One of the distinctive features of Scotland and its independence campaign is that we are a country in which nuclear weapons are based. We have around 200 nuclear bombs and their Trident delivery system just thirty miles from our largest city.

The UK has posed as one of the world's nuclear powers but since the 1960s, it has been completely dependent on the United States. It makes nuclear warheads and submarines to US design but it has had no independent delivery system for almost 60 years. It rents the Trident missile system from the US and these return regularly to the US for servicing.

This is one of the key reasons why Britain has so often behaved like a client state of the US. Any American President could cancel the lease at any time. With current technology, having Trident subs in Scotland has no strategic advantage to the American military and they will have ensured that they cannot be used without US control. Having an erratic President with contempt for international law and European states makes this a plausible scenario.

However, Britain's nuclear posture has been viewed as hugely important to its politicians who consider it as essential to their 'Big Power' status and they have been committed to spending huge amounts of money in maintaining the illusion. In Scotland the independence movement has always opposed nuclear weapons as an existential threat to humanity and a very real threat to us whether by accident, miscalculation or war hysteria. The SNP and the Greens and all the other independence groups support an independent Scotland ratifying the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which more than half the member states have signed up to.

This, of course is seen as a threat to the British establishment since there is no 'convenient' site for the Trident base outside of Scotland.

Getting rid of the completely US 'dependent' nuclear system would also be in the interests of the people of England. Money could be spent on the present incompetent defence system. The nuclear weapons are unusable and the over-dependence on the US would decline. This, of course, is a challenge to the false posturing of the British state and there is an attempt which I am sure will be used to attack other independence movements to use the claim that smaller means being weaker.

20th century history doesn't sustain that argument. Being larger or smaller has not been the key factor in involvement in violence or survival as successful states. We all need a security strategy which focuses on border and cyber defence and environmental and economic resilience. Let's show that we can build soft-power through building networks of friends.

Show our support for our colleagues in Greenland. If the US tries to invade, let's all work for a boycott of the US and turn it into a big campaign.

Isobel Lindsay - Scottish Independence Convention