"Sovereignty-association"
isn’t a new idea. It’s a complicated and rather unemotional concept and has
been defeated before. Free trade, however, isn’t a new idea either. Yet in
1776, Scotland’s Adam Smith and his book Wealth
of Nations launched it’s eventual global takeover.
In the 1960s and 1970s,
nationalists assumed that if the superpowers’ Cold War ended without blowing
us up, distinct societies of viable size could achieve genuine national
independence. Canadians and nationalists in the province of Quebec imagined
that they could manage their affairs independently of the US and, conceivably,
of each other. Consequently, when the René Lévesque sovereigntist government
asked Quebecers in 1980 for a mandate to negotiate merely a new partnership — ‘sovereignty-association’ — the Government of Canada responded with scorn.
It was a sleazy trick. Quebec
nationalists, like serious nationalists everywhere, surely would never stick to
any arrangement that would significantly limit their national power. In two
referendums, Ottawa insisted that Lévesque’s model was merely a Trojan horse;
inside its clapboard shell crouched wild-eyed Anglo-haters, with fascist
undergarments. Pierre Trudeau would snip that his ideas were both naïve and
deceitful.
Last week, in a 667-page plan,
Scotland’s nationalist first minister Alex Salmond put forward a similar
sovereignty-association proposal in a much calmer time — a time when
nationalist romantics are less certain and taken less seriously. Political
interdependence is now the normal way groups of affluent and civilized people
organize their affairs.
Two huge, loose federations — the Eurozone and
the United States — manage the world’s two biggest currencies, their open
markets and business cycles, while the citizens in their dozens of sovereign
member states manage what they don’t assign to the two giant associations.
(Canadians, Englishmen, Quebecers, and Scots prosper today, in large measure,
because these two gigantic concoctions work.)
It’s unsurprising and
unimportant that the Government of Great Britain rejected Scotland’s proposals
before the referendum; it’s the status quo’s nature to tell us that change
causes trouble. However, it’s not reasonable for resolute liberal journals like
The Economist
to complain that Scotland’s plan is too utilitarian and too optimistic at the
same time:
“He [Salmond] would also have to negotiate EU membership, continued use of
sterling, the division of Britain’s national debt, NATO membership and much
else besides. Voting for independence would be an act of faith.”
Certainly, the island of
Great Britain has had limited experience with federal-style government. The
English political class long-believed that even their descendants couldn’t make
decentralized federal systems work in North America and that "Europeans"
couldn’t make them work in Europe as well. Nevertheless, the elite that will do
most of the fear mongering in Scotland’s referendum debate will, at the same time, deeply
treasure their international alliances and associations and the acts of faith — as negotiators and traders — that made Britain great.
If Scotland votes yes,
British leaders will set their feelings aside and, by morning, start working on
how to maintain every mechanism and institution with the Scots that serves
their mutual interests.
"Sovereignty-association"
isn’t unworkable. It simply may not be necessary for Scotland.
