In his Sunday Times of Malta article (May 5), Alfred Sant judged my contribution ‘Three myths about neutrality’ (April 28) as “interesting” but endorsing “too many fallacies” that “confuse the issue and need to be contested”.

“When distinguishing between what he calls unjust/aggressive wars and just and defensive wars,” Sant says, I fallaciously compare conflicts between nations “to what happens when Peter and Paul indulge in a brawl on a street pavement”. This is not tenable, he states, because states and individuals are different entities and incomparable.

My first supposed fallacy. But a dishonest start for him.

My example refers to a mugger or thug assaulting an innocent person not to two persons “indulging” in a brawl. The difference is obviously morally of the essence. In my example, “Peter and Paul” are aggressor and victim, not self-indulgent “brawlers”. This puts them morally on a different level from brawlers.

He dismissed my article’s fundamental distinction between unjust/aggressive, and just/defensive, wars, as my invention (“what he calls”) and trivialises the concepts themselves as a “call back to pavement fights” that “really confuse the issue”.

Clearly, he has not heard of just war theory going back to Augustine in the fifth century, which underpins and gives its substance to all the international law related to what constitutes a war justly fought, that is, morally and legally justified, and what constitutes just conduct in the fighting of a war, that is, one using morally and legally legitimate means.

One justifiably describes “the flagrant and unacceptable violation by Russia of the norms of international law” as such because those norms are justified by just war theory which determine what actions constitute “flagrant and unacceptable violations”.

Far from being my invention, a wealth of literature exists on just war theory. He can begin his education into it with Michael Walzer’s classic Just and Unjust Wars, if he’s interested.

There is nothing untenable in my example intended to render the moral problem with neutrality more actual, that is, more imaginable because I clearly compare like with like.

The ethics of international relations and international law recognise states as moral persons and members of communities (states international) like individuals.

Peter’s aggressive attack on Paul raises the same moral issues and calls into play the same moral rights and obligations as Russia’s aggressive attack on Ukraine. Both involve innocent victims, their rights to self-defence and the obligations of other members of their community to defend them from aggression and contribute to their self-defence, compatible with reasonable prudence. Standing on the sidelines and doing nothing is morally reprehensible in either case.

Sant seems to agree. “The status of neutrality,” he says, “does not in any way prevent Malta from expressing a judgement and taking diplomatic sides” and offering humanitarian aid – all laudable actions. “The fundamental thrust” in Maltese neutrality is against “assuming any military posture in favour of any other state or power or alliance”, except if UN-mandated or in self-defence.

Peter’s aggressive attack on Paul raises the same moral issues as Russia’s aggressive attack on Ukraine- Kenneth Wain

I don’t know how “taking diplomatic sides”, etc. squares consistently with being neutral, with non-alignment, but let that pass. Neutrality is a much-abused word and, as he says, there are different interpretations of it among neutral states.

Maltese neutrality is active, not passive nor pacifist. It doesn’t proscribe all military action and obliges the Maltese state to actively pursue peace. My article made the point that peace without justice is worthless and unsustainable. And that, unfortunately and paradoxically, the hard fact is that it isn’t obtained with declarations of neutrality but by deterrence, by making it not worthwhile for potential aggressors to act.

My moral problem with Maltese neutrality is the unqualified statement in our constitution against “assuming any military posture in favour of any [my emphasis] state”, thereby obscuring the fundamental moral and legal distinction between military involvement in an unjust/aggressive and a just/defensive war and an unjust and just peace.

I cannot unpick the other imaginary “fallacies” he mentions for reasons of space, so I will conclude with some brief comments.

First, I didn’t “generalise about neutrality”, I defined neutrality by its standard meaning. As a chosen stance; a commitment to equidistance between conflicting parties – the definition all neutralities must share to qualify as such.

Second, the attitude that the experience of other countries with their neutrality status has nothing to teach us is dangerously arrogant.

Third, I didn’t make the absurd claim that “neutrality cannot be morally right” – it is obviously right and necessary with judges and referees of all kinds, for instance. My statement related to neutrality towards acts of unjustified aggression whether against an individual or a state.

Four, he finds my Belgium example of a failed neutrality “curious”. Why? It illustrates the myth that declaring one’s neutrality is a safeguard for one’s national security perfectly. I nowhere claimed that belonging to a military alliance necessarily protects it.

On the other hand, what odds on Russia invading Ukraine all the same if Ukraine had already been in NATO instead of wasting its time trying to appease its neighbour with repeated assurances of its neutrality if left alone?

Finally, my claim that Malta’s safety and security is best protected by its membership in the EU, and describing that membership as an “enlightened choice”, produced Sant’s predictable Eurosceptic rant. But who in his right mind will believe today that, with the present geopolitical reality, Malta’s security is better guaranteed by its constitutional neutrality than by “belonging to a collective defence system within the EU”?

Kenneth Wain is a philosopher and emeritus professor.