Neutral country

• 1. Introduction

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  Neutral country is a concept whose rules are spelled out in sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907, yet it remains one of the most contested labels in international relations. What does it actually mean to be neutral? Is it enough to stay out of the fighting, or must a nation also withhold trade, close its ports, and refuse to share intelligence? The answers vary dramatically from one capital to the next. Switzerland has carried a gun since 1815. Costa Rica dissolved its army entirely in 1949. Ireland quietly passed weather reports to the Allies during the Second World War while interning both Allied and Axis pilots who crash-landed on its soil. These contradictions are not accidents or hypocrisies. They are the product of centuries of legal argument, geopolitical pressure, and careful national calculation. The questions this documentary will follow are simple: what do neutral countries owe the world, what does the world owe them, and how do those obligations survive contact with actual war?

• 2. The Legal Architecture

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  The Hague Convention of 1907 is the foundational document that defines what belligerents can and cannot do to a neutral power. Under its terms, armies at war may not march across neutral territory, may not recruit neutral citizens, and may not transport weapons through neutral soil. The wounded, however, may pass through. Naval vessels of warring nations are permitted to use neutral ports for a maximum of 24 hours, with narrow exceptions for repairs or if an opposing ship is already docked.

  Beyond the Hague framework, neutrality is recognized in several different ways. Switzerland and Belgium had their status acknowledged by the signatories of the Congress of Vienna. Austria had its neutrality guaranteed by the four powers that occupied it after the Second World War: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union. Finland's arrangement came through a bilateral treaty with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Turkmenistan's was formalized by a United Nations declaration on the 12th of December 1995, a date the country now marks as a national holiday.

  Codeification at home varies just as widely as recognition abroad. Austria and Japan both embed their neutrality in their constitutions, though with different levels of specificity. Austria's constitution bars it from hosting any foreign military bases. Japan's bars participation in foreign wars. Sweden, by contrast, never codified its neutrality in any formal legal instrument, which gave it the flexibility to allow German troop movements through its rail network during the Second World War, a concession that a more rigid legal framework might have prevented.

• 3. Armed Neutrality

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  Catherine the Great organized the First League of Armed Neutrality in 1780, bringing together minor naval powers to prevent the Royal Navy from inspecting neutral shipping during the American Revolutionary War. Scholars like Carl Kulsrud argue the concept predates even that: as early as 1613, Lubeck and Holland had joined forces to protect their maritime trade from wartime entanglements. The Americans viewed Catherine's league as a gesture of Russian friendship and sympathy.

  The Second League of Armed Neutrality, formed in 1800, brought together Denmark-Norway, Prussia, Sweden, and the Russian Empire with the same goal of shielding neutral ships from Royal Navy searches. Because the league made no mention of French interference with neutral shipping, the British interpreted it as a pro-French alliance. In 1801, they attacked and defeated a Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen. After the death of Tsar Paul I that same year, the league dissolved. A potential Third League was discussed during the American Civil War but never formed.

  Sweden and Switzerland became the most celebrated practitioners of armed neutrality, each maintaining it through both World War I and World War II. The Swiss have not been at war internationally since 1815; the Swedes since 1814. Edwin Reischauer put the logic plainly: "To be neutral you must be ready to be highly militarized, like Switzerland or Sweden." Switzerland's armed neutrality was so rigorously maintained that the country refused to join the United Nations until 2002. Sweden held its policy for more than two centuries before applying to join NATO in 2022 and formally joining in 2024.

• 4. Wartime Compromises

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  Woodrow Wilson argued in 1914 that the United States was not trying to keep out of trouble but to preserve the foundations on which peace could be rebuilt. The country was bound by the Neutrality Acts of 1936 not to sell war materials to belligerents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt persuaded Congress to replace those acts with the Cash and Carry program, allowing military aid to the Allies. In March 1941, Lend-Lease replaced Cash and Carry, effectively ending any remaining pretense of American neutrality.

  In Europe, the gap between declared neutrality and actual conduct was equally wide. Ireland supplied the Allies with the date of D-Day by sharing incoming Atlantic weather information that was withheld from Germany. It also secretly allowed Allied aircraft to use the Donegal Corridor, enabling British planes to attack German submarines in the mid-Atlantic. Spain, while officially neutral, sent the Blue Division to fight alongside Nazi forces against the Soviet Union, though Franco restricted those troops to the Eastern Front only. Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Franklin D. Roosevelt later praised Franco's secret assistance to the Allies.

