The Truth—And Complexity—Of 'Security Guarantees' And How Even Neutrals Can Have Them.

## Introduction: The problem with fixating on guarantees What emerges from the conversation is a blistering challenge to a simple idea that has come to dominate European strategic thinking: that the security of a state is primarily, even exclusively, a function of formal external guarantees. The discussion reframes the problem by showing that guarantees are neither as absolute nor as necessary as commonly presumed. More importantly, it argues that an obsession with treaty-based security reflects a narrow, binary mindset — one that mistakes legal words for political realities and underestimates the much broader set of tools states use to make themselves safe. ## Rethinking "security guarantees" The video insists that talk of “security guarantees” too often reduces a complex, multi-dimensional practice into a single checkbox: membership in a military alliance. Yet security in international politics is not a single instrument but a spectrum of relationships, behaviors, and perceptions. A guarantee written into a treaty can have high political value and deterrent power; it can also be legally ambiguous, selectively honored, or strategically counterproductive. The conversation pushes readers to separate two questions that are habitually mixed up: first, what legal commitments exist on paper; and second, whether those commitments actually change whether anybody wants to attack you. Skepticism about hard guarantees is not nihilism about defense. Rather, it is a reminder that security is produced through a combination of deterrence, diplomacy, economic interdependence, reputation, and the absence of hostile intentions. Many countries around the world enjoy peace and prosperity without being members of formal security alliances. The point is not that guarantees are never useful, but that they are neither the only nor the inevitable — nor always the best — way to secure a state. ## What Article 5 and other treaty texts actually promise A striking clarification in the exchange is historical and legal: treaties that look like ironclad guarantees are often flexible in practice. Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is frequently described as “the” security guarantee, but its language entitles members to regard an attack against one as an attack against all and then to take “such action as it deems necessary,” including armed force. The formulation is permissive, not mandatory. In other words, the treaty creates a strong political expectation, reinforced by reputational costs, but it does not legally bind each signatory to pick up arms. Comparative examples demonstrate that stronger texts have existed; the League of Nations’ covenant, for instance, contained clauses that could be read as more demanding. Conversely, bilateral security pacts like the U.S.–Japan treaty make a different bargain — close basing arrangements in return for an explicit defense commitment. Reading the text closely matters because the legal form affects, but does not fully determine, political behavior. Treaties shape expectations, cascades, and calculations — but they do not eliminate the political bargaining that follows when crises occur. ## Alternatives to hard guarantees: deterrence, neutrality, and integration The conversation highlights several alternative pathways to security that deserve equal attention. Deterrence is one — the combination of military capability and credible intent that convinces others that aggression will be costly. But deterrence itself is multilayered: it can be national, collective, or based on extended assurances. Equally important are the politics of non-enmity. Many states secure themselves by cultivating benign relations through trade, diplomacy, and non-threatening postures. Examples cited include Mongolia and several Central Asian republics: they sit between powerful neighbors and yet remain unassailed because they have crafted relationships that make attack unattractive or unnecessary. Economic integration and mutually beneficial ties can reduce motives for conquest in a way that military alliances might inflame. Then there is neutrality — a legally and politically constructed status that can coexist with outside security arrangements. Neutrality is not a void; it is an active strategy that can include commitments by others to respect and protect that neutrality. The key lesson is that neutrality and security guarantees are not mutually exclusive categories: a neutral state can be the beneficiary of third-party arrangements that buttress its security without making it a formal ally. ## Alliances as a family of instruments: offensive, defensive, passive, active One of the most useful clarifications in the video is the taxonomy of alliance types. Alliances are not monolithic; they have distinct intentions and legal consequences. - Offensive alliances promise collective action to attack third parties. These are rare today because of their incompatibility with the United Nations Charter, but examples exist historically. - Defensive alliances pledge mutual defense in the event of aggression. NATO is the contemporary paradigm, albeit with the textual caveats noted earlier. - Passive non-assistance agreements (often labeled neutrality pacts) promise not to join another side in a conflict, a form of abstention that can reduce escalation risk. - Active non-assistance (non-aggression) pacts go further and prohibit not just joining a belligerent but also providing material support to a party attacking the other signatory. This taxonomy matters for policy because different security problems require different instruments. Worrying exclusively about defensive alliances misreads both history and utility: sometimes a passive non-assistance guarantee or carefully structured trade and diplomacy is the most stabilizing choice. ## Neutrality with guarantees: the Belgian precedent and its lessons To move from abstraction to a practical model, the conversation offers a historical case: Belgium in the 19th century. Belgium’s neutrality, formalized in 1839, was reinforced by a remarkable pair of unilateral British undertakings during the Franco–Prussian crisis of 1870. London entered two essentially identical agreements, one with Prussia and one with France, each promising to cooperate in defending Belgian neutrality against a violation by the other. Belgium itself was not party to these pacts; it remained a neutral beneficiary. The arrangement demonstrates that third parties can create security buffers around a neutral state without compromising its neutrality. That example also carries a cautionary note: treaty networks can entangle powers in ways that produce cascading obligations and the risk of broader war. The Belgian case later featured prominently in the legal and political reasoning that drew Britain into the First World War. The lesson is twofold: third-party guarantees can enhance stability when designed inclusively and transparently; but poorly coordinated or secretive treaty webs can make crises larger, faster, and harder to control. ## Designing a realistic security architecture for Ukraine Applying these insights to contemporary debates — without invoking particular speakers — reorients what a savvy settlement for Ukraine might look like. If the problem is to reduce the incentive to attack rather than to tick a geopolitical box, then options include: a broadly inclusive security compact that involves the main concerned powers; carefully calibrated neutrality backed by enforceable non-assistance commitments from great powers; economic arrangements that tie Ukraine’s prosperity to its neighbors; and verifiable arms-control and confidence-building measures in sensitive regions. Any effective architecture will need legal clarity, political credibility, and mutuality to avoid being read as a scheme to diminish someone else’s security. The conversation stresses that arrangements negotiated with all relevant actors, rather than imposed by one cam

The Truth—And Complexity—Of 'Security Guarantees' Beyond the fact that Russia has categorically ruled out any NATO membership or similar military security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a deal to end the war, we should also be aware of how one-dimensional the West's conception of "security guarantees" is, and how the entire thinking about 'guaranteeing' the security of a state through external means is a misguided approach to international stability. CORRECTIONS: I made two mistakes when recording this video. NATO has of course, 32 members as of 2025 (not 27, that's the number of EU members), and I meant to say that the Ukraine war is the only war currently in Europe, not world wide. Ma apologies for the errors. The best ways to support us: Donations on Patreon: patreon.com/NeutralityStudies. A subscription on Substack: pascallottaz.substack.com. Follow us also in Audio Podcast Form: Apple: https://podcasts. apple.com/ch/podcast/neutrality-studies/id1791051233 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show /2vvTf44yckVz1hDggVolgB?si=03305b3fe8ad4cf3 #M2 Hello everybody. So let's talk about security guarantees and alliance configurations for a moment, because there's an awful lot of misunderstanding out there about what they are, how they work, and what is and isn't possible when it comes to security arrangements. In fact, and this might sound a little bit counterintuitive, but, you know, my whole area of research, neutrality and neutral states, is one part of what you can call security guarantee structures. Everyone watching this channel occasionally knows that the West's refusal to live with a neutral Ukraine that is economically integrated into both Russia and the EU lies at the heart of the current warfare in Europe. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans have also made their entire military thinking on the conflict about security guarantees for Ukraine. You hear that over and over and over. What about the security guarantees? What about the security guarantees? I will show you why this European discussion, on the one hand, is incredibly stupid, and on the other hand, to add insult to injury, it's also conducted in one of the dumbest ways imaginable, much of it rooted actually in simple ignorance about how security arrangements work. As usual, you know, the problem boils down to people being unable to reason outside the confines of binary choices. But security arrangements are anything but binary. So let's start with a look at a map and just a short appreciation of how dumb it is to focus on security guarantees in the first place. So this is a map of NATO, right, as it stands today with Sweden and Finland integrated into it. And those are the 27-odd countries that are covered by what the majority of pundits out there call a security guarantee, right? But I already talked about this in a video last time, that the security guarantee, the famous NATO Article 5, is not even a strong security guarantee. If you read this -- 1 of 7 -- article, it clearly says that when one member state is attacked, the members will consider this to be an attack against all of them. And if that happens, then individually and in concert with other parties, actions can be taken that each member country deems necessary. Actions that it deems necessary, including, but not exclusively, the use of armed force. Each member state, once another member state is attacked under the NATO treaty, is still free to decide whether it's going to use military force itself or not. This is just to drive home the point that even if you are a NATO member country and you get attacked, all other countries within the treaty are still able to say, "We will send you weapons, we will try to support you as much as we can, but we will not go to war for you." That's still okay under the NATO treaty. So if you think of Article 5 as a hard security guarantee, then I am very sorry to tell you it is not. Of course, the political cost for members not to come to the military aid of one of the other members would be huge, and the expectation is that members will go to war. But the treaty doesn't actually require states to do so. It's an option, not a must, right? And if we just look for one second at the map of the world, you also realize that the NATO territory is not even that huge, right? And when we look at other places in the world that have security treaties or security guarantees, the way that Europeans currently think that the only possible thing for Ukraine is to have security guarantees, there's only a few other places that are covered with hard security guarantees. Japan is one. Japan has a security treaty with the United States, which requires the US to extend its military apparatus to Japan in exchange for Japan providing bases, military bases. That's the currently valid treaty, the 1960 security treaty that they have, and the US is under a hard commitment to defend the Japanese islands. We have another hard security agreement between China and North Korea. They have a still valid security agreement from the 1950s, which says an attack against one is an attack against the other, and you have to help each other if that happens. But apart from that, large parts of the world are not covered by any kind of security agreements. And this is where the whole discussion about what the security arrangements for Ukraine are is so incredibly dumb. Somebody explain to me how it is that Mongolia is safe without security guarantees. Mongolia is sandwiched between China and Russia, and neither of them has attacked Mongolia since its independence, excuse me, after 1945, you know, after the current arrangement came into being. Mongolia declared its independence around 1911, and this had its ups and downs. But Mongolia never had hard security agreements with anyone else, never had security guarantees, and Mongolia was not attacked. Mongolia currently isn't attacked. Kazakhstan—Russia doesn't invade Kazakhstan. Russia is not invading Uzbekistan. Russia is not invading Turkmenistan. Russia isn't invading anyone, and nobody is worried. Turkmenistan is not worried about being invaded by Russia. Turkmenistan officially declared its neutrality, and its neutrality is working beautifully for Turkmenistan. How is it that the Europeans keep thinking that the only thing that can keep Ukraine safe are hard security guarantees when we have so many examples? -- 2 of 7 -- Look at all of the African states that are not in any kind of security arrangement. Look at all the South American states that are not in security arrangements. How is it that so many places on earth do not have hard security guarantees and they are safe, while the only place on earth that is currently in a war is in a war because European powers wanted to ram down the idea of NATO membership, of having a security guarantee, down the throat of Russia, and over that, now you've got an entire war going on? So the safest way to exist in international relations is if you don't have enemies. If you don't have enemies and nobody wants to attack you, you are safe and you won't be attacked. So the question is not what kind of security guarantees or who can promise you security. The question is, how do you make sure nobody wants to attack you? In international relations, you often talk about deterrence, right? You want to deter others from attacking you. Well, the alternative is to have good friendships, right? You don't need deterrence if you are surrounded only by countries that want to do business with you, just like Mongolia is doing business with both Russia and China, just as Kazakhstan is doing business with Russia and China, just as most of the world is doing business with everybody. The only ones who get hung up and think that the only thing that keeps other states from your throat is hard security alliances are the Euro-Americans. Why is Mexico safe without security agreements? Well, because Mexico makes sure that it itself doesn't pose a threat to the United States, right? And this is the core of the stupidity of the current discourse. When you should focus on how to create the conditions for friendly relations, you single- mindedly focus on this idea of security arrangements. And this is the point where I really need to talk to you about the different levels of alliance-making that we've got. Because this is an old problem, right? Or an old issue. And we have at least four different ways in which alliances can be formed, and we have historical examples for those. The first and most aggressive form of an alliance is an offensive alliance, when states make treaties with each other in order to attack another one. So the promise would then be to go and attack a third state. An example of that would be the secret annex to the non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, to jointly attack Poland and basically divide Poland between the two. This is a pact, an agreement to dismantle a third state, an offensive alliance. Then we have defensive alliances, of which currently, of course, NATO is the most obvious example. An attack against one is an attack against all, and you defend together. Although, as I just showed you, the NATO treaty itself leaves it open whether this joint defense happens militarily or with other means. We've had other treaties in world history. Most importantly, we've had the Covenant of the League of Nations. The League of Nations, of course, was the precursor to the current United Nations. The League was formed in 1919, after the First World War. The League had a strong security clause—I think it was Article 16—that said if one state is attacked, then the other members must use military force to repel the attack against the member. -- 3 of 7 -- So that was a stronger version, actually, the League of Nations, Article 16, compared to Article 5 of the NATO charter. Then the next level, one step down, is passive non-assistance agreements. This has also in history been called a neutrality pact. The promise here is that if you create such a passive non-assistance agreement, you promise that you, as one of the parties of this agreement, will not join the fight against the other party. So this is something that, at the moment, basically Russia and North Korea and also Russia and China and Iran have concluded. It's also what was concluded between Japan and the Soviet Union in the Second World War. It's the promise that you won't join another alliance or another state and jointly attack the other party. Now, this is different from the last stage, the last kind of alliance-making that you have, which is an active non-assistance pact, also sometimes referred to as a non-aggression pact, in which you actually promise that you won't help other states in an attack against them. Now, the difference between these two is that in a neutrality pact, you just promise not to join the fighting against the other party, but you might still send weapons and supplies to another party, to a third state, fighting against your contract partner. In a non-aggression pact, an active non-assistance pact, you promise that you also won't do that. You won't send any kind of supplies to a third state that is still fighting the other partner. In the Second World War, we had such a situation. Japan wanted a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. It wanted the Soviet Union's promise that it wouldn't support a third state against it. But the Soviet Union wasn't willing to do that because they wanted to help the Chinese, Chiang Kai-shek, to fight the Japanese. So they wanted to continue sending weapons to Chiang Kai-shek. Hence, they said, like, no, no, no, we are not giving you a neutrality pact. Sorry. We're not giving you an aggression pact. We're only giving you a neutrality pact. So those are the historical examples. And all of these pacts are possible, and all of these pacts are just a matter of what states want to do. Again, under international law, none of these pacts, except n