Varieties of neutrality

Abstract

With the end of the Cold War, the neutral countries of Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden have grappled with the question of what their neutrality means in relation to membership in the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Partnership for Peace (PfP). The concept of neutrality has continued to inform the foreign and security policies of these four neutral EU members to varying degrees, but what explains these ‘varieties of neutrality’ and what does neutrality mean in relation to membership in the EU’s CSDP and NATO’s PfP? In this article, the primary focus is on neutrality as a norm. Understanding neutrality as a norm helps clarify how neutrality becomes embedded in national identity, what it shows about the interactions between domestic belief systems and international security conditions over time, and how the definition of a norm can be revised to allow for desired policy choices. To this end, the article asserts that there are four interrelated factors key to explaining how and why each state modified its interpretation of neutrality vis-à-vis international military institutions such as NATO, and the CSDP: the reason for and timing of institutionalizing neutrality (coerced or voluntary), the form of institutionalization ( de jure or de facto), political elite opinion and public opinion/belief.