Will strict neutrality serve Switzerland?

Dear States Councillors,

Dear Professors,

Ladies and gentlemen,

My name is Constanze Stelzenmüller, and I direct the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, a think tank founded in Washington in 1916; I also have the honor of holding the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany. But as I don’t want to inflict my high school French on you, I will continue to speak in German. You are welcome, of course, to ask questions in French after my remarks.

I am very honored that you have invited me here today to testify on the subject of the neutrality initiative. I am only too aware—not least because I have relatives in Zurich and Geneva—that a German should exercise extreme caution about giving advice to the Swiss on matters pertaining to Switzerland. But given the subject matter expertise of the four Swiss colleagues on this panel, I assume that you mainly want to hear from me about the general geostrategic situation, and about the United States in particular.

In the 10 minutes allotted to me, I will do this in the form of succinct theses on four issues: security policy, geo-economics, democratic resilience, and finally, the consequences for Europe and Switzerland. I would be happy to engage more in-depth in the discussion period.

1. Security policy

The European dream of a global market economy and democratic entropy, or at least multipolarity in a stable equilibrium, has not materialized. Instead, what we see is: systemic competition and bloc formation, erosion of the boundaries between war and peace, the dismantling of the rules-based world order and its associated norms and institutions, and the risk that might-makes-right will increasingly prevail worldwide.

The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a dramatic and painful reminder of this new reality for almost three years: hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, millions of refugees, wanton destruction, property damage running into the billions—and a brutal aggressor who will only negotiate at the price of the complete annihilation of Ukrainian sovereignty.

The same aggressor is waging an increasingly ruthless hybrid war in Europe in order to drive the Europeans apart and paralyze them politically. Vladimir Putin is not only targeting Ukraine but attempting to regain his old sphere of influence in Eastern Europe—and possibly beyond. China’s global dominance agenda has long focused on strategic purchases of physical and digital infrastructure in Europe. There is hardly a hub or node of the European economy without a Chinese component.

We know that the U.S. president’s thinking on security policy is rooted in the 19th-century concept of a Great Game for dominance among the major powers. With a keen sense of the devastation that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused in the American consciousness, he wants to end the war in Ukraine and thus end the United States’ costly support as soon as possible. He is not (currently) threatening to leave NATO, but he is calling for European defense spending of 5 percent.

But now a whole new Great Game is suddenly being opened up in the American hemisphere and in the Arctic: Canada, Panama, and Greenland, the president insists, should join the United States. It has been said that this is just an intimidation tactic to open the way to negotiations; Donald Trump should be taken seriously, but not literally. I’m less sure. Even if this were just the start of a new era of commercial colonialism, it already undercuts the European security order and the principle of the inviolability of borders—and it delegitimizes the West’s outrage at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

2. Geo-economics

This new era of systemic competition in a context of mutating but nonetheless constantly deepening global interdependence is creating new forms of economic warfare. We are participants in this: Europe, together with the United States, has imposed sanctions of historic proportions against Russia and even frozen Russia’s central bank reserves.

Nonetheless, we have to acknowledge that the West is on the defensive here, especially against China; our European economies in particular are finding it extremely difficult to counter this. (Germany is a cautionary example.)

The increasing concentration of power over cyberspace, digital infrastructure, global communications platforms (including in outer space), and digital currencies—it is absolutely correct to describe this as oligarchization, as former U.S. President Biden did in his valedictory speech—represents a completely new threat to national and supranational institutions of economic governance. Here, too, a rapid erosion of boundaries is taking place.

The 47th U.S. president was always known to be a staunch trade protectionist. But Trump is now announcing that he will use economic coercion on a large scale: not only against rivals but also against allies like us Europeans. He seems convinced that he can use economic coercion—or the mere threat of it—to fully reshape bilateral trade relations or to achieve political outcomes (e.g., curbing migration). Trump will hardly be able to turn back globalization, but he will do everything he can to shift its costs onto others.

3. Democratic resilience 

In an era of dissolution of boundaries, loss of control, and constant disruption, democracies must become more resilient across the board in order to remain capable of governance and action. This will be one of the major transformative and investment tasks of the future. But I would like to focus here on a specific new aspect: that attacks on Western democracies today also specifically target our internal constitution—our democratic order—itself.

The separation of powers, political pluralism, the rule of law, protection of civil liberties and human rights: this is the legacy of the Enlightenment and, in Europe, the lesson of two world wars. Now it is in danger: through propaganda, disinformation, and sabotage from outside, but also from domestic anti-system parties. The two often work hand in hand. Russia’s role in this context is well known; what is new is that the attacks are now also coming from the other side of the Atlantic.

Trump is known to value strong leaders, and among his MAGA supporters, reactionary national

conservatives play an important role. What is radically new, however, is the direct intervention in European politics: Elon Musk’s rants against the British prime minister and his support for the leader of a partly far-right party in the German election campaign. These interventions are particularly significant in the context of the rise of the extreme right in Europe—a right that is intent on transforming not only domestic orders but the European order itself, together with its external relations.

4. Consequences for Europe … and Switzerland?

In short, we find ourselves at a moment in which the global peace order of the postwar era, together with its normative foundations, is not only being eroded but possibly actively revised—and not only by the rivals or enemies of the West but by its historical guarantor power of this order.

The hyper-globalized world region of Europe—and Switzerland in the middle—is facing challenges that can without exaggeration be described as exceptionally threatening. However, the vast majority of European states have decided to seek security, prosperity, and democratic transformation in political communities based on shared values and interests (the European Union, NATO, and the eurozone). And despite the obvious tensions and differences within these groups of states, Russia’s aggression and Trump’s threats of punitive tariffs have given rise to new efforts to bulk up European deterrence and defense—and even to new membership discussions in non-member states.

Switzerland, however, has very deliberately chosen a different path: flexible rapprochement and selective cooperation, but without abandoning the principle of neutrality—and it seems to have done well with it. If I have understood the neutrality initiative correctly, it wants to put an end to this kind of rapprochement and cooperation forever. So—given the overall geopolitical situation I have just described—it seems justified to ask: just how would such an extremely strict definition of neutrality work to preserve and protect Switzerland’s sovereignty, security, prosperity, and internal constitution?