Neutrality as a foreign policy maxim

My topic is neutrality as a foreign policy maxim. The most important thing to say about this, I believe, is that neutrality is not just an invention of the Swiss and Austrians but is generally used in international relations. And that is the focus of my field of research.
    There are many different kinds of neutrality, and they have existed for many, many years. The oldest records we find go back to Thucydides, the Greek historian who reported on the Peloponnesian Wars.
    In these wars, too, there were city-states that remained neutral. You can also find this concept among the Indians. At the same time, about 2400 years ago, there was an Indian historian, Kautilya¹ (Chanakya), who was something similar to an old Indian Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote down when which prince should remain neutral in which wars, if the war constellation looks like this or that.

A simple and old idea

So neutrality has always been used during the conflicts of other states. And I would like to talk to you briefly about this, simply so that we are also aware of where Switzerland and Austria and European states in general are, in which field they are moving, if we try to imagine how states that do not want to take part in a war or a conflict, what dilemmas they are in. I would like to point out that neutrality is a very specific principle, and that is the principle of staying out of the conflicts of other parties.
    You can grasp this even more generally: It’s not just wars, it’s conflicts in general. And the basic problem that every neutral has in a conflict is that there is a conflict between two parties B1 and B2. Now we often imagine that the neutral then has to move between these two poles, and he is pulled back and forth, and that he stands in the middle. Funnily enough, the word neutrality is even written as “standing in the middle” (ç«›ž) in Japanese and Chinese.
    But I would like to say that this is actually a mistake, that we should think of neutrality differently. Because when we have this image in mind, it is often the image of the weighing pan, where the neutral stands in the middle and tries to balance the left and right pan. But these are bad symbols.

The logic of neutrality

It makes more sense to think of neutrality as a triangle, because a neutral state has the basic problem that it wants to live in peace with both conflicting parties, while they have a conflict with each other – or in the worst case a war. And the neutrality of the neutral state is always directed at the conflict, not at the parties to the conflict. A neutral state is not neutral towards the parties to the conflict. He is neutral regarding their conflict. Regarding the parties to the conflict, a neutral state is simply normal. He behaves towards these states or tries to behave with them in the same way as he would behave in times of peace, when these states are at peace with each other.
    And that’s one of the big misunderstandings: People always say, yes, Switzerland, which tried to maintain the courant normal during the Second World War, that’s a disgrace. No, it’s not. It’s exactly the point behind being neutral. You are neutral because you have a normal, peaceful, diplomatic and economic relationship with the parties to the conflict. Or at least it is usually the goal of a neutral state.
    The important thing is that a neutral state, even if it behaves neutrally towards the conflict, never manages to move out of the conflict constellation.
    This is also an inherent part of the problem, because a neutral state then is always urged by both conflicting parties to behave in one way or another, usually to side with them more. And that’s where all these problems come from, that a neutral has to explain again and again on both sides, so look, I’m having a good time with you, I understand that you have problems with B1. But I don’t want any more problems with B1, so I’m going to treat B1 this way and that now, even if you say I should impose sanctions and so on against B1. And regarding B2, you have to say again and again that I have a good relationship with B1. That’s why I don’t want to treat B1 worse just because you two are unfortunately at war with each other. And of course, B1 and B2 will both put pressure on A to get A to side more with them.
    The point I would like to make here is that every conflict constellation always looks like this, that we usually have parties to the conflict and parties that would rather not participate.
    And we can call these parties neutral, because that’s more or less what they’re trying to organise. If we have completely uninvolved parties, I call them the “man in the moon”. Let’s assume we have the man in the moon, and he sits on the other side of the moon, and he looks in the other direction of the galaxy. He has never heard of the earth, he has never heard of Russia, he has never heard of Ukraine and certainly not of their war among themselves.
    If there were such a being, we would not call this being “neutral” in the war between Ukraine and Russia. We would simply call this being uninvolved. A neutral actor in international relations is always characterised by the fact that, while he does not take sides in the conflict, he knows about the conflict and has an attitude towards it and takes up a position.
    That’s what the neutrals are often accused of.
    So, if Switzerland does not supply weapons to Ukraine, it is accused of helping Putin because Putin benefits from the fact that Ukraine does not get weapons. This is a very typical, absolutely normal accusation, in which a neutral state has to say to itself again and again: “So, dear warring parties, I understand your anger, I understand your problem, but I have my own position, I have my own attitude, and I want good relations with both.”
    Now the difference in Switzerland at the moment is that it has taken the side of one party to the conflict economically in the great power conflict between Russia, the USA and NATO (a great power conflict that is not being fought with weapons, but is currently being waged via a proxy war).
    In the exchange of fire, which is also taking place at the moment between Ukraine and Russia, Switzerland is adhering to neutrality under international law. And neutrality under international law only regulates these wars of fire. There are no international legal requirements for cold wars, such as this economic war between the USA and Russia or the economic war between the USA and China. In these great power conflicts, Switzerland behaves very partisan. But in the exchange of fire, it is at least still relatively neutral at the moment.
    Neutrals want to be friends to all and foe to neither. As a result, neutral states are friends with foes, i.e. friends with states that are hostile to each other. Or if we want to put it in a Twitter term: Neutral states refer to the conflict of other states with the hashtag “Not my war”.
    We find this constellation over and over again. There are various states in the world that have remained neutral in the past or in the present. The whole law of neutrality that we know in international law actually results from a long history of states that have said during wars of other states: “No, I’m not going to join you now.”

