Independent Scotland, weaker Britain

US President Barack Obama expressed his support on Thursday for a “strong, robust and united” Britain. Indicating his preference for a ‘no’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum in September, he asserted that the “United Kingdom has been an extraordinary partner to us. From the outside at least, it looks like things have worked pretty well”.

According to Press TV, Obama is not the only international leader to express concern about the Scottish referendum. Madeleine Albright, the former US secretary of state, has said that “fragmentation does not help” the United States and the EU.
Meanwhile, Swedish Foreign Minister Karl Bildt, who served as Swedish prime minister from 1999 to 2001, has said that “the Balkanisation of the British Isles is something we are not looking forward to.”
These remarks highlight the fact that, despite relative decline in the twentieth century, the United Kingdom has preserved sizeable political, military and economic influence on the world stage.
As former Conservative foreign secretary Douglas Hurd once asserted, by and large Britain continues to “punch above its weight” in global affairs and this has helped bolster international security and prosperity.
However, the domestic underpinnings of this success are now threatened by two potential political earthquakes on the horizon. Not only will the United Kingdom break up later this year if Scotland votes for independence, but there is also the possibility of an ‘in-out’ European referendum in 2017 that could see Eurosceptics prevail.