Overview: Neutrality in international relations is often assumed to be a passive Western concept. However, the underlying logic of third-parties distancing themselves from the conflicts of others is neither Western in origin nor passive statecraft. From Kautilya’s political treatises in ancient India to the nonalignment movement’s deliberate rejection of Cold War bloc politics, non-Western traditions have long grappled with the same fundamental predicaments: how to remain outside the conflicts of others without surrendering political agency.
This talk disentangles the historically Western layers of neutrality—its legal codification and European institutional form—from the universal social dynamic that underpins all neutral-belligerent relationships, arguing that nonalignment represents not a deviation but its most consequential global expression with very important implications for the multipolar future.
Panelists:
Speaker:
Dr Pascal Lottaz is an Adjunct Researcher at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study (Tokyo)and an adjunct professor for European Politics at Temple University Japan Campus. He received his PhD from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Japan. He is leading the research network NeutralityStudies.com. His other recent book publications include Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War (Routledge, 2022), Permanent Neutrality: A Model for Peace, Security, and Justice (Lexington Books, 2020), and Notions of Neutralities (Lexington Books, 2019). He also wrote an article on “Neutrality Studies” for Oxford Encyclopedia and “The Politics and Diplomacy of Neutrality” for Oxford Bibliography.
Discussant: Dr. Sharifah Munirah Alatas, Independent Scholar, Author & Researcher. Dr. Munirah Alatas was a former Deputy Director & Principal Research Fellow at the Allianz Centre for Governance (ACG), Universiti Malaya. She received her doctorate in History from Columbia University, New York City in 1997. Her main area of research lies in Geopolitics, Decoloniality, Post-colonialism, Non-Western IR Theory, Autonomous Social Science, and Global IR. Dr. Alatas is also a former lecturer at the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM) and a former Visiting Professor at International Islamic University of Indonesia (UIII, Deepok).
- 25th May 2026 (Monday)
- 2.00 PM – 4.30PM (KL Time)
- Zoom Meeting
We look forward to seeing you there!
