Title: Non-Alignment and Neutrality from a Nordic Perspective
Headings: Non-Alignment and Neutrality from a Nordic Perspective
Non-Alignment and Neutrality from a Nordic Perspective
From Neutrality to Non-aligment
The President and the People as Obstacles to NATO Membership
New Members Joining the ”Old NATO”
The Dispute over Energy is a Dispute About Money
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Content: From Neutrality to Non-aligment
In the good old days, when Europe was divided into a socialist block led by Soviet Union and a capitalist one led by the United States, being neutral was much easier to understand. Fortunately, times have changed for the worse and the good old days will never come back. What we have lost is a world easy to understand, but what we have gained is more security. The threat of a large-scale war has vanished, interdependence between European countries has increased and practically all of Europe has been opened to the free movement and interaction between people. The cooling-down period in relations between Russia and the US and bilateral problems between Russia and EU have been understood as a return of the Cold War, but this interpretation is not valid. An ideology that could challenge, let alone have the capacity to subvert, the whole Western system based on liberal market economy, does not exist anymore. On the contrary, the countries of Eastern Europe, including Russia, want to enjoy the fruits of the capitalist system. Rather than being an ideological conflict, the problems in bilateral relations between Russia and Western Europe can better be described as a conflict of interests. This conflict has crystallized on the EU side around questions of supply of energy and on the Russian side around the price it can get from selling oil and gas to the rest of Europe. Despite all the changes, militarily non-aligned countries still exist in Europe.