The world wants Scotland to vote No this week.
Some Yessers deny this; others shrug it off as a horrible fact of life. Me? I think independence supporters should embrace the hostility.
Why? Because - as crazy as this sounds - it might just be the engine that drives a new Scottish state right back into Nato, the EU and even a currency union.
Here's how: right now, powers like America, Canada and France have genuine and understandable concerns that their long-standing strategic ally and commercial partner, the UK, is going to be weakened if Scotland splits. They would prefer that we reject independence.
But what would they do if we don't? Well, they'll twist the arms of First Minister Alex Salmond and whoever is in charge in London to make sure we all play nice on foreign, defence and economic policy.
Their logic? Uncertainty, it goes, is bad. So the old certainties of the British state have to be replaced with new post-Yes ones as quickly and quietly as possible.
Take the United States. President Barack Obama has already said he thinks we're Better Together. But how will he react if we decide that we are not?
Fiona Hill, director of the Centre on the United States and Europe at Washington's Brookings Institute, has an inkling. "There will be quiet work behind the scenes to make sure the UK and Scotland handle this thing well," she said. "I can't see that it would be in the US interests to have Scotland left out of the EU and Nato. Why would they want that?"
Right now, in the heat of the final days of a fiercely contested referendum debate, we are all still looking at the big issues in isolation: the future of Trident, EU membership and some kind of deal to share the Bank of England and financial regulation framework. Come Friday, if we have voted Yes, that will end, according to whispering foreign observers. Both the markets and international partners will apply extreme pressure for an accommodation on all these fronts. And, perhaps, far more quickly than pre-referendum Unionist rhetoric would suggest.
Security and commerce, of course, aren't the only reasons some foreign governments fear independence. Spain, for one, dreads what it calls Scottish "contagion", the idea that our separatists will inspire those demanding a vote of their own in, say, Catalonia. Those concerns are real too. But, again, come a Yes vote, the clever diplomatic buzz reckons Madrid would come under impressive lobbying to "like it or lump it" as states like Germany look to mitigate any negative fallout from the break-up of Britain.
So all good news for Scotland's SNP rulers? Not really. Allies will be demanding something in return for Nato and EU membership. Mr Salmond will have to be "reasonable" on Trident. And, with the Kremlin re-invigorated, he'll have to dig deeper into his pockets. "Scotland will have to step up and not try to hide behind England's coat tails on defence," said Ms Hill. "Before Vladimir Putin decided to move in to Crimea it would have been a safe bet you could get away with lower spending. Not now."
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