Rosa Luxemburg in the Swiss Alps. Integrale, armed neutrality is a quintessentially left concept.
Text By Niklaus Ramseyer, Berne.
(Original article here in German)
Armed
neutrality means consistently renouncing war as a primitive, backward
instrument of foreign policy. It represents progress away from war and
toward peace.
For
170 years, Switzerland has had no enemies—either in the region or
worldwide, and certainly no military enemies. During that time, it has
neither waged a war nor had to endure one. This stands in stark contrast
to every other European state. We on the Swiss left must defend the
peaceful character of our neutral country.
Switzerland
without war! Why? Not because the country wants nothing to do with the
military or supposedly understands nothing about it. For a long time,
Switzerland was said not to “have” an army but to “be” an army. This was
because of its militia system (a largely citizen-soldier army), which
forgoes professional troops but requires every citizen deemed fit for
service—and allows women to volunteer—to receive military training by
the age of 20 at the latest. It was also because, after completing that
training, soldiers took their personal infantry weapon, an assault
rifle, home with them—the much-debated but unique “rifle in the
cupboard.”
A
militia army strictly limited to emergency defence, together with an
armed citizenry and the rifle in the cupboard: this is exactly what the
legendary socialist Rosa Luxemburg called for in a well-founded analysis
of the “New Army,” published on 9 June 1911 in the Leipziger Volkszeitung,
of which she was editor-in-chief. Even today, Switzerland’s military
and defence policy corresponds quite closely to Luxemburg’s defensive,
progressive, and peace-oriented ideas. A militia army, neutrality, and
the renunciation of wars of intervention are therefore decidedly
left-wing concepts.
Switzerland
is certainly a country with an army and a military. But it has never
been a country of war—least of all of intervention, aggression, and
occupation beyond its borders. The reason is Swiss neutrality. As almost
no other country in the world does, Switzerland consciously and
consistently renounces war as a primitive and backward “instrument” of
foreign policy. Unlike in nearly every other state, war in the Swiss
Confederation is not an “instrument” in the government’s hands with
which it could violently and destructively impose its foreign-policy or
even global “interests” (see Clausewitz, On War, 1832).
Our
country would go to war only if it were attacked militarily. In that
event, every Swiss citizen fit for service would be called upon to
contribute to the country’s defence within the militia system. The
purely defensive—rather than offensive and invasive—nature of this
security and defence concept is also evident in the structure of the
Swiss armed forces: they are organized so as to be “structurally
incapable of attack.” This is particularly apparent in logistics: a
collection system without long-range transport aircraft, unlike the
delivery systems used by NATO or US forces that wage wars around the
world. It is also apparent in the preference for more defensive weapons
systems.
The
country does not need bombers such as the F-35 that can be deployed in
invasions worldwide. After all, the Swiss Armed Forces’ main task is not
to be able to wage wars somewhere against someone. It is to keep all
wars away from our own country. Switzerland’s militia army is not a
“war-fighting army” but a “war-prevention army.” For more than 170
years—since the brilliant Guillaume Henri Dufour—it has fulfilled this
principal mission far more successfully than any other army in Europe.
The
political foundation of this peaceful and highly successful security
concept is neutrality. It should be understood in purely military and
security-policy terms. Small Switzerland, at the heart of Europe,
threatens no one and nothing—certainly not militarily. In return, it
enjoys considerable esteem, respect, and trust around the world.
Switzerland has few adversaries and no enemies—certainly no military
ones.
Switzerland’s
uniquely successful and progressive security policy is now being
questioned and attacked—from both the right and the left. Demands for
“greater cooperation” with NATO, which wages wars worldwide and remains
dominated by and dependent on the United States, and for “security
cooperation” with the EU come from the FDP.The Liberals (Switzerland’s
free-market liberal party) and The Centre (a centrist Swiss political
party). Unfortunately, they also come from parts of the Social
Democratic Party and the Greens.
