Neutrality in Cold War Europe
While neutrality is often associated in the post-1945 period with the Third World, it is important to realize that the roots of the concept lay in Europe and the European states system.
Indeed, one of the most overlooked issues in studies of the Cold War in Europe is the role of the neutral countries. In part this is an understandable omission; after all the countries that did not join the Warsaw Pact or NATO were small states of only marginal significance to the broader ideological, political, military and economic aspects of the East-West confrontation. Yet to some degree in the 1940s, but even more so in the 1950s, neutrality and the idea of ‘neutralism’ helped to influence the direction of the Cold War in Europe.When discussing European neutrality, it is important to bear several facts in mind. First, one must differentiate between the traditional policy of neutrality, as practised by such countries as Switzerland and Sweden, from the emergence of Cold War neutrality and non-alignment in Austria, Finland and Yugoslavia. Neither Swiss nor Swedish neutrality was an outcome of the Cold War: in the former case neutrality dates back to the sixteenth century; for Sweden, the policy emerged in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century. Moreover, while neither state joined a Cold War alliance, it was no secret that ideologically and economically both Sweden and Switzerland belonged to the ‘West’. In contrast, the neutrality and non-alignment of Austria, Finland and Yugoslavia were products of the Cold War. Austria’s neutrality was, in effect, a compromise solution imposed from the outside as a way of ending that country’s occupation ten years after the end of the Second World War. Much like neighbouring Switzerland, however, Austria clearly gravitated to the West after 1955.
The cases of Finland and Yugoslavia provide an interesting contrast.
In Finland, post-war political leaders (such as presidents Juho K. Paasikivi and Urho K. Kekkonen) considered a cordial relationship with their powerful neighbour, the USSR, to be a precondition for maintaining internal democracy. Thus, Finland made important security and foreign policy concessions to the Soviet Union (mostnotably by signing a Security Pact in 1948) but managed, through a series of political and diplomatic manoeuvres, to avoid membership in the Warsaw Pact and retain its political traditions and pro-Western sentiment largely intact. Moreover, while its exports to and imports from the USSR represented 25-35 per cent of its foreign trade throughout the Cold War, Finland also associated itself with various Western economic organizations such as EFTA in the early 1960s, and over time managed to distance itself from the USSR.
neutralism
The policy whereby a state publicly disassociates itself from becoming involved in Great Power conflicts. The first major advocate of the policy was Jawaharlal Nehru on behalf of postindependence India.
If Finland was a Western state practising ‘Soviet-friendly’ neutrality during the Cold War, Yugoslavia was the first socialist state to break with Moscow’s leadership and establish independent links with the West. Following the Tito-Stalin break of 1948 Yugoslavia received military assistance from the United States, which saw it as a potential agent for breaking the Soviet Union’s monolithic control over Eastern Europe. Such hopes proved, in the end, illusory, for Tito had no desire to leave one camp to enter another. Indeed, Yugoslavia from the mid-1950s used its neutrality to develop links with like-minded countries in the Third World, and in the 1960s became a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement.
see Chapter 9
While the policies of these five states probably had a limited impact on the unfolding of the Cold War in Europe, it is important to note that the relative success of the neutral states had broader implications.
Perhaps most importantly, their sheer existence made neutrality a potentially credible policy choice for other countries both inside and outside Europe and a corresponding headache for the leading protagonists in the Cold War. In Western Europe, neutralist sentiments were particularly strong in such countries as France and helped President de Gaulle’s efforts to adopt a more independent course in the 1960s. Moreover, in the 1970s one worrying, albeit much exaggerated, spectre for American policymakers was that West Germany’s Ostpolitik was leading that NATO country down the dangerous path towards neutralism. More broadly, there was even talk of West Europeans adopting a similar posture towards the USSR to that of Finland; the popular, if much misused, term ‘Finlandization’ became a way to refer to such potential dangers to NATO unity in the latter part of the Cold War. In contrast, the Soviets worked diligently to avoid the cancer of neutralism in their sphere. In 1956, for example, the Soviets, despite having touted the ‘neutralization’ and unification of Austria as a possible model for ending the division of Germany, reacted violently to Hungary’s attempt to leave the Warsaw Pact and adopt a neutral posture.non-alignment
A state policy of avoiding involvement in ‘Great Power conflicts’, most notably the Cold War. It was first espoused by India on its becoming independent in 1947.
Ostpolitik
The West German policy towards the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, which aimed at reducing tensions with the ultimate hope of negotiating the peaceful unification of Germany.
see Chapter 9
In the end, however, neutrality remained the privilege (or burden) of a few selected countries in Cold War Europe, and even the independent initiatives of de Gaulle’s France or Willy Brandt’s West Germany did little to shake the division of the continent. Yet neutrality and the existence of strong neutralist sentiments served as expressions of a continued reluctance on the part of large segments of European opinion to be mere pawns in the Soviet-American confrontation. Similar sentiments, if in dramatically different contexts, were shared by a large group of countries throughout the developing world that wished to remain nonaligned in the Cold War.