[sheltgor]

I'm not surprised at all... It's not every day that a country democratically permits succession. There has only been, what? One new country since the end of the Cold War? Further, while Scotland isn't London, it has a large standing in culture for a number of English speaking countries due to it being the background of many people there, and further it still has some big economic issues surrounding it. 90% of the UK's North Sea Oil anyone?

[acheron]

If you ignore Cold War fallout (though the breakup of Yugoslavia continues to this day), and sham countries like South Ossetia, then there's at least Timor-leste and South Sudan. Timor is not in great shape, but appatently getting better, and certainly better off independent. Remains to be seen if South Sudan is better off by itself or not, but I'm not planning a vacation there any time soon.

[rjsw]

There are also the Czech Republic and Slovakia which split up peacefully.

[sheltgor]

As I said, maybe one since the Cold War. I knew South Sudan, but didn't think about Timor-leste. So if you take out the various eastern bloc states breaking up that's only two new countries.

[stock_toaster]

Isn't much of the UK's nuclear arsenal also in Scotland?

[arethuza]

The UK's fleet of 4 Trident submarines is based in a sea-loch (fjord) not far from Glasgow, Scotland's largest city. As you might expect, this isn't a particularly popular policy for a lot of people in Scotland.

A very interesting article on the UK's "independent" deterrent by Charlie Stross can be found at:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...