CONFERENCE: "Permanent neutrality or permanent insecurity ? Obligation and self-interest in the defense of Belgian neutrality" [International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century (c. 1775-1914). From the Public Law of Europe to Global International Law] (Leuven: KULeuven, 24-25 Nov 2016)

(image source: KUL)

I presented a paper entitled "Permanent neutrality or permanent insecurity ? Obligation and self-interest in the defense of Belgian neutrality" at the conference International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century (c. 1775-1914): From the Public Law of Europe to Global International Law, organized by the Research Unit for Roman Law and Legal History (R. Lesaffer/I. Van Hulle) at the KULeuven.

Paper abstract:

The Congress of Vienna is seen as a turning point in many late 19th-century textbooks of international law. Among its institutional realizations, the instauration of permanent neutrality, announcing the banishment of war from the dictionary of civilization, seems to stand out. Even if this institution corresponded to a voluntary practice in the Swiss case, it was a novelty applied to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, a sui generis extension of William VI of Orange’s sovereignty over the former Dutch Republic. The guarantee of the Great Powers’ invisible hand, coupled with a system of infant global governance, would have banned war from statesmen’s dictionaries. The self-declared disinterested engagement of the Great Powers at the Conference of London in 1830-1831 automatically implied the transmission of the “reciprocal” obligations of neutrality onto the new Belgian state. Belgium’s pioneering role in international law at the end of the nineteenth century would have been a logical consequence of its neutrality, aloof from the evils of Ancien Régime geopolitics. Neutrality conferred a higher moral status to the independent liberal state on the former battleground of Europe, just as the liberal character of its 1831 constitution created sympathy abroad.
I plead for a more critical historical assessment than the above-mentioned narrative. In the interplay between issues of contemporary international law and genealogical attempts to prove historical relevance, differences matter as much as resemblances do. Recent studies on the Vienna Congress downplay the institutional achievements of the negotiations in Vienna. Doctrinal classics do not show a watershed with regards to 18^th century modes of reasoning.  Kluber even estimated that the changes in the positive law of nations between 1789 and 1815 did not justify a major overhaul of traditional intellectual categories. Compulsory neutrality, introduced in 1815, transmitted in 1831 and confirmed in 1839, was just one out of multiple tools to guarantee “le repos de tous.” Its symbolical and discursive value was mostly superficial. Neutrality was first seen as a potential economic advantage, but foremost as a fragile and threatened mode of existence.
The relative calm Franco-British relationship under Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) helped to consolidate the country’s independence. One could argue that the July Monarchy desperately intervened to prevent a reunion with its newly independent northern neighbor. The revisionary and expansive views of Napoleon III (1849-1870) consisted a frontal attack on international order as created in Vienna. Even after the French defeat of 1870-1871, this fear was reignited. Confronted to the geopolitical upheaval on the Balkans, in the Middle East or in the tensions between Bismarck’s Germany and the French Third Republic.
Precisely in this late 19^th century-context, wherein the Vienna settlement became part of history and was increasingly perceived as a turning point, the Revue de droit international et de legislation comparée, the public writings of Ernest Nys (ULB) or Edouard Descamps (Louvain), Leopold II’s advisers, presented the country’s neutral status as one of the main achievements of international law and implicitly as a proof of Belgium’s fitness to execute a mission of civilization in Africa. In a continuous geopolitical context of contiguity to France, Britain and the German space, only the option of a sovereign country under international protection could ensure la fusion des races, corresponding to social necessity.Neutrality did not consist in a unilateral renunciation of armed force to solve disputes, but rather in the early modern idea of medius in bello (Grotius, Bynkershoek). Neutrality ended at the first shot in a new armed conflict. “Permanent” neutrality implied balancing an outside factor –the willingness of the guarantors to intervene- against an internal factor, namely the capacity to defend oneself and make use of the natural right of self-defense. Although the latter pertained to the obligations of neutrality, it also activated the eternal debate between the constitutive and declaratory nature of international recognition, or between the hierarchy between international and constitutional law. In the words of Louis Arendt, director of political affairs at the Foreign Ministry: “La neutralité perpétuelle est non pas une condition essentielle, mais seulement une modalité de l’existence nationale. Chaque fois qu’il y aura conflit entre le droit de conservation et le devoir de neutralité, le droit doit l’emporter sur le devoir”. By the end of the 19^th century, Belgian doctrine officially advocated the primacy of national sovereignty over diplomacy. Newspapers ironized that neutrality did not apply when overseas markets were to be conquered. In practice, the veil of secrecy covered manifold attempts to wrestle assurances from the great powers that they would cling to the obligations undertaken in 1839.

Acta will appear as a collective volume in the Studies in the History of International Law (SHIL) series (ed. R. Lesaffer) with Brill.