This book sheds new light on the foreign policies, roles, and positions of neutral states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the global Cold War. The volume places the neutral states and the NAM in the context of the Cold War and demonstrates the links between the East, the West, and the so-called Third World. In doing so, this collection provides readers an alternative way of exploring the evolution and impact of the Cold War on North-South connections that challenges traditional notions of the post-1945 history of international relations. The various contributions are framed against the backdrop of the evolution of the Cold War international system and the decolonization process in the Southern hemisphere. By juxtaposing the policies of European neutrals and countries of the NAM, this book offers new perspectives on the evolution of the Cold War. With the links between these two groups of countries receiving very little attention in Cold War scholarship, the volume thus offers a window into a hitherto neglected perspective on the Cold War. Via a series of case studies, the chapters here present new viewpoints on the evolution of the global Cold War through the exploration of the ensuing internal and (mainly) external policy choices of these nations. This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, international history, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.

This book sheds new light on the foreign policies, roles, and positions of neutral states and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in the global Cold War. The volume places the neutral states and the NAM in the context of the Cold War and demonstrates the links between the East, the West, and the so-called Third World. In doing so, this collection provides readers an alternative way of exploring the evolution and impact of the Cold War on North-South connections that challenges traditional notions of the post-1945 history of international relations. The various contributions are framed against the backdrop of the evolution of the Cold War international system and the decolonization process in the Southern hemisphere. By juxtaposing the policies of European neutrals and countries of the NAM, this book offers new perspectives on the evolution of the Cold War. With the links between these two groups of countries receiving very little attention in Cold War scholarship, the volume thus offers a window into a hitherto neglected perspective on the Cold War. Via a series of case studies, the chapters here present new viewpoints on the evolution of the global Cold War through the exploration of the ensuing internal and (mainly) external policy choices of these nations. This book will be of much interest to students of Cold War Studies, international history, foreign policy, security studies and IR in general.

The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe examines how the neutral European countries and the Soviet Union interacted after World War II. Amid the Cold War division of Europe into Western and Eastern blocs, several long-time neutral countries abandoned neutrality and joined NATO. Other countries remained neutral but were still perceived as a threat to the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. Based on extensive archival research, this volume offers state-of-the-art essays about relations between Europe’s neutral states and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and how these relations were perceived by other powers.

Lottaz, Iwama, and their contributors investigate the role of neutral and nonaligned European states during the negotiations for the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Focusing on the years from the Irish Resolution of 1958 until the treaty’s opening for signatures ten years later, the nine chapters written by area experts highlight the processes and reasons for the political and diplomatic actions the neutrals took, and how those impacted the multilateral treaty negotiations. The book reveals new aspects of the dynamics that lead to this most consequential multilateral breakthrough of the Cold War. In part one, three chapters analyze the international system from a bird’s eye perspective, discussing neutrality, nonalignment, and the nuclear order. The second part features six detailed case studies on the politics and diplomacy of Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Overall, this study suggests that despite the volatile and dangerous nature of the early Cold War, the balance of the strategic environment enabled actors that were not part of one or the other alliance system to play a role in the interlocking global politics that finally created the nuclear regime that defines international relations until today. A valuable resource for scholars of nonproliferation, the Cold War, neutrality, nonalignment, and area studies.

In Switzerland and Sub-Saharan Africa in the Cold War, 1967-1979, Sabina Widmer analyses Swiss foreign policy in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Somalia in the late 1960s and 1970s, at the crossroads of the global East-West confrontation and decolonisation. Focusing on the independence wars in Angola and Mozambique, the Angolan War and the Ogaden War as well as regime changes that brought Soviet-allied governments to power, this book sheds new light on Switzerland’s role in the Third World during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research, it exposes the limits of neutrality in North-South relations, reveals the growing marge de manoeuvre of small states during Détente, and highlights the role of non-state actors in the making of foreign policy.

This collection examines the theory, practice, and application of state neutrality in international relations. With a focus on its modern-day applications, the studies in this volume analyze the global implications of permanent neutrality for Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States. Exploring permanent neutrality’s role as a realist security model capable of rivaling collective security, the authors argue that permanent neutrality has the potential to decrease major security dilemmas on the global stage.

In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".

Ariane Knüsel offers new perspectives on China's presence in Europe through analysis of Switzerland's central role during the Cold War.

After 1979, Switzerland became increasingly involved in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan as a provider of humanitarian aid and good offices. It delivered aid to the region, hosted Soviet prisoners of war and eventually mediated between the Afghan regime and the mujahideen. What is puzzling about this development is that initially, following the Soviet invasion, both government and parliament refused to become diplomatically involved in Afghanistan on account of Swiss neutrality. The present study investigates how and why this changed between 1979 and 1992. While the practical impact of Switzerland’s good offices was modest, the crisis revealed that Switzerland continued to struggle to balance the competing imperatives of permanent neutrality and international solidarity in an increasingly multilateral world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the wars in Yugoslavia radically changed the security environment in Europe and Central Asia. Some predictions assumed the emerging unipolarity of the liberal world order would end neutrality policies in East and West, but, as this volume shows, this was not the case. While some traditional Cold War neutrals like Sweden and Finland have been edging closer to security alignment with western institutions, there are others like Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, and Malta that remained committed to their traditional nonaligned foreign policy approaches. More importantly, there are areas of Eurasia that developed new forms of neutrality policies, most of them only noticed on the margins of academic discourse. This is the first book to systematically explore this “new neutralism” of the Post-Cold War. In part one, the book analyzes contemporary neutrality discourse on several levels like international organizations (UN, ASEAN), diplomacy, and academic theory. Part two discusses neutrality-related policy developments in Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Mongolia. Together, the 15 chapters show how on this vast, connected landmass references to neutrality have remained a staple of international politics.