Scotland’s independence referendum ended in a resounding victory for the side advocating Scotland remaining within the UK as the “No” side received 55 percent of the vote against the “Yes” side’s 45. The result notwithstanding, the referendum itself has been lauded as a great victory for democracy and something that Scotland and the UK should be proud of.
In the past, governments treated independence movements as secessionists betraying their nation and they often ended in bloody suppression.
However, the UK showed tolerance and followed democratic ideals in giving Scots the freedom to decide their own future, with the queen encouraging Scots to “think very carefully about the future,” while British Prime Minister David Cameron said that Scottish independence would “break [his] heart.”
Although the “Yes” side lost, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who led the pro-independence effort, accepted the loss and said he would resign from his post in November. Although he lost this battle, he gained a place in history and has probably also managed to improve Scotland’s situation within the UK. After the result was announced, Scotland remained mostly calm and both sides have displayed the demeanor one would expect in a long-standing democracy.
The need to trust in the public was one important lesson to be learned from this referendum. Government leaders did not try to block it by saying that there was no need for a referendum at this time, and instead let Scots decide their own future. The government did not treat the referendum as a bloodthirsty monster or play around with referendum legislation and set irrational restrictions to create a “birdcage” referendum law which would make passing a referendum, although nominally possible, very difficult or even impossible in practice.
Instead, all that was required to win the referendum was a simple majority: half of all votes plus one. UK and Scottish politicians did not have the idiotic idea that the future of Scotland should be decided by all UK citizens, in the way that some people feel that Taiwan’s future should be decided by all Chinese.
Although the UK government was fully opposed to Scottish independence, it did not treat the prospect of it as a rebellion or imprison pro-independence leaders. Nor did it hold military exercises or fire missiles or say that “no one who promotes independence will meet with a happy ending,” as former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) once said.
The Scottish independence movement issued a detailed white paper detailing what the nation would look like following independence to give the public a clear blueprint when considering their future. In the end, the Scots considered their own future based on their national identity, and in addition to national defense and foreign affairs, they considered taxes, healthcare, how the North Sea oil resources should be distributed and which solution would be more beneficial to themselves, Scotland and the UK as a whole.
Although the whole world was waiting to find out how Scottish independence would affect the UK, the EU and the rest of the world, the result was a soft landing, as the Scots decided to remain within the UK and observers breathed a sigh of relief. Someone has said that referendums are populist, but the people of Scotland displayed their intelligence and wisdom throughout the entire process.
A referendum is of course a major gamble for all parties. Prior to voting day, the situation is fluid and everyone is concerned, and if this concern and anxiety are not handled correctly, they can lead to disorder. However, a referendum lets everyone express their opinion and make their own decision. For the foreseeable future, Scotland and the UK will enjoy political stability.
Trust in the public is indeed the way to long-term political stability.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS