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Between the blocs

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Cambridge University Press978-0-521-37558-0 - Between the Blocs: Problems and Prospects for Europe's Neutral andNonaligned StatesEdited by Joseph Kruzel and Michael H. HaltzelFrontmatterMore information

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Between the blocs Problems and prospects for

Europe's neutral and nonaligned states

• • • • • • •• • • •• • •• • • ••

Edited by JOSEPH KRUZEL and MICHAEL H. HALTZEL

WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS

AND

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge

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© Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 1989

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First published 1989

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication DataBetween the blocs: problems and prospects for Europe’s neutral andnonaligned states / edited by Joseph Kruzel and Michael H. Haltzel.

p. cm.-(Wilson Center series)Bibliography: p.Includes index.

ISBN 0-521-37558-41. Europe - Neutrality. 2. Europe - Nonalignment. 3. Europe - Politics

and government - 1945- I. Kruzel, Joseph. II. Haltzel,Michael H. III. Series.D1058.B475 1989

320.94 - dc20 89-32585 CIP

isbn 978-0-521-37558-0 Hardback

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WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS

• • • • • • • a •• •• . . _ . •• ••

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

William J. Baroody, Jr., Chairman; Dwayne o. Andreas, Vice Chairman; Robert McC. Adams; James A. Baker III; Theodore C. Barreaux; James H. Billington; Lynne V. Cheney; Gertrude Himmelfarb; Max M. Kampelman; J. Willard Marriott, Jr.; John S. Reed; Robert Turrle; Don W. Wilson

The Center is the "living memorial" of the United States of America to the nation's twentyeighth president, Woodrow Wilson.

The U.S. Congress established the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1968 as an international institute for advanced study, "symbolizing and strengthening the fruitful relationship between the world of learning and the world of public affairs." The Center opened in 1970 under its own presidentially appointed board of directors.

Each year the Woodrow Wilson Center holds open international competitions to select approximately fifty residential fellows to conduct advanced research, write books, and contribute to seminars, conferences, and discussions with other scholars, public officials, journalists, and business and labor leaders.

Research at the Woodrow Wilson Center ranges across the entire spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. Staff and fellows employ comparative, multidisciplinary approaches. The process of discovery that operates at the Woodrow Wilson Center frequently illuminates new understandings of the world in which we live, an expanded awareness of history, choices, and future consequences.

Results of the Center's research activiry are disseminated internationally through the bookpublishing programs of the Wilson Center Press, of Cambridge University Press's Woodrow Wilson Center Series, and of other co-publishers as appropriate; and through The Wilson Quarterly, a scholarly journal published four times a year. Additional dissemination in the United States includes The Woodrow Wilson Center Calandar, published monthly; The Woodrow Wilson Center Report, published periodically throughout the year; and Radio DIALOGUE, a weekly FM series of half-hour programs.

In all its activities the Woodrow Wilson Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, supported financially by annual appropriations from the U.S. Congress, and by the contributions of foundations, corporations, and individuals. The Center seeks diversity of scholarly enterprise and points of view. Conclusions or opinions expressed in Center publications and programs are those of the authors and speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center staff, fellows, trustees, advisory groups, or any individuals or organizations that provide financial support to the Center.






Contents

• a . . -. • • •• • • • • •• £ ••• ••

Acknowledgments page xiii

Introduction by Michael H. Haltzel xv

Part I. Perspectives

1 Neutral states in historical perspective Philip Windsor 3

Commentary Luzius Wildhaber 10

Commentary Wilhelm Carlgren 13

2 Forms of neutrality Sigmund Widmer 17 The diminished view of neutrality 18 The different forms of neutrality 19 Nonaligned countries 20 Features of neutrality 24 The permanent neutrals in world affairs 27

3 The various conceptions of European neutrality Radovan Vukadinovic 29

Types of European neutrality 30 Attributes of permanent neutrality 35 The relationship between neutrality and

nonalignment 40 Cooperation of neutral and nonaligned states in

the CSCE 44

Vll






Vlll Contents

Part ll. Special cases

4 The underlying assumptions of Finnish neutrality Pertti joenniemi

Finland - a deviant case? A consensus concept Finland's defense of its foreign policy The historical dimension No fortress mentality Opening the door too much? Structural influences Conclusion

5 Neutrality and regional integration: Ireland's experience in the European Community

Patrick Keatinge The adaptation of the neutrals: a historical

summary Neutrality norms and regional integration Taking the plunge: Ireland joins the European

Community "Military neutrality" and European Political

Cooperation Irish attitudes toward neutrality Conclusion

Part llI. Interdependence

6 Challenges to neutrality in an interdependent world Hanspeter Neuhold

Neutrality in new types of armed conflict Military challenges Economic challenges Ideological neutrality? Problems and opportunities: a balance sheet

49 50 52 53 55 56 57 58 59

61

62 65

66

69 76 78

83 84 87 89 93 95






Contents IX

7 National security dilemmas and strategies for the European neutrals Bengt Sundelius 98

Adversarial interdependence 99 Challenges to neutrality 103 Security redefined 113

Commentary Raimo Vayrynen 122

Part IV. Security

8 The European neutrals, national defense, and international security Joseph Kruzel 133

American and Soviet views of European neutrality 135 The strategic value of the European neutrals 138 A generic Euro-neutral defense policy 144 Individual differences 151 The Euro-neutrals' contribution to collective

security 156 Conclusion 158

9 Beyond soldiers and arms: the Swiss model of comprehensive security policy

Kurt R. Spillmann 161 The Swiss security policy concept of 1973 165 The contribution of the armed forces 169 Beyond soldiers and arms 171

10 Swedish defense: traditions, perceptions, and policies Nils Andren 175

Neutrality 175 The background of Swedish neutrality policy 177 Threat perceptions and defense doctrines 181 "Active neutrality" - an asset and a problem 194 Security - a mutual process 196

11 Swedish and Finnish defense policies: a comparative study Tomas Ries 200






x Contents

Swedish and Finnish defense efforts in perspective 202 Swedish defense developments since 1972 211 The development of Finnish defense forces since

1972 217 Summary 221

Commentary Kari Mottola 222 The new Western expectations 222 The neutrals' response to challenges 224 The case of the North 225

Part V. Public opinion

12 The role of public opinion in neutral policy Hans Thalberg 231

13 Finnish neutrality and public opinion Krister Stahlberg

The Finnish policy of neutrality Public opinion and foreign policy Public opinion and neutrality policy Conclusion

Commentary Sverker Astrom

Part VI. Policy views

14 Some misconceptions about Austrian

241 242 247 250 261

263

neutrality Gerald Hinteregger 269

15 Neutrality in the European context: the Finnish perspective Paavo Vayrynen 277

16 The Swiss approach Edouard Brunner 283






Contents

17 The United States and Europe's neutrals Rozanne L. Ridgway

Common threads "Entangling alliances" Arms control The international economy Keeping the peace

Part VII. Conclusion

Xl

286 286 287 288 290 291

18 The future of European neutrality Joseph Kruzel 295 The evolution of neutrality 295 The foreign policy challenge 298 The security challenge 302 The economic challenge 304 The sociopolitical challenge 307 Idealistic states in a world of Realpolitik 309

About the authors 312

Index 315






Acknowledgments

_ • • • • • • • • • E • _ .. -....... . .

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars conference on Europe's neutral and nonaligned states was made possible by generous grants from the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Congress Special Wilson Center Conference Fund, the Xerox Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Title VIII of the Soviet-East European Research and Training Act (1983).

Additional funds for travel by non-U.S. participants were provided by the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. The Washington embassies of Austria and Sweden extended their hospitality to conference participants, as did the U.S. Department of State.

The staff of the Woodrow Wilson Center's West European Program bore the major responsibility for the logistics of the conference; Charlotte Thompson and Deborah O'Dell deserve special mention in this regard. Cynthia Ely, Gina Tatsios, and Susan Ballard of the Woodrow Wilson Center also rendered valuable assistance.

Leslie Gerry of the Mershon Center for Education of the Ohio State University did yeoman work in entering the contributors' texts on the word processor. The editors are, of course, responsible for any errors.

xiii

JOSEPH KRUZEL

MICHAEL H. HAL TZEL






Introduction

- . • • • _ • a • •• • ••••• I •••• ••

The complex position of the European neutrals

MICHAEL H. HALTZEL

u.s. policymakers are often accused by critics, domestic and foreign, of viewing the rest of the world through bipolar glasses - of evaluating other countries' actions in the context of the u.S.-Soviet rivalry rather than attempting to understand indigenous political, economic, and cultural factors. Although this accusation has most often been applied to U.S. perceptions of the developing world, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in a well-known remark, once castigated the neutral countries of Europe as immoral for not joining the Western alliance against communism. That Dulles's actions toward the European neutrals were considerably more pragmatic than was his rhetoric is indisputable - the agreement creating an independent, neutral Austria, for example, was consummated during his stewardship - but the European neutrals have always seen themselves as misunderstood, even as their international positions have solidified.

To examine the history and importance of the neutral countries of Europe, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars convened a conference in Washington, D.C., on November 19-21, 1986, attended by leading political figures and scholars from the five major European neutrals - Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, and Switzerland - and from nonaligned Yugoslavia, as well as from the United States and other countries. The conference was made possible by generous grants from the Ford Foundation, the Xerox Corporation, and the U.S. Congress Special Wilson Center Conference Fund. The papers and commentaries from the conference were the basis for the essays in this book.

