No Time for Neutrality: after Finland and Sweden abrogate their stance, Austria follows in all but name

As heavy artillery from Italy rolled through Austria last week, tabloids discover that the latter's neutrality isn't worth 'a scrap of paper'

Last week, the Twitterverse reported the following:

Source.

Yes, I’ve seen legacy media reports about it last week, but it took until yesterday for it to make a kind of splash.

Of Tempests and Teapots

Below you’ll find a translation of a brief piece that appeared in the tabloid Österreich on 18 April 2023 (emphases mine):

20 Tanks for Ukraine Transported Through Austria w/o Permission

Last Friday, Twitter was abuzz with photos and videos of a goods train at Udine station. The train was not loaded with just any goods but with 20 M-109 howitzers.

The Italian Minister for Relations with the Parliament, Luca Ciriani, confirmed to the public TV channel Rai that these were ‘self-propelled artillery vehicles’ destined for Ukraine and part of a military aid package.

There was a lot of confusion about whether the armour-carrying train would pass through Austria on its way to Ukraine, as well as whether there was an official permit for it. In the meantime, it has become clear that the war machines, weighing several tonnes apiece, did indeed pass through the country. What is not quite so clear, however, is the matter of the permit.

Ministry of Defence: We are Not Responsible [lol]

Austrian authorities were apparently in the dark themselves at first, as the Kleine Zeitung now reports [see below]. The Ministry of Defence said that, firstly, there was no request from Italy and, secondly, that it was not responsible because only military equipment and no foreign soldiers were on the road. [huhum, what about, say, drones or combat robots?]

The Ministry of the Interior also knew nothing about a request for the transit of war material. However, some military transports would not require a permit under the War Materials Act. For example, when they are transported from an EU member state to another EU member state. [again, notice a pattern? Didn’t the EU receive the Nobel *peace* prize a while ago? Oh, wait, Obama and Kissinger did, too, which tells us everything we need to know about it…]

Destination Poland as a Loophole

This is probably how it happened: the Kleine Zeitung has an email from the Italian embassy to the Ministry of the Interior informing it that ‘on 15 April, a train will transport M109 from Italy to Poland’. And further: ‘The export is war material which, according to the Austrian War Material Act, does not need a licence according to §5 paragraph 2a. There is an export and import licence from both EU states for the transport.’

Austrian Licence Requirements Circumvented

So Austria was more or less presented with a fait accompli. However, it must have been clear to the Ministry of the Interior that this was a loophole—after all, the tank transport was not supposed to end in the EU country of Poland but to continue from there to Ukraine [as much as it pains me to stress, we’d need a definition of terms here; or the ending of such transports (see below)]. In a reply [by the Austrian Interior Ministry] to the Italian embassy, it was pointed out that ‘a permit in accordance with the War Material Act is required’ for transport of such goods to a third country.

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Italian Lies, Austrian Complicity

Of course, the Italians are lying, as the cited section in the War Material Act (§5 Paragr. 2a) clearly holds (my emphases):

A licence pursuant to section 3 shall not be required for imports or transits pursuant to section 1(2)(1) and (3) if

1. a corresponding export licence of the EU Member State from which the war material is transferred is available or no such licence is required under the law of that EU Member State, and

2. the war material is not
   a) within the meaning of section 1, section I, line 7 of the Ordinance of the Federal Government of 22 November 1977 on War Material (War Material Ordinance), Federal Law Gazette No. 624/1977, or
   b) within the meaning of the Federal Act on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, Federal Law Gazette I No. 13/1997, or

   c) within the meaning of the Federal Act on the Prohibition of Blinding Laser Weapons, Federal Law Gazette I No. 4/1998, or

   d) within the meaning of the Federal Act on the Prohibition of Cluster Munitions, Federal Law Gazette I No. 12/2008, or

   e) which, with regard to its import or transit, is subject to other legal restrictions comparable to the provisions listed in lit. b to d.

3. A licence pursuant to § 3 shall not be required for exports to another EU Member State for the purpose of demonstration, exhibition, maintenance or repair, or for the purpose of return following such an operation. This shall not apply in the case of war material within the meaning of para. 2a subpara. 2.

As is clear from the unambiguous wording in (3)—’a licence pursuant to § 3 shall not be required for exports to another EU Member State for the purpose of demonstration, exhibition, maintenance or repair, or for the purpose of return following such an operation’—the Italian government is lying. And breaking the law.

But so is Austria’s government because they are not preventing this transport, which they are required to do given their own laws.

As much as I hate to repeat myself, this is nothing new or extraordinary.

Back in early March 2023, I commented on these notions in the following way:

If anything, the past year has shown, conclusively, I’d add, that one ‘can’t have one without the other’, in particular as the EU’s Common Foreign and Security (CFSP) and NATO’s policies have become virtually indistinguishable, even though this was mainly achieved by Finland and Sweden—the other two militarily neutral EU member-states—opting to join NATO.

Personally, I’d favour a return to neutrality over the continued integration with the EU and NATO. While I doubt that the powers that be will allow for that to happen, I would also predict that if the Freedom Party would add a strong ‘Leave’ plank to their party platform, it would mark a significant development.

Please refer to the below piece, published on 4 March 2023, for further particulars:

'Austria—it's time to join NATO', Politico Opines, Arguing that 'its Euro-Atlantic integration remains only half complete'

The End of Neutrality as a Political Concept

What the above reports indicate isn’t just that my reading of the appalling state of Austria’s neutrality was correct. It also proves Italian PM Meloni a quite disingenuous person; after all, she ranted, however mildly, against further Italian participation in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Moreover, what we observe here is bullying-by-proxy: the US pushes Italy to send 20 M109 howitzers (for which, ironically, almost no shells are left in NATO inventories) via Austria ‘to Poland’; Italy, in turn, abuses its neighbourly relations with Austria by claiming they understand the latter’s legislation better (which may or may not be true). Still, the point is that Rome knows precisely that Vienna can’t raise a fuss about it.

This isn’t the first time this happened, though. As a reminder, when the US-led aggression vs. Yugoslavia occurred in 1999, according to leaked information published by Profil in 2002, Austria’s neutrality was ignored by the US-led alliance on 33 occasions. Since nothing like, say, loud protests by Vienna and the arming of fighter jets to prevent this happened, the US and its lackeys were emboldened.

Lest anyone gets agitated by my choice of words, here’s what Chris Clark (Regius Prof., Cambridge U) wrote about the ‘Kosovo War’ in his 2012 best-selling book The Sleepwalkers (from the UK ed., Allen Lane, pp. 456-57; my emphases):

It would certainly be misleading to think of the Austrian note [the ultimatum to Serbia delivered on 28 July 1914] as an anomalous regression into a barbaric and bygone era before the rise of sovereign states. The Austrian note was a great deal milder, for example, than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the form of the Rambouillet Agreement drawn up in February and March 1999 to force the Serbs into complying with NATO policy in Kosovo. Its provisions included the following:

‘NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access through the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, manoeuvre, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.’

Henry Kissinger was doubtless right when he described Rambouillet as ‘a provocation, an excuse to start bombing’, whose terms were unacceptable even to the most moderate Serbian. The demands of the Austrian note pale by comparison

These notions are indicative of two conclusions:

1. ‘Neutrality’ as a political concept in ‘Western’ affairs is dead. It’s a dead letter and the hegemon won’t respect it; hence, why expect, say, Russia to respect it?

2. As regards those who abuse what remains of ‘international law’ (ahem), they’ve been at this for quite some time. There are many reports of ‘foreign’ war material rolling through Austria, and this didn’t start in 2022 or 1999 for that matter. What the US/NATO ‘Borg’ has done increasingly is to either simply ignore Austrian neutrality (‘rules-based order’) or flood Austrian authorities with requests for permits knowing full well that they cannot—won’t—be processed in time. The end result is the same.

Bottom Lines

Nothing new under the sun, it seems. 2,500 years ago, Thucydides wrote (emphases mine):

[Athenians] Since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

[Melians] As we think, at any rate, it is expedient—we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest—that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be got to pass current. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon.

Source: Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. Crawley, pub. 1923, p. 394.

Back in August 1914, German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, upon receiving the British ultimatum demanding withdrawal from neutral Belgium alleged that London would ‘criminally’ go to war for ‘a scrap of paper’, i.e., the 1836 treaty establishing the Belgian state as a neutral country.

We’re so far gone that going to war over infractions of neutrality appears an artefact of a long bygone era.

Lest anyone be in doubt about the implications here: apart from the Soviet Union and the USA, both Britain and France are also signatories to the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 that (re)established ‘sovereignty’ that forbid, among other clauses, Austrian unification with Germany.

Given the state of EU-led integration, we are thus left to ponder which domino of the post-1945 era will fall next.

Gas Follies Breed 'A New Alliance' (Robert Habeck) between Austria, Czechia, and Germany--to Create a New Model for Europe