ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the major contemporary practitioners of neutrality and examines the requirements, benefits and costs of the policy for them. It addresses the feasibility and desirability of a neutral foreign policy for New Zealand. The common denominator in every form of neutrality at all times is a refusal to take part in other peoples' wars. Neutrality must therefore always be understood in relation to war, and its most important implications follow from the relationship. The laws of war and neutrality constitute vast bodies of customary and treaty rules in international law, and are supplemented by many usages in actual practice. As the historical survey shows, permanent neutrality is an exceptional phenomenon of international politics. Swedish neutrality - in official formulation, freedom from alliances in peace aiming at neutrality in war - has always been voluntary and unilateral. Tension between neutrality and internationalism is mediated and eased by service in the tertiary sector of international relations.