In the opening essay, Philip Windsor reminds us of the long and complex history of neutrality. If neutrality is today exceptional, in earlier eras

xv






XVI MICHAEL H. HALTZEL

it was the norm in world politics, he explains. Ironically, it was because the two great neutrals of 1940, the United States and the Soviet Union, abandoned their neutrality that the character of international politics became dominated by the competition of alliances. Luzius Wildhaber amends Windsor's analysis in saying that in past centuries most states were "occasionally neutral," abstaining from war not as a matter of principle but as part of a policy of balancing. Although Realpolitik is not foreign to today's European neutrals, they have cloaked their policies in somewhat more idealistic garb.

Paavo Viiyrynen, who at the time of the conference was foreign minister of Finland, identifies four policy elements common to the major neutral states of continental Europe: (1) refraining from membership in any military alliance, (2) attempting to maintain good relations with members of both blocs, (3) taking an active role in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and (4) holding membership in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Viiyrynen's criteria, however, exclude Ireland, a strongly self-professing neutral; several other contributors to this volume also speak of the "four European neutrals," omitting the Emerald Isle. How does one square Ireland's membership in the European Community, otherwise made up of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with a commitment to neutrality? According to Patrick Keatinge, Irish politicians have propagated an oversimplified concept of Ireland's neutrality as a "function of Anglo-Irish relations, " while calling membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) "economics." European Political Cooperation (EPC) and the evolving legal structure of the European Community, however, may prove more difficult tests for Dublin's bifurcated policy.

Ireland's unique position should not be taken to mean that the other major European neutrals constitute a monolithic group. The neutrality of each one has its own peculiar historical roots, legal status, and current practice. As Edouard Brunner, who at the time of the conference was Swiss state secretary for foreign affairs, notes, Switzerland's neutrality arose for internal reasons, as a way to keep the heterogeneous Swiss federation from falling apart. Sweden adopted neutrality as a policy following the Napoleonic Wars only after having played the role of a great power for the better part of two centuries. Finnish and Austrian neutrality is a product of World War II - the former closely related to the need to reach a satisfactory longterm accommodation with the Soviet Union, the latter as the only alternative to permanent national partition. Switzerland's neutrality is mentioned






Introduction XVll

in its 1848 constitution, but the document's authors avoided binding the country to that policy forever. Sweden's neutrality is formulated pragmatically in the crisp summary "nonalignment in peace in order to ensure neutrality in war" and has been buttressed by an elaborate and longstanding corpus of policy. In his politician's overview of different kinds of neutrality, Sigmund Widmer considers Austria's to be a case of externally "imposed" neutrality like the Congo's until 1908, Belgium's and Luxembourg'S until after World War I, and the continuing cases of the Vatican and Laos. As Gerald Hinteregger, who at the time of the conference was Austrian secretary-general for foreign affairs, emphasizes, though, the Austrian Parliament demonstrably waited until all foreign troops had left the country's territory in 1955 before adopting the Federal Constitutional Law on Permanent Neutrality.

A comparison of nonalignment with neutrality evoked spirited discussion. Despite several differences he cites between the two concepts, Radovan Vukadinovic believes that they are not mutually exclusive and that adherents of both groups can and do cooperate with each other. Conversely, Philip Windsor sees in the nonaligned group's activist strivings to reshape the world the antithesis of European neutrality.

Reduced to its lowest common denominator, neutrality can be viewed in its Latin roots ne uter, or "neither of two," in war. To maintain this position has not been easy. The history of warfare in this century is studded with examples of declared neutral countries that were enticed, cajoled, or more often forced out of their neutrality. Just how credible the military defenses of the European neutrals are in the late twentieth century became the most heatedly debated question at the Woodrow Wilson Center conference, and the disagreement is reflected in several chapters of this volume. Some participants such as Pertti Joenniemi recognized that the choice of neutrality is predicated on an assumption that future wars will not be total and will have some rules of conduct. Joenniemi, Wilhelm Carlgren, Bengt Sundelius, and Kari Mottola all emphasize nonmilitary, political policies, which enhance the neutrals' security but which, they believe, are often underestimated by Western analysts.

Other participants, among them Joseph Kruzel, questioned two fundamental tenets of the European neutrals' security policies: first, that the only real security threat the neutrals face is being involved in a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; and second, that any aggressor would be unlikely to use more than a small percentage of its military resources against a neutral country.






XVlll MICHAEL H. HALTZEL

Whatever the theoretical framework, the current defense capabilities of the European neutrals vary dramatically from country to country. Ireland, on the periphery of the Continent and shielded, ironically, by Great Britain, maintains only token military forces. Austria, wedged among NATO, Warsaw Pact, neutral, and nonaligned countries, has developed a plausible defense strategy but remains without a significant air force. Recently it has reached a domestic consensus on interpreting the 1955 state treaty so as to allow the acquisition of both antitank and antiaircraft missiles. Finland, militarily limited by the peace treaty of 1947 and sharing a border of nearly eight hundred miles with the Soviet Union - to which it is bound in a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance - still managed in the 1980s to increase and modernize its army, air force, and coastal defenses. Switzerland, with a long tradition of a citizen army, remains superbly prepared militarily with a comprehensive defense plan, as Kurt Spill mann recounts in detail.

