New perceptions on neutrality in 2020?

Pascal Lottaz

​Maybe this is just my "déformation professionnelle," but in the past months I have noticed that neutrality is being mentioned more often in the news streams that I am following. Here are two interesting examples. First, a short but concise article about Finnish nonalignment today. The article doesn't say it outright but hints that this policy makes good sense still today for Finland and that NATO membership would be a gamble for Helsinki. ("Finland’s President Can Hold His Own With Both Putin and Trump", Foreign Policy, September 10, 2020).

Secondly, and this is even more interesting, there is a rather well known youtuber, PolyMatter, who made an entire video about "How Singapore Stays Neutral." The video was uploaded on August 21, 2020. PolyMatter has (as of today) 1.2 million subscribers, which puts him into the professional league among youtubers, that is people who can live off their content creation and probably even have a small team to help them. The video is worth watching. What is most interesting is the creators framing of what "Singaporean Neutrality" means. It has nothing to do with the good old 1907 rules of neutrality under international law but he talks about it in purely political and strategic terms. Not only is the content that he delivers good but the framing is quite fascinating.