Letters to the Editor

Our trip to Russia

Thanks to our friends in Caucasia, we as retired persons could visit Russia for two weeks in September 2024. The tour group led us from Danzig to Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Yaroslavl, Susdal and ended with the company “Schweizer Milch” (Swiss Milk) in the Kaluga area. The experiences and knowledge we gained were amazing and unforgettable. The many positive impressions are unfortunately not able to be reported in a letter to the Editor due to lack of space. It was however noticeable how polite and helpful the residents were with us, the non-native western foreigners. Most of what we hear about Russia and its people is not true or only a half-truth. If you want to get a realistic impression, you should go there yourself.

Hedi and Hans Jordi,
Braunau (TG), Switzerland

On the rejection of the neutrality initiative by the Federal Council

In its recently communicated rejection of the neutrality initiative, the Federal Council reduces neutrality to a doctrine of “flexible adjustments” to external power constellations. Causes of war and conflict arise from the “volatile environment to which one must adapt according to the situation”. The Federal Council is referring to the abandonment of neutrality on a case-by-case basis. Instead of resolving conflicts, it is better to come to terms with them and join a party to the conflict if the neutral position is “no longer understood”. This means giving in to pressure from a warring party and taking sides in favour of the party that is supposedly in the right.
  Parties to the conflict who “create facts” have no interest in negotiating the causes of the conflict and the aims of the war. They shy away from and fight against enlightening reason and a neutral position. The better they succeed in summarising the interests of their opponents using “soft skills”, the less alternative there is to the stated reason for war and who is in the right.
  The achievement of neutrality, on the other hand, is to position oneself clearly outside the “volatile” armed conflicts and – in the tradition of enlightened thinking – to resolve conflicts not through war but through diplomacy and negotiation. The object of negotiation is to clarify the causes of the conflict and the course of the conflict.
  The neutral position is nothing other than a basic attitude – according to the maxim of the European Enlightenment – that all actors should behave in the same way as is expected of others.
  In this area of tension, unrestricted neutrality is the basis and precondition on the road to peace.

Hans Bieri,
member of the initiative committee