Andrew Connelly (@connellyandrew) is a freelance journalist covering political developments in the UK and Europe.

GLASGOW — Independence seems to be the must-have political accessory of 2014. Pro-Russian separatists and Kyiv loyalists scorch the land amid bloody battles for control of eastern Ukraine, the so-called Islamic State continues to metastasize across Iraq and Syria, and both Israelis and Palestinians sift through the rubble after yet another orgy of death and destruction fought in the name of aspirant statehood.

Here in Scotland we are about to embark on a non-violent variant of this issue, with voting on a referendum over independence to be held on Sept. 18. But Scotland’s democratic experiment is happening at a time of such immense volatility on the world stage that one wonders: What will be the global repercussions of a new, albeit vastly more peaceful, breakaway state?


Despite obvious differences in scale and approach, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Alex Salmond, the first minister of Scotland and leader of the pro-secession Scottish National Party, share a similar rebel status: reveling in the scorn of the mainstream over their extreme actions, dismissing critics as discredited outsiders ill-equipped to judge their societies and, lately, a devil-may-care habit of concocting policy on the hoof when backed into a corner. Neither man is averse to throwing chunks of historical red meat to the crowd in order to whip up sentiment—the original impulse in Scottish National Party circles was to stage this referendum on June 23, which is notable for being the 700 th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, Scotland’s most famous battle with the English (and one of the very few that it actually won).

Salmond has even batted his eyes at the Kremlin strongman in recent months. Though not in the habit of posing bare-chested and flexing a bicep atop a Highland cow (much to the relief of Scots), he said back in March—when Russia was orchestrating its own referendum in Crimea—that Putin was admirable for having “restored national pride” for Russians. The first minister also frequently waxes lyrical about an independent Scotland building political and trade alliances with Nordic neighbors like Norway and Iceland, and departing from the United Kingdom’s “Southern bias” of commercial ties with Western Europe and the Commonwealth. Putin might cast an approving eye on this strategy as he attempts to return post-Soviet Central Asian republics to Russia’s political and economic orbit under the awkward “Eurasian Union” banner—a protection racket in all but name.

Both leaders also share the dubious honor of hosting on their territory enough weapons to annihilate the planet several times over. Russia’s stockpile of over 8,000 warheads dwarfs that of the United Kingdom’s, estimated to be in the region of 225, but both countries have launch capability of mere minutes in the doomsday scenario. Relaxing at a recent patriotic youth camp Q&A last month, Putin casually remarked, “Thank God, I think no one is thinking of unleashing a large-scale conflict with Russia. I want to remind you that Russia is one of the leading nuclear powers.” Having a Russian, or indeed any even mildly malevolent world leader, remind you of their nuclear weapons is far from heartening. Thankfully in contrast, the Scottish National Party's policy is for the naval base located on the River Clyde at Faslane, which hosts the UK’s permanently roaming nuclear submarines, to be scrapped. Cynical Scots wonder if that promise will actually stand or whether retaining the nukes will be used as a bargaining chip to gain future concessions from Westminster.

Like Putin, the Scottish leader also finds himself in a bitter and uncompromising stalemate with the British government. Instead of war, the topic is money, specifically what money Scotland will use. After years of flirting with euro membership, Salmond now proposes a “currency union” where Scotland could use the British pound, a move completely rejected by Westminster on the grounds that it would have to act as Scotland’s last lender of resort in a crisis. Salmond counters that if the UK does not subscribe to the currency union, then Scotland will unilaterally use the pound anyway and refuse to shoulder its share of the national debt. London has not doled out sanctions to Edinburgh as it has to Moscow, but this game of political playground hair-pulling is having ominous economic consequences, roiling the markets. Some Scottish banks are already talking of moving some operations to England in the event of a “yes” vote.

