Neutrality and foreign policy in Austria since 1955

• Main Author: Morrow, D. J.
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1987
• Subjects: 940
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.659634

The thesis has four main contentions; 1. that neutrality has undergone a fundamental change since the advent of the Nuclear Age and that this is most apparent in neutral States whose neutrality is a product of the Second World War settlement. Within this, the importance of foreign policy has greatly increased. The legal doctrines established in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are no longer applicable in the former manner. 2. that Austria's common history with Germany, especially in the period 1938-45, has had a profound effect on the conduct of postwar Austrian foreign policy, directly affecting relations with neighbouring States and the victorious allies. Here too a disturbing divergence between the statements of the political establishment in Austria and political reality since 1955 emerges. The development of a global-scale foreign policy has been in part a response to the growing importance of markets in the developing world and partly a reaction to the stifling effects of this historical legacy. 3. that Austria's foreign policy is based on an unstable equilibrium between the status of permanent neutrality, which since 1955 has had to operate in the context of two ideologically opposed groups, and allegiance to liberal democracy and hence to one of the parties to this ideological conflict. One of the important functions of Austrian policy has been to prevent this reality from becoming the object of manipulation from abroad. This difficulty has been most apparent in the debates over detente and the E.E.C. 4. that the continuing success of Austria, along with other small States in manipulating the World System to their advantage suggests that pure 'realist' and 'world systems' models of international relations are oversimplistic.