Giving Ukraine heavy weapons does not mean NATO is at war with Russia | The Economist - 0 views
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The charter recognises that states have a right to self-defence, and that other countries can join in “collective self-defence” to help them. States are allowed to give military support to victims of aggression, or to impose sanctions on the aggressor, without affecting their own neutral status.
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this law of neutrality was designed for a world where war was an accepted tool of statecraft. That changed with the adoption of the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1928, which made it illegal to attack another country unprovoked—a principle later enshrined in the UN’s charter.
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International law, as it developed in Europe beginning in the 17th century, required countries that wanted to stay out of others’ wars to observe strict neutrality. That meant they had to trade equally with both sides of a conflict, as Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, professors at Yale Law School, explained in a recent article. Supplying arms to one side only, or favouring its trade, could make their ships fair game for attack by the other.
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