Scotland is set to vote two days from now on whether to remain a part of Great Britain and the United Kingdom or whether to declare itself an independent nation. Ironically, one of the unanswered questions in the vote will be whether Scotland (should it choose independence) will be allowed to remain in the European Union or will have to reapply to be admitted as a new state (which could force them to use the Euro as currency, rather than sticking with the British pound). Will Scotland stay together within the E.U. while it declares itself apart from the U.K.?

I have to state, up front, that I have only a superficial grasp (at best) of the issue of independence for Scotland. I cannot advocate for either side of the question, because I simply don't have enough knowledge of the many issues surrounding Thursday's vote. Also, I have no idea what the outcome of the vote will be, but at least in this I am not alone, as the polling has gotten so close that few are now predicting which way it will go. About all anyone can say with any certainty is that it will be a historic vote no matter what happens, since if Scotland leaves Great Britain it likely won't ever return and (conversely) if it stays it will likely be a long time before another such referendum is held.

What I find interesting in the debate over Scottish independence is the larger question of whether Europe itself is coming together or flying apart. Or, perhaps, whether it could manage to do both at the same time.

One reason the European Union is not exactly encouraging the Scots to go it alone is that if Scotland bolts Great Britain, there are other ethnic groups and regions which could easily mount their own drives for independence from nation-states that have existed for centuries -- particularly in France and Spain. Catalonia has always yearned (to some degree) for a split from the rest of Spain, and the Basques have been fighting for their own country for decades. Other regions in France and in other large European countries may become emboldened to consider going it alone as well. There may indeed be a domino effect following Scottish independence, if it comes to pass.

Such splits have not always been cordial and civilized, historically. The end of Soviet domination over Eastern Europe led to several bloody conflicts, in an explosion of "ethnic cleansing." The history of the former Yugoslavia alone provides several examples. In today's headlines, the situation in Ukraine shows that nobody should expect the lines on the map of Europe to remain stable forever in some sort of rosy "end of history" naïveté. So it shouldn't be automatically assumed that independence for any particular region or new nation in Europe will happen peacefully at the ballot box. The map of Europe, after all, has changed considerably even in the past 100 years, with the aftermath of the death of an empire (Austro-Hungarian), the rise and fall of another empire (the Soviet Iron Curtain or Warsaw Pact), and two wars which redrew more than one countries' boundaries (look at the history of Poland, for the most obvious example). Germany was forcibly divided into two for half of the past century, and then peaceably reunited after the fall of the Soviet Union. The map of Europe is not an unchanging thing, to put this another way.

But, partially in response to the devastation which two world wars wreaked on Europe, in the past half-century we have also witnessed the coming together of Europe in a historic and unprecedented (since perhaps Roman times) union. This started out as an economic experiment (the European Economic Community, later renamed the European Community), which grew into a fusion of common currency (the Euro) and a full-blown confederation (the European Union). Much like in America, citizens now have allegiances to more than one governmental entity. Here, we live in states under a federal government; in Europe they live in countries under a European confederate government. This is somewhat oversimplifying things, I realize, but it's close enough for this discussion's purposes.

There are very important differences between the two systems, of course. While European borders have fallen for things like customs and movement of people, they remain on other subjects. In the United States, you can move from Virginia to Oregon, and you'll not only be using the same money but no government office will ask you to fill out a form to receive permission for such a move (OK, granted, you'll have to re-register your vehicle and update your voter registration, but this is not the same thing as applying for a green card for permission to work). But whether you live in Vermont or New Mexico, you will still be protected by the same army, and that army acts under the command of a single person -- all the states share the same foreign policy. In Europe, this is not the case. There, while the European Union allows for free movement between nations for reasons of employment, each of them will have their own armed forces and their own foreign policy. There is no European Union Army, to put it another way, and the European Union is never going to declare war on anybody -- it can't, by design. There is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which serves to at least give European armies some sort of cohesive bond, but NATO is so dominated by the United States that it doesn't really serve as a fair comparison to what a European army (with a single foreign policy voice) would be like.

Still, this gives some safety for countries like Scotland who may be considering independence. Previously, one of the biggest bars to such a split was whether the new nation would have a large enough economy to support their own currency. Currency traders were merciless before the introduction of the Euro, and caused many European countries' economies to repeatedly crash. This is no longer really a consideration, assuming Scotland will use either the British pound or the Euro (nobody's really talking about the revival of the Scottish pound in the debate, at least not that I've noticed). So voting for independence doesn't mean the possibility of driving your economy into a ditch (or at least, the chances seriously lessen).

If Scotland is allowed to -- somehow -- remain within the E.U. after declaring independence, then the push for other regions in Europe to follow their lead will grow. Whether this will ultimately be seen as a good thing or a bad thing (by both those within such regions and without, in the rest of Europe) may not be known for years -- or even decades. Likewise, the European Union itself doesn't have a guaranteed positive future. The European Union faced far more serious issues in coming together than the United States ever faced (not having a common language, for one), but still the parallel can be drawn between where the European Union is now and our own Articles of Confederation government, from the American Revolution to when the United States Constitution was drawn up. Confederation didn't work out for us, and it ultimately may collapse in Europe as well, if they see a common need to band closer together as some sort of "United States of Europe" (become a true nation-state rather than just a loose economic union). At the present time, this is seen in Europe as not desirable and a longshot at best, but in the future this could indeed change for various reasons.

There are always unknowns in speculation about overarching governmental theory, of course. Both sides in the Scottish debate are feverishly trying to exploit the unknowns of the other side, right now. We'll see who has the more convincing argument later this week. But, seen historically, Scotland leaving Great Britain in 2014 is a lot less risky than when all the other outposts of the former British Empire (on whom the sun famously never set) decided to cut ties with London (such as India, the United States, or the Republic of Ireland). If Scotland manages to go it alone but remain in the European Union, then not much will appreciably change on the larger geopolitical scale. The British Empire has been shrinking for quite some time now, but the rise of a semi-united Europe means Scotland's "going it alone" doesn't have to be all that lonely, for better or worse.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant