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Neutral Is Not Impartial: The Confusing Legacy of Traditional Peace Operations Thinking

Department of War Studies, King's College London, donmail{at}aol.com

For over forty years, impartiality (seen as synonymous with neutrality) was one of the three cardinal principles of traditional peacekeeping. But when the complex operational environments of the 1990s caused those concepts to be readdressed, impartiality was largely ignored. Those who deny the existence of a "Grey Area" between enforcement and traditional peacekeeping use traditional impartiality as a bulwark of their arguments. But a proper examination of the concept shows that neutrality and impartiality are not synonymous; that traditional impartiality is in reality neutrality; and that the naysayers have been defending the wrong concept. Only an understanding of the fundamental differences between the two principles, and a refusal to mix them in the field, can provide safe conceptual guidance for "Grey Area" operations.

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