In the final analysis, however, Putin should not be too eager to see the lid pop open on the Scottish independence jack-in-the-box. Despite the Russian leader’s newfound taste for separatist referenda as seen in Crimea and Donetsk, these examples follow a Kremlin-produced script and, despite undoubted pro-Russian sentiment in these regions, the exercises hardly conformed to any meaningful democratic standards, if the polling stations festooned with camouflaged gunmen are anything to go by. True, after experiencing the disintegration of the Soviet Union—what he once called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”—Putin may want to gloat and smirk at Downing Street in the event of a Scottish “yes” vote. And if it is correct, as many in eastern Europe suspect, that Putin seeks to build his new Russian empire by “enfranchising” Russian-speaking separatists in other countries like Moldova, he could well decide to invoke a vote in favor of Scottish independence as a precedent for his own purposes.

But Putin has built his entire political persona on keeping Russia intact, starting with the war he launched in Chechnya—and that probably puts him more in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s camp strategically than Salmond’s. The Russian president hinted at his views in June in an interview with the BBC in January—prior to his intervention in Ukraine—when he said: “I believe that one should not forget that being part of a single strong state has some advantages and one should not overlook this.”

It is also hard to imagine that Putin would or even could use Scotland as an example in the present crisis in Ukraine—that is, to back up his case for autonomy for the eastern part of the country. Putin appears to be more in favor of a Bosnia-style federation for Ukraine to strengthen and formalize Russian-speaking regions and therefore permanently block Ukraine’s aspirations to European Union and NATO membership. Moreover, it is unlikely that Moscow would be so encouraging to Scotland if Russia’s more restive, Muslim regions in the Southern Caucasus began to show more desire to leave, as anyone who lived through the Chechen wars will testify.

What of the Scottish referendum’s influence in other, more separatist-minded corners of Europe? The most bitterly ironic example can be found in the Catalonia region of Spain, a region that fits one definition of a nation being defined by a common language – more than half the population speaks Catalan, compared with Scotland where only a minority speak Scottish Gaelic. While the Scots remain divided 50-50 on the question of secession, the streets of Barcelona have recently seen mass rallies of up to a million people screaming for a vote, something that the Spanish government consistently denounces as illegal and unconstitutional, with the Spanish prime minister darkly intoning that if the region were to become independent, Spain would block any attempts for it to join the EU. Here’s the irony, though: Cameron sanctioned a referendum in Scotland because he thought it wouldn’t be successful; Madrid denies Catalonia a referendum because they know it would be.

Another country rattled by the separatist clamor from Edinburgh is Belgium, which despite hosting the European Parliament on its territory is paralyzed by its own internecine politics. Thanks to a revived pro-independence movement, the issue of the majority Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders breaking away from their French-speaking countrymen in Wallonia is once again on the table. The Walloons fear such talk, not so much out of fraternal affection but more because the exit of the significantly more prosperous Dutch province would render the rump Belgian state financially embarrassed. The friction also emanates from the Flemish traditionally leaning more to the right than the French-speaking liberals in Belgium. That makes it more difficult for the Walloons’ political preferences to be represented nationally—a complaint they share with the more Socialist-leaning Scots, who resent London’s years of conservative dominance.

Even within the UK’s own borders, some restive regions are using the Scottish drive to cough loudly at the back of the room and get the teacher’s attention. Teetering off England’s south coast, the impoverished region of Cornwall, famous for meat-filled pastries, ice cream and stunning landscape, has long vocalized its cultural and linguistic pride (Cornish is also a Celtic language) and even managed this year to gain national minority status.

Similarly, the northeast of England, a region still emerging from its post-industrial shadow, currently looks across the border and sees people in Scotland enjoy the fruits of free universities, free prescriptions and free care for the elderly—none of which they have—and wonders if a drive for more autonomy could bring more riches. And we haven’t even mentioned Wales or Northern Ireland yet. The main point is that whether Scotland votes “aye” or “naw,” these pint-sized regional independence movements are gaining traction thanks to the Scottish example and the widespread knowledge that London has a reputation of swallowing the best jobs, salaries and investment in the country and letting the rest of the country rot.

