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Notes -
"Rights of small nations" overlaps strongly with "Don't bitchslap the British Empire and expect no response" in practice.
British grand strategy between the end of the Anglo-Dutch wars in 1668 and the Brexit referendum in 2016* was built around preventing the emergence of a hegemonic power in Continental Europe. Putting a neutral Belgium slap bang in the middle of the most convenient invasion route between France and Germany was part of that - it prevents either side converting a temporary force advantage into a Sedan-tier victory by successful maneuver warfare. So from a British perspective the 1839 Treaty of London guaranteeing Belgian neutrality wasn't just a "scrap of paper" - it was core to British policy in the same way that the current "rules-based" international order is to US policy. Accordingly, violating Belgian neutrality without asking the British nicely suggests that the Germans don't take Britain seriously as a Great Power able and willing to defend its interests, and was therefore perceived by the part of the British establishment that didn't already favour a full defensive alliance with France as a bitchslap, and produced (largely without thought on the British side) an appropriately robust response.
The bitchslap in WW2 is even more blatant. At Munich, Hitler tells Chamberlain that Nazi grand strategy is about reversing Versailles, and that the Sudetenland is the last major territorial adjustment needed to complete this project**. Germany signs a treaty explicitly guaranteeing the borders of rump Czechoslovakia, and Chamberlain sells Munich to the British people on the basis that it is "Peace in Our Time". When Hitler invades the rest of Czechoslovakia six months later, he is basically saying to Chamberlain and the British voter "I have altered our agreement. Pray that I do not alter it further." This goes down differently when it is said by the Empire vs when it is said to the Empire by a short Austrian corporal with one ball. Both AJP Taylor and Orwell (in The Lion and the Unicorn) agree that the resulting British policy was a largely unthinking response to being bitchslapped.
* This is one of the reasons why I agree with this blog post suggesting that the core supporters of Brexit were assuming the EU would collapse following the withdrawal of the British net budgetary contribution - I'm pretty certain that not even the Brexiteers saw the UK facing a united, hostile Europe as a good outcome.
** This is more plausible than the modern schoolboy version of history says it is - AJP Taylor in the serious-but-moderately-heterodox Origins of the Second World War points out that Hitler had plans for a second Munich-style deal to avoid an attack on Poland, and had it worked he was not expecting to grab any Polish territory - just to annex Danzig (which was a majority-German city under League of Nations administration, where the local Nazis dominated local elections) and get better transit terms for German rail freight crossing Polish territory between contiguous Germany and East Prussia.
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