The public debate about whether we should ditch Malta’s neutrality is striking for its lack of concrete arguments – reasons grounded in geostrategic actuality. Instead of reasons, we get rationalisations. Instead of engagement with actuality, we have disconnection.
A sure sign of rationalisation: the reasons given don’t add up. For example, those in favour of keeping neutrality tell us that it helps keep us out of other people’s trouble… but it also helps us get involved as mediators.
Those against tell us that the time for neutrality (a position mainly relevant in war) is over… because war has returned to Europe.
Others tell us that neutrality as a policy instrument to pursue Mediterranean peace has become irrelevant because the Mediterranean itself has become irrelevant – but then say we need to join a military alliance to guarantee our security in a troubled neighbourhood.
Then there is the disconnection from reality. Those against neutrality say it’s a freeloaders’ option. Those for neutrality say we can avoid spending public money on the military.
Both are mistaken. Neutrality – certainly that embedded in our constitution if taken seriously – calls for significant investments.
Even when they were neutral, Finland and Sweden took military preparation very seriously – both have conscription. Finland considered media education about fake news for schoolchildren to be a security issue, not just a civic one.
Both have their reasons for ditching neutrality. But they are reasons rooted in concrete assessments of their own security.
Our own debate would strike them as odd. Sweden and Finland never confused political neutrality with moral neutrality – as some critics of neutrality do here. While neutral, Sweden also pursued a morally committed development agenda for the global south.
As for the argument that we can’t be neutral and have international security agreements, it forgets that Malta had just such arrangements. We need new ones, of course. Sweden and Finland carried joint exercises with NATO for many years even when they were neutral.
In Malta, however, it seems that any cooperation with NATO is either dancing with the devil or joining the moral crusaders on the right side of history.
Anyone who argues either side of that argument is disconnected from reality and can’t be taken seriously.
The rationalisations and disconnections are understandable. When it comes to neutrality, our leaders are tongue-tied. Unlike other countries, whose neutrality comes with an articulated set of political and security doctrines, neutrality here is shrouded in silence.
The government condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as illegal and also asserted that condemnation did not violate our neutrality. But it did not explain why. You’d think our government had no answer and only issued a condemnation under European pressure.
The result: a public that thinks our neutrality is actually being violated, with some thinking that’s a scandal and others believing it’s a step in the right direction.
Malta is neutral between states but it’s not neutral about international law- Ranier Fsadni
There is, in fact, an explanation. Our neutrality and qualified pacifism are grounded in the upholding of international law. As a small state, it’s in our national interest to uphold the international legal order – for largely the same reasons why we adopted neutrality.
Just as UN Security Council resolutions qualify our pacifism, international law qualifies our neutrality. Malta is neutral between states but it’s not neutral about international law.
See, it’s not even difficult to explain. So it’s striking that our leaders don’t or can’t.
The point here is not that our neutrality is of timeless relevance. It’s that we can’t expect to have a rational debate on its relevance when the current leaders can’t even outline its raison d’etre.
One reason is the quality of leadership. But there are historical reasons as well.
Since independence, Malta has done very well for itself in proposing concrete projects for regional and international peace, security and prosperity. You might say that our constitutional commitment to peace has a pedigree that goes back to independence.
Our commitment to neutrality, however, has been different. It went through different, not entirely successful iterations under Dom Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. After being constitutionalised in 1987, parts of its provisions soon became defunct with the end of the Cold War.
There followed an age of unipolarity combined with a mini-golden age for the liberal international order and European institution building.
It was an age where no real demands were placed on neutrality. There was no need to articulate what it meant. But there was plenty of scope to articulate Maltese contributions to the new geostrategic order that was promised for the Euro-Mediterranean. Malta’s role was premised on Europe’s engagement.
As a result, our politicians were more fluent in talking about how Malta could be a “bridge” in the region than they were about what our neutrality meant. It just didn’t seem relevant.
Over the last 10 years, as European geo-economic engagement with the southern Mediterranean has faded, so also has it become difficult to imagine any role for Malta.
It’s one reason why our discourse about neutrality seems so cut off from any basis in reality.
Marginalised in Europe’s imagination, it’s easy to have the illusion that the Mediterranean raises no strategic concerns.
States with a sharper sense of their geostrategic interests – Turkey, Russia, China and the Gulf States – are engaging profoundly with the region, sometimes on our very doorstep, and with consequences for the stability of our neighbourhood.
Let’s root our debate in actuality, not unreality. Let’s first assess the balance of threats. Then let’s see if some version of neutrality contributes to our security. On that basis we can retain it, redefine it or drop it.