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The law of neutrality has traditionally required neutral States to observe a strictimpartiality between parties to a conflict, regardless of which State was viewed as the aggressorin the armed conflict. 36 However, after treaties outlawed war as a matter of national policy, itwas argued that neutral States could discriminate in favor of States that were victims of wars ofaggression. 37 Thus, before its entry into World War II, the United States adopted a position of“qualified neutrality” in which neutral States had the right to support belligerent States that hadbeen the victim of flagrant and illegal wars of aggression. 38 This position was controversial. 3915.2.3 The Law of Neutrality Under the Charter of the United Nations. The Charter ofthe United Nations may, in certain respects, be understood to be consistent with, and, in otherrespects, to modify, rules reflected in the law of neutrality.36 Refer to § 15.3.2 (Neutral Duties -- Abstention From Participation in Hostilities and Impartial Conduct TowardContending Parties).37 LAUTERPACHT, II OPPENHEIM’S INTERNATIONAL LAW 221 (§61) (“Similarly, it is open to neutral States as a matterof legal right to give effect to their moral obligation to discriminate against the aggressor and to deny him, in theirdiscretion, the right to exact from neutrals a full measure of impartiality. In some cases neutral States may, havingregard to their own safety and the desire not to be involved in the war, continue to accord impartial treatment to theaggressor. But they need not do so wherever they feel in the position actively to assert the principle, as did theUnited States and other States before entering the Second World War, that the historic foundation of neutrality as anattitude of absolute impartiality has disappeared with the renunciation and the abolition of war as an instrument ofnational policy. With regard to States bound by the obligations of the Charter of the United Nations that legalfaculty and that moral obligation assume the clear complexion of a legal duty.”).38 Address of Robert H. Jackson, Attorney General of the United States, Inter-American Bar Association, Havana,Cuba, March 27, 1941, 35 AJIL 348, 353-54 (1941) (“Present aggressive wars are civil wars against theinternational community. Accordingly, as responsible members of that community, we can treat victims ofaggression in the same way we treat legitimate governments when there is civil strife and a state of insurgency—thatis to say, we are permitted to give to defending governments all the aid we choose. In the light of the flagrancy ofcurrent aggressions, which are apparent on their face, and which all right thinking people recognize for what theyare, the United States and other states are entitled to assert a right of discriminatory action by reason of the fact that,since 1928 so far as it is concerned, the place of war and with it the place of neutrality in the international legalsystem have no longer been the same as they were prior to that date.”).39 See, e.g., Edwin Borchard, War, Neutrality and Non-Belligerency, 35 AJIL 618 (1941) (“At Havana on March 27,1941, Attorney General Jackson delivered an address designed to prove that as a matter of law the United States wasnow obliged to render to England (and presumably others) all aid ‘short of war,’ while ‘at the same time it is thedeclared determination of the government to avoid entry into the war as a belligerent.’ Apparently convinced thatUnited States military aid to one belligerent alone cannot be justified by the traditional international law, theAttorney General feels obliged first to explode as obsolete the international law conceptions of war and neutrality ofthe past two centuries, culminating in The Hague Conventions, and to maintain that a new international law has nowbeen revealed in the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Kellogg Pact, the Budapest ‘Articles of Interpretation’of 1934, and the Argentine Anti-War Treaty of 1933, all of which are alleged to make discrimination the new way oflife for neutrals. The legislation of Congress requiring impartiality is not accorded even honorable mention. The‘new international law’ is thus found in the vague and illusory monuments to the myth called ‘collective security,’which crumbled under the impact of the first European crisis. It should be no surprise to the Attorney General thatmany international lawyers do not share his views on international law or how international law is created, or followhis unique construction of documents.”).936

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