Neutrality

Neutrality is a concept deployed for safeguarding one's position in the complex and sometimes hazardous world. Since the fourteenth century, the word neutrality has predominantly denoted nonalignment in the realms of politics, diplomacy, and war, in which no firm ground for neutrality can be assured. Thus, neutrality as nonalignment is dependent on the political judgment of others: whether they acknowledge one's neutrality to be sincere or expedient to their interests. The history of politics shows that in some cases the neutral political status was accepted (for instance, Switzerland since the Congress of Vienna in 1815) and in others it was not (Laos during the Vietnam war).