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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   24098 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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My understanding of neutrality law is so-so, but as I understand it, you're very much incorrect here, at least as far as traditional understandings of neutrality goes.

Selling arms to a belligerent on normal commercial terms definitely doesn't breach neutrality under international law (although the arms shipments themselves are usually legitimate military targets).

My understanding is that it does not breach neutrality norms if they are being sold under equal terms to both sides. Which obviously is not happening here.

Nor does providing them on less-than-commercial terms (such as Lend-Lease in WW2, which was legally compatible with US neutrality).

It may have been legally compatible with US neutrality law, but that does not mean that it was not a breach of traditional norms surrounding neutrality - it was very obvious to everyone that the US was not a neutral party, and that it was aiding Britain against Germany.

It isn't obvious why giving them away free would change the logic.

This is a pretty clear breach of traditional neutrality. If you are aiding one party militarily, you aren't neutral (although that doesn't necessarily qualify as an act of war, as I understand it, but it might be considered a cause for war.) There was a huge fracas during the American Civil War when the Americans accused the British of breaching neutrality by building warships for the Confederacy.

Russia has claimed that Ukrainians are unable to use western weapons without a level of in-theatre technical support which would make the supplier a co-belligerent, but I don't believe them.

Well, as per US reporting, it appears that the Russians were at least partially correct about this, and the Pentagon is now soliciting bids for contractors to provide technical support in-theater.

(There's also the interesting question of how you define "in-theater"? The Russians are supposedly providing satellite intelligence to the Houthis to attack US shipping, is that a neutral act? Is it not an act of war, or, at a minimum, a valid cause for war? But of course the United States has been providing similar intelligence support to the Ukrainians since the beginning of the war, as has been acknowledged.)

It may have been legally compatible with US neutrality law, but that does not mean that it was not a breach of traditional norms surrounding neutrality - it was very obvious to everyone that the US was not a neutral party, and that it was aiding Britain against Germany.

The US was, uncontroversially, legally neutral under international law during the Lend-Lease period - that's why Germany had to declare war after Pearl Harbour - everyone understood that they were not already at war.

This mattered - before Pearl Harbour, U-boats did not operate in US waters. After Pearl Harbour and the declaration of war, they did - the period between Pearl Harbour and the US putting effective anti-submarine defences in place is called the Second Happy Time (happy, that is, for U-boat captains) by military historians.

There is a big difference between an unfriendly country and a country you are actually at war with. There are times when this matters - in the case of the US vs the Soviet Union, it is why we are still alive.

I think you're a bit mistaken about how neutrality works. As I mentioned above, a state of non-neutrality is not the same thing as a state of war. I recommend this CRS report – relevant excerpt:

Under traditional conceptions of neutrality, sending “war material of any kind” to Ukraine or any other belligerent would violate a duty of neutrality; however, some countries, including the United States, have adopted the doctrine of qualified neutrality. Under this doctrine, states can take non-neutral acts when supporting the victim of an unlawful war of aggression.

[...]

Even if qualified neutrality did not apply in this instance and U.S. security assistance breached a duty of neutrality, international law would limit the breach’s legal consequences. For example, security assistance to Ukraine would not permit Russia to use force against the United States in response to a neutrality violation unless Russia could satisfy an exception to the U.N. Charter’s prohibition on use of force. Nor would a violation of neutrality, on its own accord, make the United States a co-belligerent or party to the conflict fighting alongside Ukraine. Questions of co-belligerency implicate other legal paradigms and are not resolved by neutrality law alone.

So, yes, US war aid to England did violate neutrality. It did not (by itself) constitute an act of war.

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