I am writing these lines in the capital of a country where I worked as an Eastern Europe correspondent for several years while the Berlin Wall fell, but NATO had not yet been expanded to include the Warsaw Pact countries.
Vienna has changed a lot since then, and I’m not just talking about the huge presence of tourists from former communist bloc countries in this excellent city of tourists and music.
Something much less perceptible has changed, and it is the gradual weakening of the “permanent neutrality” to which this country, an accomplice rather than a victim of Hitler’s Germany, committed itself to the Allies in 1955 and in turn ruled. to get rid of the invading armies.
“Permanent neutrality” meant that the new Republic would never enter into military alliances and would seek to maintain friendly relations with all countries.
This was the key to the success of a very poor country as a result of the war, which could present itself as a place for inter-bloc meetings and negotiations.
The meeting between US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961 would give definite support to his international recognition.
As the famous Austrian journalist Hugo Portisch wrote in the “Kurier” newspaper published in Vienna at that time, the peaceful coexistence of East and West was possible as long as each respected the other’s sphere of influence.
In the 1970s, against the opposition of the powerful pro-Atlantic Austrian People’s Party, Vienna became the third UN headquarters with the construction of the so-called “Uno-City” and the International Conference Centre.
The then Federal Chancellor of Austria (1970-1983), Social Democrat Bruno Kreisky, went so far as to say that the establishment of various international organizations in the capital was more important for the country than the rearmament of the army.
However, the active neutrality, which had given such important fruits in the Middle East conflict, began to break down gradually and the balances required by this became increasingly difficult.
Austria’s entry into the European Union and the country’s subsequent participation in certain Atlantic Alliance programs began to erode its initial commitment to Moscow.
And this process was especially accelerated by the war in Ukraine: Austria does not seem as timid, for example, as neutral Switzerland, which refuses to send artillery to the occupied country.
Earlier, in 1999, during the war in Yugoslavia, NATO airspace used Austrian airspace to attack Serbia without permission from Vienna, but nothing happened.
But also in the war between Iraq and Iran (1980-1988), and in flagrant violation of neutrality, Austria sold cannons produced by the Voest Alpine company to both sides.
And as condemned by the Austrian journalist Erwin Riess in the German magazine Konkret, after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Austria supplied this country with North American exploits through Latvia.
Also, when Croatia declared its independence in 1990 without recognizing the rights of the Serb minority, Austria, writes Riess, despite the fact that everyone knew that the exclusion of the Serbs would lead to war.
Although the majority of Austrians continue to defend their country’s neutrality if the polls are to be believed, experts at the Vienna Defense Academy believe that such neutrality literally no longer exists and will become more pronounced. The EU and NATO are increasingly confused.