Neutrality in International Relations: Preface
I'm writing a book on "Neutrality in International Relations" and it will be published 'Substack-first,' as I write its different parts (aka work in progress). Here's the preface.
This book explores the age-old concept of ‘not taking sides’ in wars and conflicts of others. It traces neutrality from its oldest known origins among the ancient Greek city-states and the Indian principalities to the maritime neutralities of the medieval and early modern periods, all the way to the modern conceptions of Post-Cold War neutralism. The book will serve as a comprehensive introduction of the subject to students of international relations and world history. By exploring a phenomenon that goes to the heart of conflict , the following chapters offer a rich analysis of global warfare from ‘a third angle,’ which is usually left unexplored. It also offers a theoretical approach within international relations to a topic that has mostly been treated as either a subject of history or international law, appearing in various sub-fields of the humanities and social sciences, such as diplomacy studies, humanitarian discourse, sports-diplomacy, or conflict studies, but does not exist as a theoretical approach in its own right.[1]
The analysis uses an eclectic approach across different academic traditions to work out the underlying currents and mechanics of neutrality as an archetypical position of actors caught up in the conflicts of others. Critics argue that neutrality does not matter much since, as Thucydides said about the neutral Melians, “the week suffer what they must,”[2] and neutrality to them is a form of institutionalized weakness. But this view is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of neutrals being pacifist and isolationist, which are both exceptions, not the rule. On the one hand, modern neutrals tend to be strongly armed and diplomatically engaged in world affairs. On the other hand, neutrality and its conceptual correlate, neutralism, go far beyond what one might imagine as ‘classic’ neutrality of the permanent type that have become the signature foreign policies of some small states like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Malta, and Turkmenistan.
As an analytical category neutrality encompasses phenomena like Cold War Nonalignment, occasional neutralities of great powers like Britain, the US, or China during different periods of time, and instances of diplomatic omni-partiality like Oman’s multi-directional foreign policy[3] or Vietnam’s ‘Bamboo Diplomacy.’[4] Even strategies of countries that are bound into ‘loose’ alliances that they seek to distance themselves from and political neutralist movements inside states that try to bring about equidistant foreign policies are part of this discussion. Such instances are all tied together by what this book calls ‘the neutral idea.’
It is an old idea and a natural one that keeps occurring in many shapes and forms. And because neutrality is hard-wired into the mechanics of conflict itself, it will remain with us whether we like it or not. The only question is if we recognize its patterns and understand how to deploy it as a tool of diplomacy and foreign policy—or if its manifestations will be left alone, attended to by historians only in retrospect. For these reasons, the following chapters will not focus on particular foreign policies of one or the other state. Nor will they focus on international law or trace the development of the concept meticulously over time. Others have completed this task already marvelously.[5] Instead, the book will discuss the idea and its various manifestation across periods, geographies, domains, and intellectual traditions to work out its impact and role in the international system.
[1] Pascal Lottaz, "Neutrality Studies," Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies (2022),https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.680.
[2] Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Richard Crawley, 1874 ed. (London: Longmans, 431 BC), 397.
[3] Roby C. Barret and Leah Sherwood, "Oman: Partisan Non-Intervention," in Neutrality After 1989: New Paths in the Post-Cold War World, ed. Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2024).
[4] Khac Giang Nguyen, "Bamboo in the Wind: Vietnam’s Quest for Neutrality," in Neutrality After 1989: New Paths in the Post-Cold War World, ed. Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom (Bristol: E-International Relations, 2024).
[5] Stephen C. Neff, The Rights and Duties of Neutrals: A General History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Maartje M. Abbenhuis, An Age of Neutrals: Great Power Politics, 1815-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Cyril E. Black et al., Neutralization and World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).
I'm excited to read more of your work, it's a niche field considering the brain drain in international relations.
Good luck with this project, Pascal. It is needed, though I wonder how you can find the time to do everything you do.