The Limits of Compensation Swiss Neutrality Policy in the Cold War

✣ Thomas Fischer and Daniel Mockli¨

After World War II, Switzerland was in a unique position in Europe. Although situated in the center of Europe, it had not been attacked by Nazi Germany and could thus emerge from the war with a strong economy, stable political institutions, and social cohesion. This peculiar experience of World War II forged a collective identity and role perception different from that of other continental states. The Swiss felt a deep emotional commitment to neutrality and shared a conviction that autonomous defense would continue to be an effective security strategy after 1945. The Swiss government acknowledged the need for, and was supportive of, the new United Nations (UN) collective security system and was also well aware of the beneﬁts of Western collective defense and European integration as the Cold War divide came about. But Switzerland was willing to associate with these new multilateral governance structures only to the extent that they did not erode neutrality—or, in the case of European integration, Swiss economic interests. Swiss decision-makers accordingly came up with a foreign policy doctrine that rendered neutrality a quasi-axiomatic paradigm of Swiss postwar foreign policy. This was coupled to an ideologization of neutrality that was to defend the country against future outside accusations. The conceptual basis for Swiss neutrality during the Cold War was laid during the long tenure of Foreign Minister Max Petitpierre, in ofﬁce from 1945 to 1961. The main elements were non-membership in military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and in international “political” institutions such as the UN, as well as non-participation in the European integration process. Switzerland was severely criticized in the immediate postwar period over the its neutrality, but it gradually managed to foster international acceptance of its foreign policy conception by pursuing a strategy of compensation, promoting itself as a neutral mediator and humanitarian benefactor outside the UN, and participating in Western economic, technological, and cultural cooperation. However, the limits of this strategy became increasingly visible in the early

Journal of Cold War Studies Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 2016, pp. 12–35, doi:10.1162/JCWS_a_00678 C 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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1970s, when major changes in the international system occurred with the onset of superpower detente´ and a shift of focus in the UN system from the East- West to the North-South axis. However, efforts to adapt Swiss foreign policy and open up toward more multilateralism in the 1980s were rejected by Swiss voters, as traditionalist notions of neutrality proved resilient on the domestic level. This article shows that the effects of the postwar policy of promoting a rigid understanding of neutrality as a cornerstone of Swiss identity decisively narrowed the foreign policy options of Switzerland in the later Cold War years and are indeed felt to this day. The article is divided into five sections. The first section examines the establishment of a rigid neutrality conception after World War II and outlines the practical handling of neutrality in the early Cold War period. The second section analyzes the conceptual basis of Swiss Cold War neutrality—including its compensatory elements—and explains how neutrality became ideologized after 1945. The article then looks at how Swiss neutrality regained international acceptance by the mid-1950s and assesses the extent to which the Swiss were able to implement their compensation strategy at the height of the Cold War. Next we examine the Swiss government’s difficulties in adapting Swiss foreign policy to the changes of the international system in the later Cold War period, with the electorate turning down Swiss membership in the UN in 1986. In the concluding section, we offer a brief look at the growing domestic polarization concerning Switzerland’s role in the world after the end of the Cold War, with the meaning of neutrality becoming a hotly debated issue. This section also discusses how the historiography of the subject of Swiss neutrality has evolved since 1989.1

Sticking with Neutrality after 1945

When World War II ended, the Swiss were dead set on maintaining their traditional policy of neutrality, no matter how the world was changing. The Swiss widely believed that the policy of neutrality and autonomous defense had

1. For two general overviews of the recent historiography of Switzerland’s international relations during the Cold War, see Sacha Zala, “Publications sur les relations internationales de la Suisse parues depuis la ﬁn de la Guerre froide: Notice historiographique,” Relations Internationales, No. 113 (Spring 2003), pp. 115–133; and Andreas Wenger and Christian Nuenlist, “A ‘Special Case’ between Independence and Interdependence: Cold War Studies and Cold War Politics in Post–Cold War Switzerland,” Cold War History, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May 2008), pp. 213–240. See also Sacha Zala, “Historiograﬁsche Anmerkungen zur Geschichte der schweizerischen Aussenbeziehungen in der Nachkriegszeit,” Traverse, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2013), pp. 242–257.

