extent Germany’s refusal to avoid attacking neutral American merchant ships
that brought the USA into the war on the side of Britain and France. Only
Switzerland, which has been recognized internationally as permanently neutral
since 1815, was fully able to avoid favouring or being used by one side or
another. (Even Switzerland has accepted a limitation to its neutrality since
voting to join theUnited Nationsin 2002.) Even the most bitterly hostile of
enemies can see the mutual benefit of having some genuinely neutral inter-
mediary to deal with, for example, negotiations over prisoners of war.
Legally, in fact, not all nations even have the right to announce a general
neutrality. All members of the United Nations, for example, share a common
duty to defend each other and to aid in the punishment of an aggressor under
certain conditions, and could not claim that their neutrality required or
allowed them to be impartial between two parties if one had UN sanction.
In practice the only effective neutrality is what has come to be known as
‘armed neutrality’. This state of affairs, and modern Sweden may be the best
example, involves not just the general intention not to be involved in any war,
but a manifest ability, at some cost, to defend its own frontiers effectively. The
Swedes in fact have an efficient armaments industry, and a very effective
military capacity based on a large reserve and more or less total liability to
conscription for military training. Being able to defend oneself actually comes
close to a legal definition of neutrality, because it is always open to a combatant
nation to claim the need to occupy a neutral to prevent its enemy from so
doing, if it cannot trust the neutral itself to be able to honour its legal obligation
not to allow any other party to benefit from its weakness.
Considering the readiness of aggressors to invade neutral countries in the
potentially limited wars of the 20th century, the notion of neutrality in any
third world war is largely imaginary. Not only was the sort of major war that
used to be feared in Europe inherently likely to be nuclear, but the strategic
position of a country like Sweden would make it extremely difficult for
NATOor any likely enemy to respect the neutrality of at least its airspace.
Neutrality is, of course, entirely possible in limited and small wars not
involving a major power or alliance, but this is largely the neutrality of those
who do not care to be involved, rather than the neutrality of a small nation
which fears to be involved. Effectively it is only possible for a country to be
neutral if it is sufficiently independent of both sides in a conflict. The position
of Iran during theGulf Warof 1991 is a particularly interesting example of
neutrality in a conflict not only involving close neighbours, but also a UN
alliance spearheaded by the USA. Iran had not only been a bitter enemy of Iraq
in the recent past, but had also been forced to be independent from most
Western powers ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979. In contrast Jordan
displayed a clear tendency to support Iraq, upon which it was economically
dependent. Furthermore, there are very few potential conflicts that are not at
Neutrality