The End of Neutrality

I almost don’t believe what I’m seeing, from Europe.

I don’t want to diminish the reaction of any of these nations. I believe it is every sovereign nation’s right to make and join alliances and associations of nations, so long as they are wise. I don’t doubt that some of these nations, witnessing aggressive war on their continent for the first time in a generation or longer, are re-evaluating their security needs. They should.

Also, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the traditional policy of neutrality has occasionally had moral costs and has been executed with hypocrisy. Swiss financial institutions have been hammered for the business they did with the wartime Nazi government of Germany. “Neutral” Ireland has allowed U.S. military planes to use its runways for years during the War on Terror. Ireland’s Éamon de Valera did covert war-planning and intelligence-sharing with the British government during World War II, but at the end he traveled to the German consulate in Dublin to pay his respects upon the death of Hitler, to maintain the appearance of neutrality. Finland’s neutrality during the Cold War caused it to be silent in the face of embarrassing Soviet atrocities.

Still, neutrality was for some of these nations a necessary condition for their independence, for their freedom from the rivalries among cousins that could send this duchy or that province into devastating conflict with one another. To throw it away or redefine it is a serious thing, and I don’t think there has been serious debate in any of these nations about it. Neutral states also offered, before the advent of bodies like the U.N., “safe spaces” for various dissidents or even negotiations for the larger powers. That means it is a potential loss for us as well.