The
right argues that, as part of an informal “West,” our country must also
help conduct a “united” struggle—under US leadership—against Russia,
Islamism, and China. The governing left, for its part, views
Switzerland’s independently sovereign security policy and neutrality as
obstacles to the country’s long-desired “integration” into the
Brussels-based EU. Supposed “leftists” even call for our army to join
NATO—or at least to move “closer” to it.
Both
political camps promote the belief that Switzerland could not defend
itself militarily on its own. Yet historical and current examples—from
Vietnam and Afghanistan to Ukraine and Iran—show how successfully
determined defenders can fight on their own strong terrain, even against
attackers that appear vastly superior at first sight.
Nevertheless,
politicians receive some support from officials and career military
officers in the DDPS (Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection
and Sport) and at the top of the armed forces, both of which have
suffered from weak political leadership for decades. They, too,
disparage Switzerland’s defensive army and claim that alignment with
NATO is therefore unavoidable—and that rearmament in accordance with
Trump’s demands is urgently needed here as well.
Thus,
a motley collection of “NATO adapters”—career military officers and
DDPS officials under weak political leadership, alongside politicians of
the left and centre—are fighting against our peaceful country’s
military sovereignty and neutrality: fundamental Swiss principles that
they should, on the contrary, be defending.
This
is particularly embarrassing for the members of the Social Democratic
Party of Switzerland (SP/SPS) in this alliance. Only a few years ago,
their party programme still championed self-government, sovereignty, and
a policy of peace. In fact, only two countries in Europe remain
sovereign in military-policy terms today: France and Switzerland—for
now. Neither tolerates foreign bases, and both retain full democratic
control over all their own troops in the country.
Every
other NATO country “hosts” US occupation troops on sealed-off bases
within its territory, over which it has no control and often not even
access. Several NATO governments in the EU even accept bases for US
nuclear missiles. Contrary to the brazen claims of NATO ideologues,
these US military positions, advanced thousands of kilometres eastward,
are not “protective umbrellas.” On the contrary, they are grave sources
of danger. In an emergency, they would be the first targets of
preventive strikes, with hundreds of thousands of uninvolved people in
the surrounding areas becoming “collateral” victims.
With
their attacks on Switzerland’s military sovereignty and neutrality, the
Social Democrats, FDP.The Liberals, and The Centre do not seek to
restore to the Federal Council (Switzerland’s seven-member federal
government) the power to wage war claimed and exploited by the backward
governments of militarized great powers. For a small country such as
Switzerland, that would in any case be illusory, if not ridiculous.
No.
Under the banner of “cooperation,” they intend gradually to
professionalize the hitherto purely defensive Swiss militia army—through
continuous-service conscripts (soldiers who complete their service in
one uninterrupted period)—and coolly move it closer to NATO through
exercises, planning, intelligence, and ammunition procurement beyond the
country’s borders. Swiss soldiers are once again supposed to learn and
practise aggression, invasion, and occupation in exercises abroad,
instead of defending the country on its own strong terrain.
Everything
would take place under NATO supreme command and, ultimately, as
auxiliary forces for the US Army, which wages wars worldwide. Decisions
about whom to mobilize against and whom to fire upon if necessary would
no longer be made under the “primacy of politics” (civilian political
control) in Bern, but by military planning staffs somewhere in Mons or
Tampa Bay. Those staffs would naturally demand reciprocity in the form
of NATO exercises here in our country. For our sovereign, neutral state,
that is an absolute no-go.
There
is no middle position between military sovereignty with neutrality, on
the one hand, and subordination to NATO—called “cooperation”—on the
other. The foreign base used by Switzerland’s SWISSCOY
continuous-service personnel in Kosovo (the Swiss contingent supporting
KFOR)—a.k.a. “mercenaries,” as the author puts it—is, in practice, the
sandbox and training ground for integrating our armed forces into NATO.
It is a typical follower-and-auxiliary deployment under the NATO command
of KFOR (the NATO-led Kosovo Force). In Ferizaj, Kosovo, KFOR guards
and secures Camp Bondsteel in particular, the largest US military base
in Europe.