There was general agreement among conference participants about the defense capabilities of the four aforementioned neutrals. The discussion of those of the fifth - Sweden - produced a classic case of how scholarly interpretations of the same data can differ. Tomas Ries details a coordinated, presumably Soviet, program of incursions into Swedish territory involving frogmen, small underwater craft, submarines, and other units, including deep penetration of naval basing areas. He acknowledges that Sweden is by every measure a much stronger military power than its neighbor Finland. Trends have, however, an instructive value, particularly in the same region, and in comparing various trends from 1972 to 1987, Ries sees Sweden as having been engaged in a gradual but continual reduction of its considerable military defense capability in contrast to Finland's modest but steady buildup. Joseph Kruzel asserts that the neutrality of Sweden has been severely challenged and possibly compromised by the lack of military action against the calculated intrusions.

In a systematic review of his country's security policy, Nils Andren, a key figure in the Swedish defense establishment for decades, admits that the submarine incursions of the 1980s have revealed shortcomings in the Swedish navy's protection of its territorial waters. Nonetheless, unlike Ries, Andren is not alarmed about the country's overall security situation, and he notes with approval the Swedish Parliament's decision in 1987 to increase defense spending over a five-year period. In addition, he believes that since Olof Palme's death the style of Swedish foreign policy has become less assertive, perhaps presaging a return to the style of the






Introduction XlX

period from 1945 to the end of the 1950s, when Sweden combined a lowkey foreign policy with a strong defense.

In fact, to a great extent the security policies of the neutrals and of NATO have complemented each other. For nearly four decades NATO has provided the shield behind which the democracies of Europe, including the neutrals, have been able to prosper. At the same time, several of the neutrals, especially Sweden and Switzerland, and nonaligned Yugoslavia have by their geographical locations and force deployments significantly lightened NATO's burden. Moreover, bilaterally and within the framework of the CSCE the neutrals are acting as mediators between Eastern and Western Europe.

Security questions are intimately related to economic ones, and it is here that the European neutrals may be most vulnerable. As Hanspeter Neuhold points out, classical neutrality developed at a time when the military gap between small and great powers was much narrower than it is now. Today the technological gap between the neutrals and the major blocs is large and widening, principally because of the enormous cost of research and development, excessive even for the wealthy European neutrals. International economic and technological interdependence poses new challenges for the neutrals. Raimo Viiyrynen speculates that EFTA may no longer be able to meet all the needs of its four neutral members. The restructuring of the global economy is pushing them, individually and as part of EFTA, into closer cooperation with the European Community, as in joint efforts on the nonmilitary part of EUREKA, a multinational project on technological cooperation. Finding a way to maintain neutrality while being drawn farther into economic cooperation with other advanced industrialized states is one of the major challenges facing the European neutrals in the future.

Clearly, being a neutral is anything but a "free ride." Maintaining a costly and difficult policy of neutrality demands widespread public support, even consensus, yet open discussion of sensitive issues may jeopardize the neutral status a government is trying to uphold. Hans Thalberg, a former Austrian ambassador, takes the elitist view that issues of international relations are too complex for public opinion in democratic countries to comprehend and that, in any event, public opinion has been irrelevant in most major foreign policy decisions of our age. In a similar vein, Sverker Astrom, who more than anyone else has defined Sweden's concept of neutrality, favors intellectual discussion but nevertheless advocates selfcensorship by government officials in debates over the fundamentals of






xx MICHAEL H. HALTZEL

neutrality. Krister Stahlberg documents a history of government displeasure with the press and of resulting self-censorship in Finland. Stahlberg goes so far as to assert that today one cannot combine adherence to Nordic democracy and public criticism of the Soviet Union without risking incurring the wrath of the Finnish foreign policy establishment, but he adds that there is no unanimity on where to draw the "undrawable line." Neutrality appears, however, to have the overwhelming support of the population in Finland, as it does in the other European neutral countries. There can be no clearer example of this adherence to principle than the resounding rejection that the Swiss populace gave to United Nations membership in the March 1986 national referendum.

Free societies have their inconsistencies and contradictions, and one should not expect more from the European neutrals than from NATO members. In their values the European neutrals are decidedly not neutral, belonging solidly to the Western family of nations. As former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rozanne Ridgway declares, the United States and the European neutrals have a common cultural heritage, similar political systems, and intertwined free-market economies. If this volume serves no purpose other than to convince Western skeptics of this basic fact, then it will have made a noteworthy contribution.






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