¹ Whether we say “neutral” is a relation rather than stands for or refers to a relation, depends on how seriously we take our nominalism.

² It is sometimes wistfully assumed that we can guarantee another's neutrality toward us by being neutral toward it. This would follow logically, if “neutral” were a symmetrical relation (like “join”). But it is logically worse off even than “love” (which is notoriously non-symmetrical) for we see by the above analysis that “neutral” being a relation with more than two terms must be asymmetrical and therefore reciprocity is logically precluded. By the same token it must also be intransitive.

³ The logical difficulties surrounding “about” and “relevant” need not detain us here.

⁴ This argument is examined in greater detail below.

⁵ We could equally well have borrowed the concept of remoteness from the law of tort and paraphrased the rule thus: a conflict is remote for A if it is reasonably foreseeable that its consequences will not substantially affect it. It would therefore be rational for a state to seek to affect the outcome of a proximate (non-remote) conflict and irrational not to.

⁶ Neutralism then becomes the policy of not seeking to affect the outcome of unspecified present and future conflicts between unspecified states. “Neutralism in the air” indeed.

⁷ These “aberrations” can of course be considered as five cases of special relevance.

⁸ It can be argued that Canada's neutrality in the Cuba-United States conflict owes a good deal to such an interest in disassociating itself from American policies. The Cuban crisis also provides a nice example of transition of the Cuba-United States conflict from subliminal to transliminal relevance for many of the South American states.

⁹ I am indebted to Professor Gabriel Almond for this point.

¹⁰ It could be argued that Switzerland's position can be. justified by induction. Surely few states have had such a consistently successful foreign policy. The argument would be that its present neutralist policy is justified by past success. But it is the burden of this paper that even in the strong case of Switzerland such an approach is full of pitfalls, not because of a distrust in induction but because of respect for it. With induction everything hangs on a careful scrutiny of past and present facts, and a comparison between them. It is only if both can be placed in the same narrow class (the narrower and more crowded it is the better) that the same consequences can be predicted for both. And it is just this sort of scrupulous examination of the particular situation confronting the state that is here being urged. Might not such an examination reveal for Switzerland a disquieting disparity between facts then and now? The conflict that now threatens is one between Western Europe (of which it is a member) and Eastern Europe, not primarily between groups of states within Western Europe. It is one between capitalist states (of which it is one) and communist states, not primarily between capitalist states. On the other hand, Switzerland in spite of being a democracy, was successful in maintaining its neutrality in the last two wars sometimes labelled as being between democracies and totalitarian regimes. These considerations indicate the difficulties in causal determination that make induction from past experience with neutralism (or any other policy) so hazardous. But hazardous or not, a state must arrive at a select number of such intermediate principles of foreign policy by taking into account all the facts, values and risks. What is here argued is that it follows from our definition that neutralism cannot serve as such an umbrella principle from which specific decisions of remaining neutral toward specific conflicts can be deduced. The reverse is true: a specific policy of neutrality toward a specific conflict can only be justified by being itself deduced from quite different policies and statements of fact. An illuminating example of such an intermediate principle at work is the Monroe Doctrine which is a curious amalgam of a negative policy of neutralism toward conflicts outside the hemisphere and a positive policy of resisting outside interference in continental affairs. It is noteworthy that the second element has proved more durable than the first. Neutralism toward such conflicts was indeed practised to a degree until the time they became transliminal for the United States when it became rational to seek to affect their outcome.

¹¹ Some would add: “and while resisting the imposition, improve the non-communist world as much and as fast as possible”.

¹² The crumbling of this two-fold division into three with the growing split between China and the Soviet Union will only affect this analysis if it can no longer be assumed as a fact that it is a fundamental aim of the Soviet Union to disturb the status quo. If this assumption is rejected then this aspect of the problem will have to be reexamined.