Prof Andrew Cottey: So, just what is neutrality?
The minimum benchmark definition of neutrality is not joining military alliances.
The Government’s consultative forum on international security policy inevitably confronts the question of neutrality.
The government parties argue that military neutrality — refraining from joining military alliances — is compatible with security and defence cooperation with the EU and Nato and that such cooperation is necessary to address the security challenges of the 21st century.
Critics argue that the Government is watering down, even abandoning, Ireland’s neutrality.
The roots of neutrality lie in the idea of non-belligerence in war — that is not participating in or being drawn into wars between other states.
This can be traced back as far as wars between the ancient Greek city states.
Neutrality, in this sense, was a protection for states: By committing not to join a war between others, a state hoped to avoid being attacked by those states or having its territory used by them.
Similar practices emerged in Europe in the Middle Ages, with states sometimes concluding bilateral agreements relating to neutrality.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, some European powers formed two short-lived Leagues of Armed Neutrality as part of efforts to stay out of the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars.
The emerging practice of neutrality prompted debate on what exactly were the rights and duties of neutral states.
The 1907 Hague Conventions — a key part of the modern international laws of war — codified the rights and duties of neutral states, including that the territory of neutral states is inviolable, that belligerent states must not move (or be allowed to move) troops or armaments across the territory of neutral states, and that neutral states are not forbidden from trading with belligerents, including trading armaments.
From all this it is clear that the minimum benchmark definition of neutrality is not joining military alliances.
By definition joining a military alliance, such as Nato, commits a state to defending its allies — even if the exact circumstances in which this might occur are unclear — and is therefore not compatible with neutrality.
There are even questions, however, over whether neutrality is compatible with membership of collective security organisations like the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Under Article 25 of the UN Charter member states ‘agree to accept and carry out’ decisions of the UN Security Council, which include the council’s power to authorise the use of force.
UN membership can thus be read as taking on a commitment to go to war on the UN’s behalf, although in practice whether to join any UN operation remains a national choice.
Nonetheless, because of such concerns, Switzerland did not join the UN until 2002.
Another version of neutrality is so-called ‘armed neutrality’.
In order to defend their neutrality, countries such as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland have historically maintained large, well-armed militaries.
In contrast, Ireland, which was in no position to establish strong defence forces when it gained independence in 1921, has, as critics have pointed out, followed a policy of ‘unarmed neutrality’.
More broadly, neutrality is sometimes associated with a policy of equidistance between great powers and military blocs.
During the First World War, one of the slogans of the Irish Neutrality League was ‘neither King nor Kaiser’.
During the Cold War, this logic was reflected in the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1956.
Over time, European neutral states such as Ireland, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland also became associated with other ‘peace’ policies, including conflict resolution, UN peacekeeping, nuclear disarmament, and development aid.
Publics in European neutral states have thus often come to view their countries as ‘good guys’, standing against bad things such as militarism, alliances and nuclear weapons.
This view is, however, is overly simplistic and sometimes avoids difficult moral choices.
Refraining from supplying arms to states at war might seem to be the more peace-loving policy, but had the USand EU countries followed this approach in Ukraine Russia would now control Kyiv and President Putin would be imposing a brutal dictatorship on the country.
Nato may be a military alliance, but it has arguably succeeded in deterring Russia (and the Soviet Union before it) whilst avoiding escalation to a Third World War — and helped to underpin integration amongst the states of Europe.
The uncomfortable reality is that there is no single or correct definition of neutrality.
Simplifying somewhat, the Irish people face a choice between a pragmatic version of neutrality, which recognises the value of cooperation with the EU and NATO, and a purist version which distances the country from not only NATO but also a key element of the EU.
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