Swiss Neutrality Makes No Sense Anymore

Switzerland’s refusal to take sides in Ukraine only benefits Russia.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

A Swiss soldier stands at attention in front of a Swiss flag before the arrival of German President Christian Wulff on September 8, 2010 in Bern, Switzerland.

March 24, 2023, 6:58 AM

Switzerland has a history of trading with Nazis, serving as a tax haven for the world’s corrupt officials, and claiming the moral high ground in global politics. That’s because of its tradition of neutrality, which dates back to the 1500s and was codified in The Hague Convention of 1907. Its preferred involvement in international conflicts has been to offer luxury hotels amid lofty mountains as venues for holding peace talks.

But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Switzerland’s continued insistence on not getting involved in a war that threatens all of Europe, has irritated Western countries that had previously accepted its claims of neutrality. There is growing criticism in Western capitals at just how easy Bern has had it all these years.

At the start of the war last year, Switzerland agreed to impose sanctions on Russia, which included freezing assets of Russian oligarchs, denying airspace to Russian planes, and imposing a travel ban on some men in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s entourage. It was hailed as a watershed moment in Swiss foreign policy, but Western diplomats say Bern should have done much more.

Scott Miller, the U.S. ambassador to Bern, said that Switzerland could easily increase its freezing of assets belonging to Russian oligarchs from $8 billion up to $109 billion. He urged the Swiss to rethink their neutrality and contended it is not a “static construct.” Switzerland can’t call itself neutral and allow either side to exploit that position, added Miller, suggesting Russia was taking advantage of its stance.

Yet despite pressure from the West, Bern is not reconsidering its neutral status nor introducing any substantial changes to it. The only legal change it has considered is an amendment to existing law that would allow third countries to re-export Swiss arms and ammunition.

Until now, Germany, Spain, and Denmark—which wish to send Swiss-made weapons to buttress Ukraine’s defenses—have been prevented by the Swiss Federal Act on War Material, which bars re-exporting to a country in an armed conflict without the Swiss government’s approval. In January, Michael Flügger, German ambassador to Switzerland, said Bern was effectively hindering other European nations from helping Ukraine.

He described Switzerland’s position as “incomprehensible.” Germany’s Defense Ministry has appealed to Switzerland asking for more than 12,000 35 mm rounds of Swiss-made ammunition for Gepard air defense tanks that Ukraine needs to protect its cities from Russian drone attacks. A German company has since started to manufacture the ammunition itself, but German diplomats are making sure to voice their frustrations.

Earlier this month, the Swiss parliament discussed an initial proposal that would have allowed re-export to Ukraine if the suppliers were like-minded nations, but it was rejected by a majority. The vote was telling of just how deeply entrenched Switzerland’s neutrality is—even if it comes at the expense of an embattled nation fighting for its independence.

“Switzerland will not reconsider neutrality, not fundamentally, because it doesn’t depend on the kind of conflict, not if someone is on the right or the wrong side,” said Laurent Goetschel, the director of the Swiss Peace research institute and a professor of political science at the University of Basel. Switzerland’s various political parties have disparate reasons to protect the neutral status, he told Foreign Policy over the phone. “The populists in Switzerland want to stick to an orthodox interpretation of neutrality because it better fits the country’s interest,” he added. “Many of those on the left and among the greens are pacifists.”

But for those on the right, the support for neutrality may be masking an active affinity for Putin. In his recent speech commemorating the first anniversary of Ukraine’s invasion, Putin accused the West of destroying the institution of family, as well as “cultural and national identity,” by “forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages” and exploring the idea of a gender-neutral god. The comments were tailor-made to lure far-right politicians across Europe who are against progressive values.

