Austria's Neutrality Today and its Impact on the Nation's Security

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 1,7, University of Lisbon, language: English, abstract: In my paper, I want to investigate to which extent Austrian neutrality is still existing. Is it yet more than a romantic picture of our home country? How has this concept been affected by the membership in various International Organizations, especially the EU? And how does a neutral state cope with its security in a globalized world? My hypotheses are that in the course of time, Austria has quietly given up neutrality in favor of the benefits of being part of the international community. Security Policies are coordinated and in a globalized world, that is continuously moving closer together, cannot work independently. Therefore Austria has to participate and cannot hide behind it's neutrality.