#isolationists

I'm not even making an accusation of ideological inversion.

Most of The American Left in 1940 were with the Isolationists on the subject of entering the War in Europe. BreadTube videos want to focus only on the Right Wing Isolationists and pretend it was only a right wing phenomena among Nazi Sympathizers, but it wasn't.

The CPUSA took their marching orders form Moscow all through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but it wasn't just the same, it was the same with all three Trotskyist parties and the Socialist Parties that predated 1917 and the Anarchists including some who were Jewish (Emma Goldman and Paul Goodman) and everyone still alive who had been Anti-War during WW1 falsely comparing WW2 to that war just as people are now falsely comparing this to Iraq. That includes Suffragettes like the first woman ever Elected to Congress who even voted agaisnt the War after Pearl Harbor and Dorothy Day.

And even a revered Black Civil Rights leader who argued we should flat out root for Japan because they are resisting White Western Imperialism, his name was W. E. B. Du Bois.

Challenge #04370-K352: Strangers in the Woods

A: "It's all natural!"

B: "So're arsenic and cyanide." -- Anon Guest

There are, in magical worlds, places where the people do not trust magic. They shun it, exile those with magic in their bones, and even watch those using sleight of hand with suspicious eyes. The threat of a noose, or a pyre, lurked within those hateful eyes.

They also mistrust anything new, anything from the outside, and anyone who doesn't look like them.

No matter what you do to improve a society, or a world, there's always pockets of resistance who believe that everything was better when it was all worse. You'd think it would be the Dragons or the Elves who are most like that, but... shockingly, it's the Humans. One of the species with the shortest lifespans likes to keep things the way they were when they were children.

The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 71/275 of 2017 declares 12 December as International Day of Neutrality – and invites all United Nations Member States to mark its observance. More substantively, it suggests that the Secretary-General should continue to cooperate closely with neutral states, with a view to implementing the principles of preventive diplomacy while using those principles in their mediation activities (all only with voluntary contributions, of course!).

So what does neutrality really mean in 2021? No doubt everyone’s thoughts will first turn to Switzerland, the state most unequivocally committed to a permanent armed neutrality, and to Geneva, the seat of the International Red Cross and home to UNOG, as well as numerous UN programmes and agencies. Swiss neutrality formally dates back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and Switzerland has long prided itself on its good offices and its role as a protecting power or a mediator. For the Red Cross, its base in neutral Switzerland reinforces its impartiality and hence its efficacy in caring for victims of conflict.

However, neutrality, even in Switzerland, is not a static concept. When I was Chef de Cabinet at UNOG – quite a while ago – the Swiss electorate dismayed us by voting by a margin of three to one not to join the UN. That was in 1986 and one of the key reasons adduced was that UN membership would jeopardise Swiss neutrality. Even in Geneva, 70% were against joining. And yet, 15 years later in another referendum, the Swiss electorate decided – in a close vote – to join the UN. Apparently, it was no longer felt that UN membership was incompatible with neutrality. And now, Switzerland is set to join the Security Council next year as non-permanent Member. It would take a much longer article than this to analyse the changing motivations behind these diverse positions, but it’s clearly not possible to point to a hard and fast definition of neutrality beyond the basic premise of ‘not taking sides in a conflict’.

The other prominent neutral states within Europe – Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland – had no such qualms about joining the UN, and all of them take a different approach to neutrality. As a young diplomat serving in Vienna (also a good while ago), I was frequently reminded of the demands of the Austrian State Treaty, the 1955 agreement with the four occupying powers (Soviet Union, UK, France and US) that bound Austria to not join any military alliances, and led to Austria declaring its permanent neutrality – while in the same year joining the UN. Austria affirmed it would follow a policy of “active neutrality”, offering its good offices for East-West issues. And now, Vienna has of course become the third home of the UN, after New York and Geneva.

In Sweden, the question of neutrality is quite a live issue at present, although not with respect to the UN. Sweden has long championed the UN and sees no problem with the country’s neutral status. Indeed, the most famous of all UN Secretary-Generals is perhaps Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold. Sweden’s current debate revolves around a closer association with NATO, the Western military alliance with which the country already maintains a degree of cooperation. Membership of NATO, unlike the universal United Nations, would clearly put an end to neutrality, yet there are many voices in the country who would opt for NATO membership as a realistic policy in the current troubled geopolitical situation, as well as many others who would instead hew to neutrality.

Finland and Ireland are other European states which have elected for neutrality at one point or other in their national history and maintain this choice today. Like Sweden and Austria (and Cyprus and Malta, two other professedly neutral states), they are members of the UN, the EU, but not of NATO. And, these memberships do raise questions: Is it strictly neutral to go along with UN sanctions imposed against another state? Perhaps the ‘universal’ nature of the UN allows for such action without jeopardising neutrality, but what of the EU, with its growing initiatives under a Common Security and Defence Policy? At least Costa Rica and other neutrals beyond Europe have no such issues.

The first UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, declared that international organisations and neutrality were on two different planes. Now we have the UNGA encouraging respect for neutrality as an instrument of preventive diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson, bitterly frustrated by the US Congress’ refusal to join the League of Nations, dismissed armed neutrality as “ineffectual enough at best”, yet the international solidarity demonstrated by some of the core neutral countries – Sweden, Austria and Switzerland – has long been exemplary. Ultimately, this is all about politics, not international law. The debate over neutrality is linked to domestic political debates pitting isolationists against interventionists: a debate long current in the US and one that straddles party lines of left and right. And, when we debate humanitarian intervention and national sovereignty, we raise some of the same sets of issues. Moreover, in several historical occasions, for example during World War II, neutrality may have been more a question of survival than of free choice. How we view neutrality today depends on shifting political currents, on alliances changing with new conditions, on new threats and challenges in the face of which no one can remain ‘neutral’ – but this is far from the strictly political neutrality understood by that Resolution 75/170, where we began.