Can we, and should we, ever really be neutral? In a new series, Zócalo explores the idea of neutrality—in politics, sports, gender, journalism, international law, and more. In this essay, neutrality studies scholar Pascal Lottaz writes about the unique American-style neutrality from George Washington to Pearl Harbor.

If you were born any time after 1960, the first (and perhaps only) country that will come to mind when you think of “neutrality” is Switzerland—that tiny alpine nation that has been following a policy of “perpetual neutrality” for 200 years.

However, if you were born in the 1800s, the most obvious country that you would think of would be the United States of America.

George Washington declared American neutrality in his 1796 “Farewell Address.” “After deliberate examination […] I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take—and was bound in duty and interest to take—a neutral position,” the first U.S. president declared. He gave many reasons for his thinking, including that “a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils,” including binding the U.S. to interests and the wars of other states.

After that statement, neutrality remained a pillar of U.S. foreign policy for 150 years. But Washington’s definition of neutrality was hardly the only one in play.

Neutrality is a fuzzy concept that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In foreign policy, the term is used in at least three different ways: as a concept of international law, as a policy of states, and as an analytical category to describe the approaches of states toward certain conflicts. Within that framework, the meaning of neutrality frequently changes.

The U.S. history of neutrality exemplifies this. Indeed, the U.S. neutrality of Washington and of the early 19th century would look like a strange animal to us today, and very different from Switzerland’s version.

For instance, American neutrality did not preclude the U.S. from using warfare to achieve its goals elsewhere. It fought the Indigenous nations of North America in a series of bloody wars,  swallowed up the equally neutral Kingdom of Hawaii in 1899, and went to war with Mexico and Spain when that was in its interest.

From the beginning, U.S. neutrality policy was only directed toward Europe, and specifically toward European conflicts that the country wasn’t interested in. That included the first few years of the First and Second World Wars (1914-17 and 1939-41). The Americans only got rid of this neutrality-toward-useless-overseas-conflicts approach after the Japanese bombed them out of it in Pearl Harbor. So far, they haven’t returned to it.

At its time, this form of “occasional neutrality” was the norm. In fact, the 19th century was the global heyday of U.S.-style neutrality, because the balance of power that emerged after the early-1800s Napoleonic Wars provided relative stability to the Great Powers. That stability inspired more neutrality. Of course, this period was not peaceful—several small wars took place and the ramped-up colonization of Africa, Asia, and Australia killed millions of people. But the fact that no single Great Power could dominate the eight to 10 others led to each one of them having an interest in remaining neutral sometimes.

Hence, there was a strong desire for all powers to hammer out the concrete rules of engagement between belligerents and neutrals. This led to the codification of the “law of neutrality” in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions. The conventions clearly stated the “do’s and don’ts” for neutrals and belligerents during war.

Today, the only states that still refer to these legalistic neutrality concepts are small, perpetually neutral states like Switzerland, Austria, or Ireland. They feel bound by neutrality law, which is why they refuse to export weapons to war zones (to Ukraine, for instance) or allow overflights to NATO countries that are engaged in military operations. Great Powers today, like the United States, China, or Russia, do not make use of this part of international law anymore.

The reason for that is well known. Since the Second World War, the U.S. has built what it now calls a “rules-based international system” that centers around alliance-building—from Israel to the NATO countries, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. U.S. allies either help in interventions abroad (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.) or allow the U.S. military to station personnel and assets on their soil and harbors, thereby enabling Washington to project unparalleled hard power with roughly 750 bases around the globe.

The allies, in return, receive guarantees of protection from Uncle Sam. No NATO country has ever been attacked by another state actor, nor has Japan seen any fighting since sticking to a grand bargain with the U.S. in the 1950s. In the Philippines and Taiwan, too, some believe that only their alliance with the U.S. deters China.

Instead, in the contemporary world neutrality is most often used to describe policies of states that, in one way or another, do not fall in line with other states toward a third-party conflict. Those states, however, don’t usually call themselves neutral, nor do they follow neutrality law; what they are neutral toward is often not even covered by the treaties of old.

Take, for example, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that formed during the Cold War. In response to the bipolar conflict between the two superpowers, recently de-colonized countries in Asia and Africa developed a loose coalition united by despising the idea of having to choose sides in an ideological conflict among former European colonizers. Countries like India, Indonesia, Ghana, or Egypt had no desire to pick a side between the Soviets and the West when they could remain on good terms with both sides and use trade with both to develop their economies and move away from dependence on former oppressors.

The NAM was and still is only a loose association of countries. Some, like the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, are even fixtures of the U.S. alliance system with military base agreements, showing that nonalignment and alliances can and do go together—international politics rarely is a binary affair. But since the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, the NAM as a neutral block has again become relevant, with members refusing to choose sides.

Similarly, the BRICS+ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and the 2024 additions of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) will likely also become a neutral block, because its members include friends and foes alike. China and India have open territorial disputes along their border, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are strongly opposed strategic rivals in West Asia. This all but ensures that the BRICS+ block won’t become a military alliance, but will remain institutionally tied to neutrality toward each other’s conflicts.

There is a propensity in the U.S. and Europe—especially in neoconservative circles—to view global security in a friend-foe schema, a Manichean black and white with the forces of good (democracies) on one side and evil (autocracies) on the other. But many nonaligned and neutral countries have a much more nuanced picture of international security.

There are moments when Western democracies and their allies make tremendous mistakes, like illegally invading Iraq and killing one million people, bombing Serbia and Libya, occupying parts of Syria in a stark breach of international law, or supporting the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians—not to mention the older mistakes of the Vietnam War or the overthrow of democratic regimes in Iran and Latin America. Such errors provide strong incentives to countries outside the immediate U.S. security regime to avoid hard alliances and opt for uncommitted, situational policies.

In short, there are many reasons why states decide to “go it alone” and not bind their fate to others. The international system’s dynamic and fluid amalgamation of interests and dependencies creates ever-changing compositions and conceptions of war, peace, and—indeed—neutrality.