Quote from the article:
Dr Bernhard Blumenau, a senior lecturer in international relations at St Andrews University, said: “There’s a lot of shared interests between Canada and the EU countries: the rules-based international order – whatever that means, with all the caveats that come with it – free trade, defence cooperation.”
This works along the lines that Canadian premier Mark Carney set out in his speech in Davos at the World Economic Forum at the beginning of the year, where he spoke of the “middle powers” and their need to work together internationally, warning: “If we're not at the table, we're on the menu.”
Trump reads this as a threat, according to Dr Blumenau: “The middle powers, I think Trump basically sees it as an alliance against him.”
The perception of the US against the world can bolster the president’s claim to champion an “America First” agenda, but the St Andrews academic was unconvinced there would be a return to the interwar isolationist position.
“I think the US, for all the rhetoric that’s coming out of it, they simply cannot withdraw from the world,” he said.
“They can focus a little bit more on their own interests and they’re doing that, but ultimately, they’re a global power with global interests so they will always have global interests that they need to defend.”
[...]
But does a chaotic new world order really benefit the causes of Scottish and Welsh independence or Irish reunification?
Dr Blumenau is not convinced. “At the moment, what they’re trying to build is European unity towards Russia, towards the United States, towards China, potentially and that includes, in the bigger sense, the UK so I don’t think that anyone has any interest in anything that would be perceived to be weakening the position of the UK,” he said.
“If you’re looking at it from the geopolitical, global context, it’s not a great time for Scottish independence at the moment, simply because there are so many other issues going on that no-one really wants this to pop up now.”