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prevented an invasion by the Wehrmacht. Moreover, even if neutrality could not guarantee an effective defense against future challenges, the same could be said from the Swiss perspective about the global and regional institutions that emerged after the war. Neutrality, however, did not have a good international standing in the postwar period, and it had to be redefined in relation to the new global and European governance structures in some way or other. Accordingly, the process of conceptualizing Swiss postwar neutrality took place against the background of a series of practical foreign policy challenges. The most immediate, though conceptually least influential challenge con- cerned the Allies’ intense criticism of how the Swiss had practiced neutrality during World War II. The United States had respected the Swiss decision in 1944–1945 not to join the war despite the likely victory of the Allies, but it strongly criticized the Swiss for continuing to trade with Nazi Germany. Although the Swiss pointed out that neutrality law allowed for trade with all countries at war, they were accused of prolonging the war and of profiteering. Swiss concessions in the Washington Agreement of 1946 attained a provi- sional settlement of the dispute with the United States, Britain, and France over German assets in Switzerland and gold acquired from the Reichsbank. Yet, Swiss neutrality continued to be viewed with skepticism in the international arena, with the country only gradually succeeding in overcoming its postwar isolation.2 A major challenge with enormous conceptual implications for Swiss foreign policy was the founding of the UN, which declared war illegal and defined a system of collective security based on economic and military sanctions against violators of peace that theoretically left no room for neutrality. Sweden reacted to this development in 1946 by subordinating its neutrality to UN law, which meant that it chose not to apply its neutrality when the Security Council agreed on sanctions. Austria, too, joined the UN in 1955, based on the assumption that the international community would respect its neutrality when the latter clashed with sanctions obligations. In 1945, Switzerland tried to secure recognition from the UN that the country’s position constituted a “special

2. The following draws on Daniel Mockli,¨ “Neutral Switzerland and Western Security Governance from the Cold War to the Global Economic Crisis,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies,Vol.9,No.4(December 2011), pp. 282–304. For the immediate postwar period, see Daniel Mockli,¨ Neutralitat,¨ Solidaritat,¨ Son- derfall: Die Konzeptionierung der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik der Nachkriegszeit, 1943–1947,Vol.55 of Zurich Contributions to Security Policy (Zurich: Forschungsstelle fur¨ Sicherheitspolitik und Kon- ﬂiktanalyse, ETH Zurich,¨ 2000); Daniel Trachsler, Neutral zwischen Ost und West? Infragestellung und Konsolidierung der schweizerischen Neutralitatspolitik¨ durch den Beginn des Kalten Krieges, 1947–1952, Vol. 63 of Zurich Contributions to Security Policy (Zurich: Forschungsstelle fur¨ Sicherheitspolitik und Konﬂiktanalyse, ETH Zurich,¨ 2002); and Daniel Trachsler, Bundesrat Max Petitpierre: Schweizerische Aussenpolitik im Kalten Krieg 1945–1961 (Zurich: Verlag Neue Zurcher¨ Zeitung, 2011).