Neutrality law:
Invented on the high seas

International law actually started with the so-called “Consolato del Mare”². This was a collection of rules that emerged about 700–800 years ago in the Mediterranean region, where many small city-states – from Spain to North Africa, Southern France and around Italy – all traded with each other, all around the Mediterranean. And it happened time and again that certain states were at war with other states or city-states, but the others wanted to continue trading. And so it was really very important, especially for the seafarers, to know: What can we still transport while our colleagues are at war with each other?
    That is why we have the international law of the Consolato del Mare. And what was subsequently formulated is very detailed. Which goods from belligerent states can be transported on neutral ships? Or which goods from neutral states can be transported on belligerent ships? What may a belligerent state confiscate and what not?
    All of this has developed over many years. And there is a great deal of customary law, which was then ultimately codified. The interesting thing about this is that the law of neutrality actually comes from the maritime sector, not from the sector of land warfare, but from naval warfare. And neutrality has always had an extremely close connection with trade.
    So when the Indians, for example, are criticised today for taking advantage of the situation because they dare to continue buying oil in Russia and trading in this oil, even though Russia is subject to sanctions, and for doing so they are seen as violating Western sanctions, two things need to be said in response. Yes, these are Western sanctions, and the West can indeed complain about this and say that it is not nice, but the Indians don’t care much because the Indians have their own relationship with the Russians and can continue to shape it as they wish.
    At the same time, they always have to consider: How do I proceed so that Western countries do not sanction India as well, because such secondary sanctions are extremely ‘in’ at present. That is the typical problem of how a neutral country has to act in the triangle between B1, B2 and itself. And the fact that it is about trade, that it is about the economy, has always been part of the problem of neutral states that then pursue neutrality as a foreign policy during the wars or conflicts of other states. It was only 400 years ago that Hugo Grotius began to codify large parts of international law in more concrete terms.

Neutrality law: the other part
of international humanitarian law

The concept of neutrality also emerged at those times, more or less. And in 1899 and 1907 we had the biggest and most important conferences, the Hague Conferences, two peace conferences, at which law of neutrality was codified and signed in international treaties. But after that came the First and Second World War, and the whole concept of neutrality as we use it today has changed as a result, saying: War is generally forbidden, and if war is forbidden, then neutrality is no longer needed. But the problem is that although we have banned war, we never got rid of the wars. We have simply continued with the wars.
    And martial law which is also part of international law, we have simply renamed. What used to be called martial law before World War I, is now called international humanitarian law, but it is one to one the same. International humanitarian law regulates – like the Geneva Conventions – that you are not allowed to shoot at civilians. This is simply the law of war in international law, which we have now renamed.
    The law of neutrality is very similar to international humanitarian law. In principle we should no longer need it, but in practice it is still necessary. And we see that just as there are wars, there are also states that want to remain neutral. And now let’s take the states from the Global South, i. e. India, Indonesia, the whole of Southeast Asia at the moment does not understand why the Europeans are getting themselves into a deadlock constellation with Russia and Ukraine in which they quasi have to fear a nuclear war on their own continent.
    And the countries of the Global South are saying: We’ll stay out of it; we have nothing to do with it. At the moment, these states are behaving more neutral than Switzerland when it comes tom economic sanctions. Switzerland’s neutrality initiative is about that the definition of neutrality that we have now only refers to acts of war and under international law only to whether Switzerland supplies weapons or participates or does not participate in war. In addition, neutrality should also apply to economic warfare.
    This is the debate that we now must lead in Switzerland, whether we want such a definition of neutrality, yes or no. Because neutrality is extremely flexible, extremely elastic, and you can understand different things by it.

Neutral-neutral cooperation

Neutral states such as Switzerland and Austria are not unique in the world. There are other permanently neutral states, Malta, Ireland; Moldova also still has a principle of neutrality in its constitution. Mongolia tries more or less to have a neutral foreign policy, but Switzerland and Austria have a long tradition, and they see themselves as deeply neutral. And if this neutrality is strengthened again, then I am convinced that both countries could do a lot to pass on their know-how, their long experience and all the diplomatic processes that they have developed, the good offices and so on, which we operate to carry them further and to tell other countries how to do that. I recently had a conversation with a Swiss-Congolese woman, Natalie Yamb, who told me that most African countries want a neutrality like Switzerland’s. They would like to be as well positioned institutionally as Switzerland or Austria when it comes to their neutrality.
   But they are still working on it. And with such partners, Switzerland and Austria could work together to take neutrality to the world and help that other states can also stay out of third-party wars. Because world wars can be fought in two ways. Either by declaring war illegal – but in such a way that it works – or by simply finding enough states that do not join in. ‘We’re not going along with this’. That’s how you stop war from becoming a world war. And neutrality is this second approach: I simply won’t go along with it. Leave me alone. •

1   Kautilya (Chanakya) (* around 350 BC; † around 283 BC) was minister and closest advisor to the first emperor of the Indian Maurya empire Chandragupta Maurya (* around 340 BC; † around 293 BC).
2   ‘Consolato del Mare’: a code of maritime law written in the Middle Ages, which is based on ancient law and has influenced modern law.

(Translation Current Concerns)

*   Pascal Lottaz is an associate professor for neutrality studies at the Faculty of Law of the University of Kyoto (Japan). He is originally from the Swiss canton Fribourg and is a member of the Swiss Social Democratic Party.