PLANS for an independent Scotland's defence policy can win over influential international allies and convince more people to vote Yes in a future referendum, one of the country's top experts in the field has said.
Phillips O'Brien, writing in today's Herald, said that the Yes campaign would have an opportunity to win the arguments over the military as a result of the UK's move to quit the EU and recent cuts to armed forces spending.
The Professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrews University said that defence had been "perhaps the greatest handicap" for the Yes campaign in 2014 but that the picture could be reversed if "centrist" policies were developed, in a move designed to reaffirm commitment to European institutions and NATO.
Professor O'Brien wrote: "The British government used to boast that excellent UK armed services helped the country punch above its weight. That may have been true in the past but in 2016 the UK has dropped down a number of classes.
"Then we have Brexit, which for all the fine words of the Brexiteers about creating a more international Britain, is and will continue to do precisely the opposite. To Britain’s European partners, who are focussing more and more on European wide defence initiatives, Brexit makes Britain less reliable.
"If the SNP and the Yes campaign develop their policies in a centrist, cooperative way, they could turn what was the biggest handicap in the last campaign into a possible plus. They could run on confirming Scotland’s commitment to European institutions and NATO, It would mean that far from using defence issues to try and scare Scotland into voting to stay in the union, the USA and the EU would at worst stay out of the fray and at best, might look benignly on what would be a reconfirmation of European unity."
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