Research

In a world of shifting power balances, Americans can no longer compete internationally with wealth and weaponry alone.  We live in a world in which other nations no longer automatically defer to the United States.  Our national margin for error has demonstrably narrowed.  In several regions war has already replaced the Pax Americana.  It threatens to do the same in still others.  Our highly professional military remains peerless, but our diplomacy – our first line of defense – increasingly lacks traction.  Our country needs to get a lot better at diplomatic reasoning and the practice of diplomacy.  To match the professionalism of our competitors, we must professionalize our own diplomacy.  But what is diplomatic professionalism?

The following pages will pull together different strains of the fragmented neutrality debate, attempting to structure the terminology and offer a narrative understanding of conceptual developments. That is not to claim neutrality was perceived at the time in a coherent manner or that there was an agreement about the way the different terms were used. The framing this chapter proposes should help to understand how neutrality was embedded in the early Cold War and how it related to its politics.

Does the law of neutrality influence the war in Ukraine, or does this war in turn influence the law of neutrality, and if so, how?

In Switzerland, there is currently much talk about neutrality law and neutrality policy. However, almost never do we hear about the philosophy of neutrality, despite it being the essence of neutrality.

Does the law of neutrality influence the war in Ukraine, or does this war in turn influence the law of neutrality, and if so, how?