Mashable quotes Transatlantic Relations Program Senior Fellow Nicholas Dungan on the upcoming referendum on Scottish independence:
A divided U.K. would be a weaker member of NATO and would cause a “huge blow to Britain’s political weight,” according to Dale, who is now a senior fellow with the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And Scotland would have almost no international standing to start with. The new nation would likely have to reapply to enter the European Union, which is not a sure bet because many European governments are dealing with separatist movements of their own and would rather not legitimize the Scottish government. That’s according to Nicholas Dungan, a transatlantic relations expert with the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank.
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Should Scotland become its own nation, it may quickly find itself trying to develop its own currency, weaning off British subsidies and fighting for E.U. membership. Those three things are a recipe for economic instability, and Dungan said many businesses may move away from Scotland long before the fledgling nation can stabilize.