Part III Neutrality in the Era of Balance of Power, 1815 1917 121 Sovereignty and Security Community since 1917
122 Sovereignty from the Bottom-Up Introduction The third stage in the development of the nation-state system entailed the diffusion of national sovereignty as an ordering principle, first in Central and Eastern Europe through the US intervention in the First World War and the subsequent peace treaties, and then in the rest of the world through decolonisation after the Second World War. This diffusion coincides with the consolidation of a liberal democratic security community, in principle beginning with Wilson s fourteen points, but working in practice only with the Pax Americana after 1945. That the nation-state has reached universal scope must be seen as the result of a series of contingent historical developments. These include the relative peacefulness in Europe in the period after the treaties of 1815. The ambition of Napoleon to create a European super-state, or empire, came to nothing. The hundred years following 1815 were a time in which a successful balance of power was maintained in Europe, disturbances of which were for the most part contained by diplomacy. This went together with an acceleration of technological innovation in weaponry, made possible by industrialism and stimulated capitalism, which allowed the European powers to master the rest of the world. Equally important was the formal recognition of the autonomy and boundedness of the nation-state made in the treaties following the First World War. If a new and formidably threatening pattern of war was established at this time, so was a new pattern of peace. The point is not so much the acknowledgement of any particular state boundaries, but the recognition of the authenticity of the nation-state as the legitimate arbiter of its own internal affairs. These doctrines were subsequently renewed in the altered international context following the termination 122
Neutrality in the Era of Balance of Power, Introduction 1815 1917 123 of the Second World War. Yalta is perceived as the symbol of those accords that gave recognition to the hegemony of certain of the larger powers within the global nation-state system and formally accepted the existence of socialist nation-states as authentic members of that system (Giddens 1985: 255 7). In recent times the authentic character of the nation-state has again been confirmed by the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union and its empire in Central and Eastern Europe. At the close of the twentieth century, however, there were signs of a new fundamental shift. Interstate wars have almost disappeared, and when wars continue to appear it is within states. NATO s new strategic concept of spring 1999, triggered by the Kosovo crisis and underpinned by a new Third Way consensus among the Western powers, shifted the focus of legitimacy from state sovereignty to human rights. While statehood seems to lose its status, however, ethnicity and nationality maintained a central role since most human rights abuses are committed against ethnic minorities or aspiring national groups. Nineteenth-century ideologies were in the main less than total, and even the war that broke out in 1914 could initially be regarded as an ordinary, limited, and private quarrel of Germany and its great public enemy, to use the words of Sir William Scott in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It soon turned out to be the first industrialised mass war, and an ideological battle between monarchism, parliamentarism and emerging socialism. The twentieth century was an age in which mass politics and ideologies often turned into exclusionary and aggressive worldviews. With Stalin and Hitler were discovered the great political potentialities of ideologies which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurrence by deducing it from a single premise (Arendt 1958: 468; Cassels 1996: 8). In the twentieth century wars were increasingly waged against the economy and infrastructure of states and against their civilian populations. Wars were not fought between armies and fleets alone but between entire societies, and civilian casualties by far outnumbered military casualties in most belligerent countries except the USA (Hobsbawm 1995: 13). The Hague Conventions had confirmed the principles established in the first American neutrality declaration of 1793 of a strict separation between the state on the one hand, and private individuals and companies within its jurisdiction on the other. International
124 Sovereignty and from Security the Bottom-Up Community since 1917 law concerned relations between states, and was not applicable to civil society. Neutrality laws developed in the liberal era when a clear distinction was made between the military and civilian sphere of society, and wars were mainly limited to a battle between armies on a battlefield. If a citizen or a private company of a neutral state provided military supplies and support to the belligerents it did not constitute a breach of neutrality as defined by international law. The main principle of neutrality law is that economic and financial relations shall continue in the same way during times of war as during times of peace. The only explicit limit to this interchange is an absolute prohibition for neutral states to supply credits, arms and ammunition which are of direct use in warfare. In effect this left the right to the belligerents to control the relations of neutral citizens with the enemy. The neutral state had to admit a right for the belligerents to punish neutral citizens who broke a blockade, traded with contraband or otherwise supported the enemy (Oppenheim and Lauterpacht 1952: 673). Apart from these regulations of private trade in war materials there were no legal rules for the commercial behaviour of the neutral state towards the belligerents, such