money given, tend to result in informal alliances and relationships, and mean
that neutralism in a pure form is seldom practised. Essentially neutralism is the
same as ‘non-alignment’, and the Non-aligned Movement has over 100
members. Unlike the actual status of formal neutrality, which is a breach of
the general duty allUnited Nationsmembers have to support a UN mandate
against an aggressor, it is perfectly compatible with active participation in
international affairs and with full membership of the UN.
Neutralism need not involve total neutrality, because membership of regio-
nal alliances and defence pacts which do not involve relations with external
major powers is perfectly possible. India, for example, is one of the leaders of
the non-aligned nations, and yet there is no question of it being neutral in any
conflict between, for example, Bangladesh and Pakistan, both of which
countries are also practitioners of neutralism.
It is important to differentiate not only between neutrality and neutralism,
but also between neutralism andisolationism. The latter, famous as the
official US policy towards all international affairs outside its own hemisphere
from the declaration of theMonroe Doctrinein 1823 until its entry in the
Second World War in 1941 (with a brief break from 1917–20), involves a total
abdication from international affairs, and a complete lack of interest in the
outcome of any conflict. Isolationism was taken by the Americans, for
example, to preclude membership of theLeague of Nations, yet many
neutralist countries (and Sweden, a neutral country) have contributed to
UN peace-keeping forces.
Neutrality
Neutrality does not just refer to a state of non-involvement in international
conflict, and there is in fact a fairly precise meaning in international law. If a
state wishes to assume a position of neutrality between countries who are at
war with each other, it has an obligation underinternational lawto refrain
from aiding either party, or from allowing either to use its territory for any
warlike purpose at all. In return for this it is to be allowed to continue trading
with either or both of the war-making powers, although the latter have the
right to blockade and prevent any prohibited trading, exercising care to protect
the nationals and ships of the neutral country. None of the war-making powers
may, within international law, attack the neutral state.
Although the idea of neutrality was at one time, during the era oflimited
war, perfectly sensible and minimized the impact of war on the rest of the
international community, it did not, in the context of the two world wars,
make a great deal of sense. In both wars, for example, protestations of neutrality
did not save Belgium from invasion. In the First World War it was to a large
Neutrality