The slow decline of Swiss diplomacy

Unable to reach a consensus, Switzerland had to abandon the organisation of the humanitarian summit on Palestine (see article "The Federal Council’s failure to fulfil its obligations as depositary state of the Geneva Conventions and as a member of the United Nations"). When will it realise that international Geneva and the Swiss mediation venue cannot be saved by complacently jumping around and shouting “Multilateralism! Multilateralism!” and pulling a few million out of your pocket to bail out careless NGOs?
  The furore caused in Europe by the dismantling of USAID, the sudden resumption of the Russian-American dialogue and the statements made by Vice President J. D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference are only symptoms of deeper ills and a development in the international system that no one here wants to see. As long as we do not decide to face the facts and correct our mistakes, all the patching up we can do to try to repair a system that is rotten to the core will be useless.
  As in Mikado, Bern winks but doesn’t move. Ms Keller-Sutter pretended to appreciate J. D. Vance’s speech, but immediately took that back. Then she repeated the old chestnut about Ukraine and Europe, moving swiftly on to talk about the conservative  revolution, the rise of the global South and the new world order that is abandoning international law and returning to the confrontation of empires. Meanwhile, our supposed foreign minister remains silent.
  This keeps the focus on the past, namely the UN, international organisations and traditional NGOs. Since Kofi Annan opened up the United Nations to civil society at the end of the 1990s, NGOs have proliferated. They have stuffed themselves with public subsidies and private donations. Many of them have sold their souls, either to the governments that sponsored them, as evidenced by the abstruse programs that USAID ended up funding (queer operas in Colombia and transgender ballet in Bangladesh, while people starve a few hundred meters away), or to private “philanthropists” like Bill Gates, whose money funds vaccination campaigns for the benefit of the companies whose shareholders they are.
  The ICRC also experienced this misfortune two years ago, after the ICRC’s budget had doubled within a few years. They looked for new sponsors, the money came in, expenses rose, the budget exploded, so that fundraising ended up taking precedence over other tasks and helping victims was forgotten. Until there is a crash, when major donors withdraw.

Neutrality – a trump
card of captivating modernity

And people prefer to ignore true modernity, namely neutrality, which has been the strength and originality of our country on the international stage. Neutrality is not something old-fashioned that should be discarded and that some believe should be denigrated. It is a trump card of captivating modernity that countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which strictly do not align themselves with the major powers, have adopted to their greatest advantage. For three years, they have been pushing from all sides because they did not make the mistake of organising a summit for peace in Ukraine without Russia or arbitrarily imposing sanctions on half the planet. After such one-sided partisanship, how can anyone be outraged when Donald Trump organises peace talks with Russia without Europe?

Damage due to
de-facto abandonment of neutrality

It goes unnoticed, but it was the Federal Council itself that took the initiative and asked NATO to open a representation in the Maison de la Paix in Geneva. In return, it demanded that Switzerland not ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, even though it had signed it! How can we still believe in our pacifism and neutrality after such a breach of faith?
  Today, both Bern and Geneva refuse to see the damage caused by the de facto abandonment of neutrality in February 2022 through the imposition of unilateral sanctions and the rapprochement with NATO, the belligerent and criminal organisation that illegally bombed Serbia in 1999 and massacred innocent civilians.
  They continue to deny it. But you only have to travel anywhere in the world, outside the West of course, to Beijing, Brasilia, Africa or Jakarta, to realise that the damage is immense and has severely damaged both our diplomatic reputation and the credibility of our banks, which have launched veritable witch hunts for fear of sanctions from the United States.
  Let us also remember that neutrality is a demanding discipline that applies to both Ukraine and Palestine. The fact that Switzerland, which is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions and international law, pretends to apply them in Ukraine but tramples on them in Palestine by tolerating the massacre of tens of thousands of women and children in Gaza and sanctioning UNWRA has not gone unnoticed outside the West.

The world has changed …

The third problem has to do with the development of the international order, with the erosion of the United Nations system and the collective security that Roosevelt wanted in 1945 and which was embodied by the Security Council with its five permanent members, two of which, France and Great Britain, have lost their legitimacy. The emergence of the BRICS states and the Global South, the rise of China and soon India, the emphasis on multipolarity by the entire non-Western world are now inevitable. In Munich, no one paid attention to the speeches of the Indian and Chinese ministers, even though they were of crucial importance. It is an irreversible phenomenon, with or without Trump, who can do nothing about it. China, Russia, India, Indonesia and Brazil, to name just the largest, have sat down at the table of world politics and will not leave it.
  The focus of the global economy has also shifted in their favour. Politics is following suit. You can mourn them. You can insult them, call them fascists, autocrats, communists. But you will have to come to terms with it.

… and Switzerland
should get back to basics

The Americans do it their own way, brutally and egocentrically. But we have other weapons. It’s time for Switzerland to get its bearings, get back to basics and act proactively with the new, emerging global forces. All is not lost yet. •

(Translation Current Concerns)

* Guy Mettan is a journalist and member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Geneva, where he presided in 2010. He worked for “Journal de Genève”, Le Temps stratégique, Bilan, “Le Nouveau Quotidien”, and later as director and editor-in-chief of “Tribune de Genève”. In 1996, he founded the Swiss Press Club, of which he was president and later director from 1998 to 2019.