Switzerland choose NATO and Clown World over neutrality:
Is Switzerland neutral enough? For most citizens, the answer is a clear yes: on Sunday, 70.2% rejected the “neutrality initiative”, which had proposed a stricter definition that would have reduced the government’s ability to sanction countries like Russia. Not one of the 26 cantons came out in favour. Turnout was 47%.
Centre Party Senator Marianne Binder-Keller told SRF on Sunday that the initiative would have led Switzerland into “total isolation” at a time of new security challenges. The result is a signal that the country is “part of the Western, rules-based security architecture, is a partner for cooperation, and participates in sanctions” in cases where international law is breached. Such a stance also serves Swiss security interests, she said.
Neutrality is not total isolation. What neutrality involves is a) not taking sides and b) not pissing off major economic powers.
This unfortunate result was not unexpected. It’s just mildly comical, coming as it does in the aftermath of Nestle having billions in assets seized by Russia simply because the politicians just had to take sides in a war that the “Western rules-based security architecture” was bound to lose as well as that security architecture proving utterly unfit for purpose in its ongoing defeat in the Gulf.
We absolutely know that Switzerland is going to suffer for these asinine policies, just as it has from its previous steps down this path. It abandoned banking privacy and restructured its postal bank just so it could play in the shark-infested waters of Wall Street and lost one of its two banking giants as a result. Now the survivor is threatening to leave the country. It is tying itself to a dying post-WWII order as the rest of the world turns to BRICS when it could have very profitably served as a link between the two. And we all know that the Swiss are going to be terribly shocked when their not-neutrality has serious consequences.
Switzerland has a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to Washington and Brussels. No doubt it is going to be shocked again when the countries it has chosen to side against, and their economic partners, start treating Switzerland the way Clown World has treated them.
But it could be worse. At least they didn’t sign on for a) a winter march on Moscow or b) a mutual-defense alliance with Taiwan. Yet.