The referendum will also have the fringe benefit of shaking up the lethargic Westminster status quo. As the reigning prime minister and head of the Conservative and Unionist Party— to use its full name—David Cameron obviously has more than enough reasons to fight for a no vote that go far beyond ideological. To his credit, Cameron has until late said very little on the topic, knowing that to some Scottish ears the mere sound of his Eton-inflected tones is enough to conjure up images of a 19th-century English lord berating an overexcited ghillie on a Highland hunt. This was at least the case until the beginning of this week when an influential poll revealed for the first time that the “yes” campaign had climbed a few percentage points higher than the unionists, leading Cameron to pen a mawkish diatribe in the Scottish Daily Mail telling Scotland that it and rUK (rest of the UK, working title) are “better off together.” More and more, Cameron sounds like a needy boyfriend facing a break-up than a senior statesman rallying the country.

Political commentators speculate whether Cameron would survive a Scottish “yes” vote. The party’s electoral makeup wouldn’t suffer (Scotland has precisely double the amount of giant pandas as Conservative MPs), but who wants to be the prime minister who lost a third of the nation’s territory and 8 percent of its population? It is debatable whether that would be a resigning issue on its own, though he could risk being defenestrated anyway as harrumphing backbench right-wingers use the result as an excuse to remove a leader they consider to be too pro-European Union.

Add to all this a continent increasingly running into the arms of the far right, and the stage is set for a bumpy ride across a far greater landscape than Scotland. More than ever, the European Parliament is populated by a dyspeptic rag-tag rabble of nationalists, populists and outright fascists. Following the EU parliamentary elections in May, Germany let the team down by electing a neo-Nazi candidate (who now cutely sits on the parliament’s “civil liberties” committee), Italy went dynastical and brought in Benito Mussolini’s great-grand daughter and France completely lost the plot by elevating the far-right Front National to be the country’s largest political party represented in Europe. These eruptions are frequent, the mutant marriage of an electorate generally uninformed on the workings of EU and populations that have suffered from years of post-crisis austerity measures and are thus willing to give incumbent governments a bloody nose. Nevertheless, it presents a worrying situation: A vote for Scottish independence could embolden other, less savory nationalist movements across Europe .

Traditionally the average British citizen has also been woefully uninformed about the workings of the supranational entity “on the continent” that partially governs them, although the meteoric rise of a euroskeptic populist party has harnessed this ignorance and transformed it into political action. In the most recent EU elections, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) came out on top, gaining 24 seats, more than any other party. It was a stunning victory for a group most Britons considered to be a glorified band of disaffected golfing barflies with a romanticized image of a vanquished old Britain and some unenlightened views on foreigners; now it may soon even gain its first national MP. Its oleaginous leader, Nigel Farage, has managed to convince a sizeable chunk of British society that the country they hold dear is no longer in control of its own destiny but instead at the mercy of sinister EU bureaucrats in Brussels who wish to ban fun and flood the country with job-stealing immigrants. Farage’s line on Scottish independence is that, considering that the aspirant nation wishes to remain within the EU, the independence they seek is a façade anyway. His brand of divisive electioneering does not play so well in Scotland, as witnessed during a visit to Edinburgh earlier in the year when he was surrounded by heckling left-wing activists, barricaded himself in a pub and had to be bundled out through the angry mob by police escort.

But Farage and his ilk's preoccupation with Europe has achieved one thing: It has forced the hand of David Cameron, who has pledged that, if the Conservatives win the 2015 election, an “in or out” referendum will be held on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. If on Sept. 18, the majority of Scots vote “no” on independence, it will mean that they could be caught up in a British exit. For Scotland, a generally pro-EU country that wouldn’t take kindly to leaving, this may well mean … another referendum on Scottish independence.

In other words, get comfortable—this may all just be a dress rehearsal.