Do Syrians dare to remain permanently neutral?

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On May 15, 1955, in the marble hall of Vienna's Belvedere Palace, Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold Figel declared, "Austria is free!" Let these two words be engraved in the country's national memory, then the text of the "State Treaty" was raised from the palace balcony in front of the crowds.

For ten years, Austria remained divided between four occupation zones, and its capital, Vienna, was divided into four sectors, patrolled in jeeps and crowded with soldiers: American, British, French, and Soviet. This is because none of the occupiers wanted to leave Austria to their bitter opponents. A unilateral withdrawal is a gift to the competitor, but remaining is an exhaustion with no horizon. This is, almost literally, the equation of Syria today.

This is because Syria, as I have repeatedly written, is no longer just a collapsing state, nor is it a state left to its own devices to recover. Rather, it is left preserved in a refrigerator until the region’s conflicts are resolved: the external heirs keep it alive because her death confuses their calculations, but they keep it weak because its recovery threatens to restore what they took from its body.

Ankara wants security depth in the north, Tel Aviv in the south without power, and the capitals of the Gulf as bright, stable and prosperous far from Tehran. Moscow finds in it a cheap foothold on the Mediterranean, and Washington finds in it a regional platform to use against its opponents without expending its soldiers and capabilities. As for Tehran, it will not disappear, but rather waits at the door.

Every external heir has a client at home who finances him: a movement, a network, a faction, or a Syrian component that fears for its existence. The result is that the medicine offered by the intervening forces is nothing but the same type of disease. Is there a way out other than death or guardianship?

History suggests a third answer that is rarely presented in the Syrian debate: complete and permanent neutrality.

What is required is not the neutrality of the weak, which is imposed by external agreements, but rather the neutrality of the state that consciously decides by its people to leave the board on which others are playing, to declare that it is not a pawn in anyone’s game.

In February 1934, the Social Democrats and Christian Conservatives fought a bloody civil war in the streets of Vienna. However, after many of them were released from Nazi prisons, they quickly announced their comprehensive social contract with the “spirit of the camp road” document, in which they declared a broad national coalition in which they shared the state instead of fighting over it!

Thus, reconciliation at home preceded neutrality abroad. If it were not for it, every occupier in Vienna would have found a party or group to summon.

Austria did not gain its independence because the occupiers were indifferent to its condition. Khrushchev did not aspire to a communist Austria as much as he feared an Atlantic Austria that would connect West Germany with Italy and cut off the flank of the Eastern Bloc. The West did not aspire to anything more than the withdrawal of the Red Army from the heart of Europe.

Neutrality, here, was an Austrian national decision that established the balance of regional power: each party lost the Austrian card, but won with the certainty that its opponent would not win it.

In the "Moscow Memorandum" - April 1955, the Austrian delegation pledged Austria's neutrality, but it was quickly approved by Parliament in October, in parallel with an inclusive national social contract.

Neutrality was not imposed on the Austrians, but they declared it among themselves first and of their own free will, and imposed it on the world. This will become their national holiday.

Then, Austria quickly began to reap the benefits of its neutrality: Vienna hosted the International Atomic Energy Agency and OPEC, then a third headquarters for the United Nations after New York and Geneva, and it turned, during the reign of Bruno Kreisky, into a mediator with both East and West knocking on its doors.

Neutrality was not isolation, but rather diplomatic and economic capital to be invested. This is precisely what Syria, which is stifled by a lack of trust, needs: for its geographical location, which brought it armies, to become a resource that brings investment.

Switzerland's history was no different! Switzerland was an arena for other wars. In 1799, the armies of France, Austria, and Russia fought on its soil, and Russian General Suvorov crossed its rugged Alpine passes to chase the French armies. In the end, the European powers - Paris 1815 - recognized their permanent neutrality. Neutral Switzerland is cheaper for everyone than dependent Switzerland that is open to conflict.

The deeper Swiss lesson is the internal one: a country with four languages ​​and two religions, which fought a brutal civil war in 1848, but one year later produced a federal constitution that made diversity a national contract, not a pretext.

But history reminds us that neutrality that is not supported by national consensus and civil peace quickly collapses, as in Laos and Lebanon. In fact, Hezbollah did not ask anyone for permission to go to Syria, so that neutrality became an excuse, premise, and cover for future wars.

So that neutrality is not a piece of paper!