  Portugal remained officially neutral while actively supplying naval bases to the Allies overseas and selling tungsten to Germany. Sweden made its largest concession by permitting the 163rd German Infantry Division to travel from Norway to Finland by Swedish rail, a decision to aid the Finns in the Continuation War that triggered what became known as the political Midsummer Crisis of 1941. The Holy See made diplomatic concessions to both sides while maintaining the formal requirements of the Law of Neutrality; later historical judgment largely exonerated it despite criticism over its silence on the moral questions of the war.

• 5. Neutrality and the European Union

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  Three members of the European Union still describe themselves as neutral in some form: Austria, Ireland, and Malta. The EU's development of a Common Security and Defence Policy has put their positions under constant pressure. Since the Lisbon Treaty came into force, all EU members are bound by Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union, which requires states to assist any fellow member that suffers armed aggression. The article includes a carve-out allowing neutral members to respond with non-military aid rather than troops, and Ireland's constitution separately prohibits participation in a common defense.

  The launch of Permanent Structured Cooperation, known as PESCO, in late 2017 sharpened the debate further. The framework was designed to allow states to opt into specific forms of military cooperation rather than committing wholesale. Ireland's government argued this flexibility permitted participation in areas like counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, and peacekeeping without purchasing aircraft carriers or fighter jets. Some members of the Irish Parliament nonetheless viewed the decision as an abandonment of neutrality. Malta, as of December 2017, was the only neutral EU state to remain entirely outside PESCO, with the Maltese government stating it would wait to see how the framework developed before deciding whether membership would compromise its position.

• 6. Permanently Neutral Powers

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  Switzerland is the most globally recognized example of permanent neutrality. The 1815 Congress of Vienna re-established the country and had its permanent neutrality guaranteed by France, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, and others. Despite its reputation for absolute non-involvement, Switzerland's Armed Forces participated in the U.S.-led War in Afghanistan, which the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation described as the nation's first military deployment since 1815. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the United States was permitted to use Swiss airspace for surveillance missions. In 2022, Switzerland adopted European Union sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, a notable departure: the country had previously only implemented sanctions created by the United Nations Security Council.

  Austria's permanence was imposed from outside. The Federal Constitutional Law on the Neutrality of Austria was enacted in 1955 at the demand of the Soviet Union as a condition of the postwar peace. It bars military alliances and foreign military bases on Austrian soil. Austria joined the European Union in 1995 and participates in UN peacekeeping, threading its constitutional obligations through the EU's evolving defense architecture.

  Turkmenistan's permanent neutrality was formally recognized by the United Nations on the 12th of December 1995. Alongside Moldova, it remains one of only two former Soviet republics to maintain that status. At the other end of the spectrum, Costa Rica ratified its demilitarization by law in 2014, more than six decades after dissolving its military in 1949. Tonga, which first declared neutrality in 1845 under George Tupou I and later reaffirmed it, saw Queen Salote Tupou III break neutrality in 1939 and 1941 to align with the Allies; Tonga troops went on to fight in Guadalcanal and the broader Solomon Islands campaign before the country reaffirmed neutrality in 2025.

• 7. Neutrality as a Structural Force

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  Neutrality, in political science, functions as more than a simple refusal to fight. At a structural level, it works against the tendency of international systems to sort themselves into two opposing blocs, whether Christian versus non-Christian polities, the Capitalist-Communist divide of the Cold War, or a possible future division between liberal and illiberal international orders. By maintaining states that stand outside any bloc, neutrality helps sustain a world of multiple sovereign equals rather than a polarized standoff between two mutually hostile sides.

  Former Yugoslavia made this logic explicit. After the Stalin-Tito split in 1949, the country positioned itself as a buffer between the Soviet bloc and the West, becoming a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement. Yugoslavia simultaneously supported South Korea in the Korean War and accused the Soviet Union of starting the conflict, showing how ideological flexibility allowed neutral powers to exert diplomatic influence without military commitment.

  Not all claims to neutrality survive scrutiny. The legitimacy of some states' self-described neutrality has been openly questioned, and much depends on how broadly or narrowly a government defines its own obligations. Ireland provides a particularly layered example: it has provided military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War, contributes active forces to United Nations peacekeeping missions, and holds political membership in the European Union, all while maintaining that it remains militarily non-aligned. The rights and duties of a neutral power were first codified in 1907 at The Hague, but the century since has shown that defining those duties is a permanent negotiation between a country and the world it insists on watching from the side.