Inside the Edinburgh security gathering as Scotland prepares for war

There was a sobering consensus in the room that Scotland and the wider UK are facing threats from foreign powers that will result in a large-scale conflict in the near future.

Military leaders, senior civil servants, defence analysts, academics and industry bosses were among the experts who delivered stark assessments on how geopolitics in 2026 has put the British and western authorities on high alert to potential attacks, especially from Russia .

They were among the figures who gathered in central Edinburgh last Thursday to take stock of threats facing Scotland and the UK and to assess current preparations for a large-scale conflict which military chiefs could say could erupt by 2030.

The growing threat has led to the Scottish Government becoming involved in developing a new "War Book" with the UK Government which sets the measures that would come into force across the UK in the event of conflict.

The aim of the Edinburgh meeting, some of which took place under Chatham House rules, was to achieve a better understanding of Scotland’s importance to UK national security and to understand how the Scottish Government and Westminster can best work together to improve resilience and preparedness for a major conflict either at or against a Nato ally which would automatically engage the UK because of Nato's collective defence policy.

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Much of President Vladmir Putin's current campaign, described by some defence experts as a "hybrid war" against Western and Nato nations, has been focused around the "High North" and European states in Russia's vicinity such as Finland, Norway, Sweden and Estonia.

But the Ministry of Defence has suggested that Britain is in Russia line of sight too with a 30% rise in Russian naval activity around UK waters over the past two years with incidents coming to the public attention.

They included the Russian spy ship Yantar which is believed to have been deployed along with a submarine in the Irish Sea to survey the gas pipeline linking Britain and Ireland.

The Yantar incident was particularly troubling as it was confirmation that attempts by Russia to sabotage critical subsea infrastructure off Norway and in the Baltic now appeared to be moving towards Britain - and off the Scottish coast in particular.

At Thursday's meeting Stewart McDonald, the SNP 's former defence spokesman, who now serves as senior adviser on defence and security at the Dublin-based public affairs firm Fenton Fitzwilliam, where he is part of a pan-European network of people with political, diplomatic, military, and security expertise who advise clients across the continent, set the scene - starting with Scotland's proximity to the Scandinavian states.

Former SNP MP Stewart McDonald (Image: Gordon Terris)

"Scotland sits across the GIUK gap [the main and most practical gateway for Russia’s Northern Fleet to enter the Atlantic] and we are critical to the UK's ability to watch and defend it," he told the conference, hosted by The D Group consultancy and the British Foreign Policy Group.

Mr McDonald underlined that the case needed to be made for Scotland to understand its place in national security "far better than it does, and that this demands a kind of political attention it has lacked since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999".

He listed the UK defence facilities based in Scotland - the Royal Navy's submarine service and the UK's nuclear deterrent which are based on the Clyde, at Faslane and Coulport, the maritime patrol aircraft that watch the North Atlantic, and the Typhoons that intercept Russian aircraft approaching UK airspace from the north, fly from Lossiemouth.

" Prestwick Airport, which is owned by the Scottish Government, matters to Nato, to the UK and to Ukraine far beyond what its size as an airport would suggest," he said.

"Then there is civilian infrastructure that would be a target in any serious confrontation, some of which is already being probed. The subsea cables and inter-connectors that run between Scotland, Ireland, the Northern Isles and the Faroes come ashore on our coasts. "A large of the gas that heats British homes arrives at St Fergus in Aberdeenshire.

"The North Sea installations, the offshore wind farms now being built at scale, the onshore grid that will carry their power south, the ports that service all of it: this is critical national infrastructure in the formal sense of the term, and Scotland has lots of it. And we know that much of this is of interest to our adversaries."

He added: "Indeed when you put the geography and the inventory together, and consider the complex threat picture we face, you arrive at a sobering conclusion. Scotland is both a forward edge of Nato's northern flank and a target for anyone who wants to weaken the alliance below the threshold of war."

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Professor Kristen Harkness, of the School of International Relations at St Andrew's University, warned that Scotland's large coastline and numerous island communities present heightened security risks in terms of potential Russian sabotage of sub sea cables

"What is of most concern to Scotland is the intensification of sabotage of European under sea critical infrastructure," she told the gathering.

She pointed to a possibility that because Scotland is geographically close to where Russian has been attempting to damage sub sea cables off Norway and in the Baltic, Scotland could be a "target of ease".

She added that Scotland was also vulnerable because of its large coastline and island communities heavily dependent on sub sea infrastructure.

"We have a lot of islands and a lot of communities on islands and they are all connected through their telecommunications. their power, their internet," she said.

"Communities may need to be prepared, particularly island communities, to go for a period of time with power or internet cuts."

She said assessments would be needed of how much critical services - including health and education - delivered more often remotely in island communities than on the mainland - are dependent on sub sea infrastructure.

"How dependent are our services on sub sea infrastructure that could be damaged in attacks?" she asked. "And this ties back into the issue of resilience and how communities can increase their resilience."

War resilience boxes are extra supplies of food, water, blankets, batteries and medicine that (Image: Derek McArthur)

Mr McDonald argued that substantially more work needed to be done to improve Scotland's resilience - as he urged the Scottish Government to learn lessons from Sweden, Finland and Norway on how to prepare citizens for a possible attack or war.

"The government of Sweden has twice in the last decade sent every household a booklet, under the title 'If Crisis or War Comes', setting out what people should do, what they should have at and what the state will expect of them in the event of crisis or conflict.

"Norway does the same. Finland has built its whole approach to security around the idea that the state, business and the citizen each have a part to play, and runs national defence courses that have put a large of the country's leaders in every field through the same training.

"Nobody in Stockholm, Oslo or Helsinki thinks of this as frightening the public or scaremongering. They think of it as treating people as adults who can be told the truth and asked to prepare."

He added: "The conversation with the public preparedness must take on real urgency. The Nordic governments talk to their citizens what to do in a crisis as a matter of routine, and the Scottish Government, which already runs most of the services people would turn to, is well placed to do the same.

"That means plain guidance, regularly refreshed, on what households should expect and what they should have at , and a willingness to talk conflict as well as floods, wildfires and pandemics. It must be a whole-of-society effort beyond just the state."