Among those are leaders of the populist Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the largest in the Swiss parliament, which calls for a strict interpretation of Swiss neutrality in the Ukraine war and has been instrumental in blocking the supply of Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine. “There’s not a little bit of neutrality,” said Yves Nidegger, a member of the SVP who sits on the Foreign Policy Commission of Switzerland. On social issues, he seems to be in sync with the Russian president. In one recent message on Facebook, he posted a pardoy of a Pink Floyd song, declaring, “We don’t need ‘woke’ education.”

Roger Köppel, another member of the SVP and editor in chief of the hard-right political weekly Weltwoche, is described in the local media as a Putin sympathizer and a friend of Russia. He believes the Russian president is vilified because he “stands for manhood” and prophesied that Putin might be the shock the West needs to come back to its senses.

Such comments reflect how the SVP might see an ally in Putin when it comes to propagating its social values. Goetschel said some leaders on the far right identify with Putin “because he has a similar stance on LGBTQ and woke culture.” Moreover, like other populist parties in Europe, the SVP believes that Russia is serving as a counterweight to Washington

In collaboration with advocacy group Pro Schweiz, the SVP has launched an initiative to safeguard Swiss neutrality, which seeks a referendum to inscribe a stringent definition of neutrality in the Swiss constitution. If it is passed, it would ban Switzerland from joining a defense alliance like NATO unless the country was directly attacked. If it collects 50,000 signatures, it must be put to a vote, said Fabian Molina, a Swiss politician with the left-leaning Social Democratic Party. “The SVP wants to defend Swiss neutrality to defend (Switzerland’s) economic foreign policy. The Swiss became very rich in the last hundred years by not having to take a stand on anything but being an offshore platform for sometimes questionable businesses. We survived two world wars and benefited from trading with Nazis,” he added.

While Molina said that his party is supportive of re-exporting Swiss weapons, Alain Berset, Switzerland’s president who hails from the same political group, has said it isn’t possible in the current legal framework. He warned against “war frenzy” and said Swiss weapons should not be used in a war. “Pacifism has a bad reputation right now, but warfare is not part of the Swiss DNA,” he said in an interview.

The Kremlin, however, has been the beneficiary of pacifist ideology in Europe. Although Berset retracted his war frenzy comment, the Russian ambassador to Switzerland was quick to latch onto it and seized the chance to once again call the United States a “hegemon” that is refusing to accept a multipolar world. Anti-Americanism and whataboutism are popular among both the populists and pacifists in Europe, and people still mistrust U.S. intentions because it invaded Iraq. But Russia’s war in Ukraine is not linked to Iraq and has been overwhelmingly condemned at the United Nations.

At least four or five other legal proposals are pending, including a so-called Lex Ukraine, which would allow a one-time transfer of material to Kyiv. One motion that is gaining traction among some Swiss politicians says the Swiss government could revoke the re-export clause if weapons are being sent to a conflict condemned by two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly for violating international law.

A government official told FP on the condition of anonymity that, legally, it should be possible to “uphold neutrality and yet let third countries supply Swiss weapons.” At least two observers of the Swiss arms industry, a government official and a military expert from a European country based in Switzerland, told FP that when it came to wars in poorer nations, Switzerland has simply turned a blind eye to the re-export of its weapons, but now, since Russia is involved, the debate is more politicized. Swiss weapons have ended up in Afghanistan, and Swiss Sig Sauer 551 assault rifles are used by Saudi forces in Yemen, including against civilians. Furthermore, according to one research report, Swiss components were also found in some of Russia’s most modern military systems.

Switzerland’s glaring double standards are raising the question of whether the neutrality doctrine is tenable at all anymore. Benno Zogg, a former senior researcher with the Zurich-based think tank Center for Security Studies and now head of strategy and international affairs at the Swiss Ministry of Defense and earlier, wrote a research paper on Swiss neutrality and said some believe neutrality is ingrained in Swiss identity, but he also represented the other argument. “In contrast, the core of neutrality—essentially abstention in interstate war—has lost much of its meaning in the 21st-century state system,” he wrote, “as non-state actors and threats have become more prevalent, and states are increasingly interdependent.”