It
is astonishing, even alarming, that supposed leftists in the Social
Democratic Party of Switzerland continue to support military adventures
of this kind. They carelessly surrender democratic control over
defensive forces in our own country while accepting foreign NATO control
over our troops during invasive missions elsewhere. They even do so
under the more than cynical heading of “solidarity” with “peacekeeping
forces.” For the modern “integrationist Social Democrats”—and even for
the Greens—solidarity, it seems, now also “grows out of the barrel of a
gun.”
In
short—and it is not good: we are moving away from Switzerland’s
sovereign, democratically controlled defensive army and toward
semi-professional follower and participation forces under foreign
command on NATO training grounds or even in NATO “war theatres” that are
not ours and cannot be ours. And we are expected to pay for this
dangerous nonsense as well.
Unfortunately,
the same conformism and eagerness to participate are even more evident
in relation to US and EU sanctions. If these sanctions had even the
slightest basis in the rule of law, they would have to rest on the
following legal standard: “Regimes and governments that systematically
disregard and violate human rights and international law shall be
appropriately sanctioned and boycotted.” Properly applied under the rule
of law, these rules would naturally have to apply equally to every
usurper, perpetrator of genocide, and war criminal. Russia would
certainly be sanctioned—but so, without question, would Israel, the
United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
Yet
nothing of the sort happens. Sanctions are arbitrarily imposed only on
countries—and individuals—that refuse to dance to Washington’s tune,
from Cuba and Iran to North Korea and Russia. And not only by the United
States itself: by threatening sanctions, Washington also coerces many
smaller states in its “values-based West,” even though those states have
no problems, tensions, or conflicts with the countries targeted by US
sanctions.
Switzerland,
for example, is threatened by neither Cuba nor Iran nor North Korea.
Yet under pressure from the United States and the EU, the Federal
Council sanctions those countries so severely that it has become almost
impossible to transfer aid funds to Cuba. Transfers to Taiwan, by
contrast, remain possible at any time without difficulty.
The reason for our federal government’s timid and embarrassing conduct lies in Switzerland’s Embargo Act of March 2002.
Article 1 states:
“The
Confederation may enact coercive measures in order to implement
sanctions that have been ordered by the United Nations Organization, the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe or by
Switzerland’s most significant trading partners, and which serve to
secure compliance with international law, and in particular respect for
human rights.”
There
would probably be little objection to this wording. But the Embargo Act
is not a Swiss law governed by clear rules that apply equally to
everyone. It is a vague mechanism for joining in and enforcing measures
on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, it starkly contradicts the separation
of powers: sanctions may be imposed—or their imposition assisted—not by
the courts but by the government, the Federal Council. Worse still,
there is simply no right of appeal to a higher authority against its
decisions, although such a right should be self-evident under the rule
of law.
The
phrase “or by Switzerland’s most significant trading partners” is also
untenable and even dangerous. Instead of laying down clear rules that
apply to everyone, it opens the door wide to those trading partners’
arbitrariness and pursuit of power—and to compelling neutral Switzerland
to support their trade wars. On the basis of this absurd provision,
Washington in particular can place the Federal Council under enormous
pressure and demand that our country sanction states with which we have
neither problems nor conflicts of any kind.
It
is alarming that left-wing and Green members of the Federal Assembly
(Switzerland’s parliament) supported and continue to defend such
dangerous nonsense. The neutrality initiative (a Swiss federal popular
initiative) now seeks to correct these serious defects in Switzerland’s
Embargo Act by deleting the reference to “significant trading
partners”—nothing more and nothing less.
But
during the referendum campaign, the Social Democratic left—and the
Greens as well—will once again stand on the wrong side: on the side of
war within the NATO alliance rather than peace and Swiss neutrality, and
on the side of arbitrary US sanctions in Washington’s trade wars rather
than clear rules, applied equally to all, under the rule of law. That
is certainly not left-wing politics.
Niklaus Ramseyer is a Swiss journalist. He served as Bundeshaus correspondent for the Basler Zeitung.
