Armed neutrality is a peace offering

There is a growing tendency in Switzerland to relativise neutrality by using woolly adjectives and by moving closer to defence alliances. This shows fickleness and a lack of historical awareness.

Can one be for both freedom and neutrality? The answer is yes. Neutrality is an option for cosmopolitan people and states that makes sense both economically and in terms of security policy. Those who offer something on open markets do not expect ideological, political or religious conformity and consciously refrain from discrimination that has nothing to do with the transaction. Neutrality is neither selfish nor cowardly, it has a strategic component in addition to the economic one, which promotes world peace and helps to avoid the escalation of conflicts.
  Unfortunately, there is a widespread misconception in Switzerland – especially in politics – that neutrality is “yesterday’s news”, that it is merely a nostalgic concern of national conservative patriots. Hardly anyone explicitly calls for its abolition, but it is only a small step from relativisation by adjectives to de facto abolition.

Threats from joining alliances

Membership in a defence alliance may well act as a deterrent to potential aggressors, but at the global level it gives the respective alliance’s supremacy an increase in power. This can provoke other alliances with different power-political goals to attack. While common enemies make friends, common friends can also make enemies.
  An independent country should not allow itself to be defended at the expense of others, even though this would relieve the budget considerably. What a country saves at the expense of allies, it pays for with dependence. Self-defence does not guarantee total security, but such security is not to be had in alliances either. In every alliance there is a superpower that sets its own priorities in the event of a crisis or war.
  The attractiveness of global networking in combination with non-alignment or neutrality under international law has tended to increase in recent years and decades – especially for smaller and medium-sized states. However, this basic attitude is only credible if it is linked to the willingness to defend oneself militarily in the event of an attack. Otherwise, it really does become a “bush behind which the scaredy-cats hide”, as the writer Lukas Bärfuss recently put it. As a neutral, one must not offer a potential aggressor the “ideal case” of an intact country with a functioning infrastructure for conquest without a fight.

Illusion of eternal peace

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many politicians, diplomats and military officers in Europe and also in Switzerland tended towards a view of the world without history or a view that suppressed history. For them, there was an irreversible development trend towards an “eternal peace” in Europe and a linear progression of an integration process. Other scenarios were no longer even considered. The war in Ukraine has frighteningly exposed this idea as an illusion.
  Periods of relative peace have been repeatedly interrupted by unexpected irrational outbreaks of violence, and in view of the rampant rush for change and adjustment, it is important to include this in the long-term foreign and security policy considerations of our country. In terms of time horizon, the simple men of Rütli were more courageous and far-sighted when they concluded their covenant “in perpetuity”. And the diplomats who stipulated “perpetual neutrality” at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 were also aware that the strategic world situation can change so much within a single generation that it is wise not to leave the foundations of foreign and security policy at the mercy of the fluctuating assessments of the situation and enemy images of day-to-day politics.
  Neutrality is anything but obsolete worldwide. It is in the interest of the permanently neutral to free its maxim (and also its non-membership in international organisations such as the EU and NATO) from the smell of crude egoism at the expense of the so-called community of states and to make others aware that neutrality could also be of benefit to them. The effectiveness of the neutrality maxim depends on its credibility, and credibility can only be expected “from outside” if one appears reliable and consistent and communicates one’s concern with good arguments.
  There are two adjectives that do not relativise the principle but accentuate it: “armed” and “everlasting”. They underline the function and show to the outside world that neutrality in general is not “yesterday’s news”, but has a global future and promotes peace, not only for Switzerland. Anyone who credibly renounces the ability to attack, but at the same time ensures the defence of their own territory with their own means (and reserved, but free decisions of cooperation), makes a more promising contribution to world peace than anyone who joins (and at the same time submits to) a world power that fights against other emerging world powers.

Neutrality and foreign policy

After the Second World War, the principle of neutrality was supplemented by the principle of solidarity. Here, too, the question arises: can one be both neutral and in solidarity? And here, too, the answer is: yes, if it is a matter of solidarity with the victims, which always exist on both sides in wars. This is also the basic idea of the International Red Cross, which places itself at the service of the victims of all belligerents without taking sides.
  The concern to place neutrality in a larger context with other foreign policy objectives is the subject of reports by the Federal Council on foreign and security policy. In this context, the twin formula of “neutrality and solidarity” has been supplemented by two further objectives, both of which underline the central importance of neutrality: availability and universality. Availability stands for the permanent offer of mediation services, universality for a fundamental globally oriented openness.

Reliable maxims instead of relativisation

The four maxims were drawn up as early as the 1950s by a commission with the participation of the international law expert Rudolf L. Bindschedler. Today, only the tension between neutrality and solidarity is discussed in the foreign policy debate. However, the goal quadrangle that was gradually worked out is still meaningful and increasingly topical, and it can convey reliability in times of insecurity, both internally and externally.
  The three complementary maxims of solidarity, availability and universality do not relativise neutrality, they describe functions that neutrality, contrary to all prophecies of doom, can and does fulfil if it is handled properly. It is not “although we are neutral” but “because we are neutral” that we can target the other three goals. Neutrality is not an antithesis, but a prerequisite for humanitarian (not political!) solidarity.
  Neutrality is also a prerequisite of availability for intermediary services and universality in the sense of worldwide openness and global free trade. The importance of the principle of universality is increasing. It is compatible with membership in the UN, but not with association with the EU.
  The popular initiative “Safeguarding Swiss Neutrality” (Neutralitätsinitiative) launched in November, which wants to anchor perpetual and armed neutrality in the constitution, enables a fundamental debate on neutrality and its relationship to the other maxims. It restricts itself to the two adjectives mentioned and attempts to put a stop to all softening and relativisation as well as a gradual abandonment at the constitutional level. However, it cannot influence the tension between international law and national law. It is unlikely that there will be organised opposition to the idea of abandoning neutrality. What cannot be ruled out, however, is an attempt to push the initiators into a national-conservative corner in terms of party politics and at the same time to relativise the principle of neutrality by using vague adjectives. A rejection would probably be perceived worldwide as Switzerland’s farewell to neutrality. Because “neutral” is first and foremost what is perceived as such by third parties, and not what one declares oneself to be.  •

Source: https://www.robert-nef.ch/2022/12/01/die-bewaffnete-neutralitaet-ist-ein-friedensangebot/;
first published in Schweizer Monat December 2022/Janaury 2023;
reprinted with kind permission of the author

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Robert Nef is a publicist and author, a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society and the Friedrich August von Hayek Society. Nef was editor and co-editor of the Schweizer Monatshefte from 1991 to 2008. He lives as a freelance journalist in St. Gallen.