I grew up in a town in the United States that was built from nothing in the 1960s around an artificial lake with -- in the lake -- a fountain modeled on the fountain in Geneva. Yesterday I saw the fountain in Geneva for the first time, and felt at home.
I also feel at home with neutrality.
I think another word for neutrality is blindness.
Not in the sense that if you are for neutrality you are blind to the imperative to join in on mass slaughter and destruction on either this side or that side.
Rather in the sense of all those statues of Lady Justice with a scale in one hand and a blindfold over her eyes -- and usually a building behind her where the rich cut deals and the poor cannot, but where sometimes, in some ways, the laws of cities and states are applied equally to all without fear or favor.
To be neutral in that sense is to strip away, not wisdom, but bias. In a neutral view of the world, with a blindfold to block out prejudice and only prejudice, the crime of war would be a crime if a poor country far away and different from yours did it, and if yours did it. It would be a crime whether your president did it or your legislature. It would be a crime no matter which political party your president belonged to or whether he or she were a nice person or not. It would be a crime whether you told lies about nuclear weapons, or told truths about nuclear weapons, or said you just felt like murdering some foreigners that day. It would be a crime whether your nation did it alone or got a big coalition of governments to join in. It would be a crime no matter what you said about responsibilities to protect, or the international community, or axes of evil, or persons of interest, or enemy combatants, or some guy being a bad bad person who needs to learn a lesson, none of which exists in the law.
I know Geneva is the global center of war reformation, not war abolition. But recognizing the UN Charter, not ignoring it, is the neutral position.
In a neutral view of the world, filling your country with foreign bases and troops immune from your laws and prone to war mongering would not be thought of as liberation if a certain special country ran the bases. It would be thought of as occupation no matter what country did it. Manufacturing and selling weapons of war would be as evil no matter which countries you were selling them to during which wars or pause between wars. In Washington D.C., near where I live, and to various degrees in various other capitals, laws are for other countries. Some countries get to veto anything they like in the United Nations and refrain from joining most treaties. Other countries get to do as they are told. Some governments get to be the international community. Others just don't count. This isn't usually thought of as unfair. It's more like the animals in Animal Farm declaring that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". We should set aside our prejudice and call unfairness unfairness.
In a neutral world, killing a Palestinian would be exactly as horrible as killing a Ukrainian. A neutral observer is not against either type of person but in favor of protecting all persons. In a neutral Switzerland, Netanyahu -- should he visit -- must be arrested, not because of someone's biased opinion but because there is a warrant for his arrest.
A neutral country acting out of neutrality, choosing not the U.S. or Russia but humanity, not the U.S. or China but humanity, is of course asking for trouble from the U.S. if not Russia or China, if not also from those well-meaning people who long for a multipolar balance of belligerents.
But a neutral country is also likely to be recognized as credible, as trustworthy. Another word for neutrality is honesty. When a government sells or gives weapons to brutal dictatorships, facilitates a livestreamed genocide, or sabotages peace talks on Ukraine, it also resorts to dishonesty. This is the compliment that non-neutral countries pay to neutrality: they pretend to be neutral. The U.S. government spent decades arming and defending and propagandizing for Israel while claiming to be a neutral arbiter for negotiations between Israel and Palestine. In contrast, a truly neutral nation gains the world's respect as a potentially serious arbiter of conflicts. A Switzerland that did not support sanctions that violate the Geneva Conventions would be a credible arbiter -- as it now is not on Ukraine.
It took rare courage for South Africa to bring charges of genocide against Israel to the International Court of Justice, not because it wasn't a painfully overwhelmingly classic textbook case of genocide, but because of powerful nations that oppose neutrality. These nations, including the one where I live, have so desired that laws apply only to others, that they've risked ruining the very idea of laws. When the United States could not be more equal than others in the League of Nations, it refused to join the League of Nations. When it could be above the law in the United Nations, it joined the United Nations. Later it worked to create the International Criminal Court and to insist that it not uphold the law except for others. For many years the only prosecutions were against Africans. Just recently, as Africa was threatening to abandon a global court for Africans only, the ICC began prosecuting people from other parts of the globe. The U.S. has been punishing ICC staff and countries that support the ICC, while lying that it loves the rule of law.
For governments to be truly neutral on matters of war, to truly refrain from joining a side, requires not only that they maintain neutrality in normal times. It requires that they also work to avoid the creation of non-normal times, that they work for disarmament, for the strengthening of systems of conflict resolution and arbitration, and for the widespread use of diplomacy, courts, reconciliation commissions, and unarmed civilian resistance to prevent non-normal times. What I mean by non-normal times is becoming increasingly normal, but what I mean is the imminent threat of violence and the cry that all warmaking is now purely defensive and beyond debate.
It generally takes two to tango or to wage war. Even where you think you know who clearly started it, both sides will claim the other did. But whether you blame your allies or not, you'll be thrust into a position of being told that you must choose defensive war and that defensive war is effective and legal. Those points are debatable. The Kellogg-Briand Pact had banned all war, defensive, humanitarian, benevolent, or otherwise. At the end of World War II, the winning side wanted to prosecute the losing side for what both had done, so invented the crime of aggression, which made it into the UN Charter as a loophole for defensive wars. But I challenge you to find anyone waging wars who doesn't claim to be defensive. That's a hell of a loophole. Joining in these defensive wars risks nuclear apocalypse while guaranteeing huge human and environmental costs, none of which is defensive. And it ignores the potential of nonviolent techniques, even in a moment of crisis. But chiefly the neutral government that wants to stay neutral has to help build the infrastructure that prevents the concerted efforts of others to generate moments of crisis.
In discussions in the United States the most common argument against neutrality is a single word: Hitler. The reasons why misconceptions about World War II are not good reasons for militarism today could fill a book. In fact, I wrote such a book. But I want to touch on just one item, because of where we are today, here in Geneva.
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