as to balance trade between the belligerents. In practice, however, the wars of the twentieth century would show that it was in commerce that the neutrals faced some of their greatest difficulties with regard to the belligerents. The volume and direction of foreign trade and financial services of neutral states became a major bone of contention during the world wars, as it would in the Cold War. From the neutral s point of view, the capacity to redirect foreign trade and provide strategic goods became an important tool to accommodate belligerents. From the belligerent s point of view, it became of crucial importance to limit the commercial and financial relations between the neutrals and the enemy. This forced the belligerents to control the external commercial relations of the enemy, as well as for the neutral state to regulate the activities of its citizens and companies vis-à-vis the belligerents. No neutral country could refrain from economic and political relations with the belligerents, and often had to bow to superior force. The two world wars showed quite clearly the shortcomings of neutrality as a means of security, and the re-emergence of the bellum justum argument led to a new scepticism towards neutrality on grounds of principle. In shocking contrast to the long, peaceful nineteenth century, the war that started in 1914 soon involved all European states except Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway
Neutrality in the Era of Balance of Power, Introduction 1815 1917 125 and Sweden. The lesson of the Second World War was even more depressing from the neutral s point of view, with only very few countries, notably Sweden and Switzerland, being left outside military conflict and only at the price of far-reaching concessions to Nazi Germany. Furthermore the concept of collective security posed a challenge to legal neutrality. Much of the history of the short twentieth century was dominated by the fundamental challenges to the international state system provided by Wilson s appeal for a supranational League of Nations, and Lenin s call for proletarians in all countries to arise and overthrow their oppressors. As Gaddis notes, both ideologies were injected into world politics within the two and a half months from the Bolshevik coup of November 1917 to Wilson s Fourteen Points address in January 1918 (Gaddis 1997: 5). To these mutually exclusive ideologies was then added a National Socialist Germany from 1933 to 1945, which gave further reason to argue in terms of bellum justum, reminiscent of that of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The development of neutrality in the twentieth century was largely determined by the actions of the world s mightiest neutral, the USA. The American decision not to intervene at the beginning of both world wars allowed the small European neutrals to borrow strength from the much more powerful neutral across the Atlantic (Salmon 1997: 11). On 18 August 1914, President Wilson appealed to the American people to observe neutrality not only in actions, but also in conscience. In 1914, the USA was a volatile country of immigration. Among its Foreign White Stock were not only Anglo-Saxons but also millions of Germans and Irish who detested the British. To choose side would be to risk a rupture of the American nation. When the US ultimately intervened, it had profound repercussions on all other neutrals. After the Germans declared unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, however, President Wilson obtained a large majority in the Congress for declaring war against Germany, in defence of the freedom of the seas. In his message to Congress on 2 April 1917 Wilson declared that Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples... What threatened peace and liberty was the existence of autocratic governments which made use of force without any regard to the will of the peoples. Repeating the thesis of the learned monks of the Middle Ages regarding
126 Sovereignty and from Security the Bottom-Up Community since 1917 just and unjust wars President Wilson concluded that under these circumstances intervention must be obligatory even for neutral states. The largest neutral country in the world thus went to war to defend neutrality (Scott 1921: 80; Bacot 1945: 46). It was time, as the Dutch lawyer Wollenhöven explained in late 1917, that the old neutrality deaf and dumb give way to a neutrality that feels and judges (Bacot 1945: 46). When in September 1939 the USA again declared neutrality the context and the underlying tone of the declaration was very different from that of 1914. President Franklin Roosevelt, a great admirer of Wilson, declared: This nation will remain neutral, but I have not the intention to ask every American to remain neutral in his thoughts. Even a neutral has the right to hold an opinion of events. One cannot ask even a neutral to close his spirit or his conscience. In Roosevelt s America the European immigration had almost come to a halt, and assimilation had created a melting pot. In addition, a small fanatic minority of German Americans detested Hitler (Duroselle 1993: 19 24). Even if marred by moral dilemmas, it was in the first half of the twentieth century that neutrality developed into a solid national doctrine in Sweden and some other European small states. The League of Nations, while in principle rendering neutrality obsolete, paradoxically also implied a general recognition of the authenticity of that form of statehood the sovereign nation-state that reserves for itself the right to neutrality in the absence of true collective security. In the age of extreme ideological passions neutrality came to enjoy solid national support and was adapted and applied in a more systematic manner than ever before. It was a doctrine of national armament, but at the same time a democratic agreement not to deploy those forces actively.