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case,” exempting it from implementing sanctions because of its neutrality. When Switzerland failed to win such recognition, it decided to stay outside the UN. That the one-world vision propagated by the UN’s founders soon proved unrealistic was not unwelcome news for the Swiss, as this diminished the price of abstention. Yet, although the bipolar international system that emerged was in principle much more conducive to a policy of neutrality, in reality it, too, posed a serious challenge to Switzerland’s traditional foreign policy. In both geopolitical and ideological terms, the Swiss were clearly part of the “free world.” Their economy was to a large extent dependent on exports to Western Europe and the United States. Whether this constellation still left room for neutrality at a time when the Soviet Union was perceived to be expanding toward Western Europe was far from clear. Still, the Swiss decided to stick with neutrality. As with the UN, where Switzerland remained aloof from the principal organs (except the International Court of Justice) but joined most specialized agencies, the country came up with a dualistic approach vis-a-vis` the Western Cold War system. On the economic level, it participated in several new multilateral schemes, though on a selective basis. But on the political and military level, it remained at a distance from the West. Switzerland was one of the first countries to confirm participation in the Marshall Plan in 1947. The Swiss government supported the U.S. economic recovery scheme despite its obvious political nature and even though Switzer- land did not require aid itself. Switzerland also joined the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which became a key platform for the Swiss to engage with Western Europe, secure export markets, and gain access to the U.S.-dominated commodities market. By contrast, the country distanced itself from the process of European integration during the Cold War and stayed away from the Council of Europe prior to 1963, fearing that it might turn into the political nucleus of a unified Western Europe. Switzerland also refrained from joining the Bretton Woods institutions before 1992 in order to avoid external influence over its monetary and trade policies. The gradually unfolding European integration process was a key challenge for Swiss foreign policy during the Cold War. Joining the European Commu- nities (EC) or any other customs union was deemed incompatible with Swiss neutrality and was never seriously considered. The Swiss also had strong economic reasons for not joining the EC. Switzerland, a rich creditor country with a strong currency and a global export outlook, perceived European integration as having too many restraining effects on its economy to be of real interest.

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Aspects of the EC such as its labor market policies and Common Agricultural Policy were not appealing to the Swiss, either.3 The principle of participating in multilateral frameworks only if Switzer- land’s autonomy in economic and trade issues was not affected was formulated as early as 1947. When the European Economic Community (EEC) was launched in 1957, a period of hectic activity set in on the Swiss side, the main goal being to preserve Swiss autonomy while securing non-discriminatory access to the European market. At ﬁrst, the Swiss joined with the United Kingdom and others in pushing the idea of a great European free-trade zone. When the six founding members of the EEC rejected this model, the Swiss together with the British were a driving force behind the creation of a small free-trade zone of non-EEC members in the form of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). As a platform for seeking common solutions with the EEC, EFTA soon descended into crisis as the United Kingdom decided in 1961 to apply for EEC membership. Together with other neutrals, Switzerland now felt compelled to seek negotiations on a bilateral association with the EEC.4 This step provoked intense domestic debate about the relationship between Switzerland and the EEC. Talks in Brussels about association did not go well, ending with criticism of the Swiss for cherry-picking and failing to commit fully to European integration. All these considerations soon proved to be of limited importance, however, as the UK’s accession talks with the EEC failed in 1963, providing EFTA with a second life.5 Swiss membership in the Brussels Pact and NATO as an alternative to neutrality was also never seriously considered after 1945. Switzerland’s political and military elites regarded transatlantic defense capabilities as too limited to provide any reliable security guarantee against the Soviet Union. If neutrality in the early Cold War was a security check without cover, so was NATO. The Swiss strongly preferred to adhere to their strategy of neutrality and autonomous defense, which had proven its value in the past.

3. Roland Maurhofer, Die schweizerische Europapolitik vom Marshallplan zur EFTA 1947 bis 1960: Zwischen Kooperation und Integration (Bern: Paul Haupt, 2002). 4. Antoine Fleury and Martin Zbinden, “The Model of Neutrality: Switzerland and the EEC Enlarge- ment Negotiations 1961–1963,” in Richard T. Grifﬁths and Stuart Ward, eds., Courting the Common Market: The First Attempt to Enlarge the European Community (London: Lothian Foundation Press, 1996), pp. 303–324. 5. Martin Zbinden, “Von der Neutralitat¨ zur direkten Demokratie: Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Integrationspolitik,” in Thomas Cottier and Alwin R. Kopse, eds., Der Beitritt der Schweiz zur Europaischen¨ Union: Brennpunkte und Auswirkungen (Zurich: Schulthess, 1998), pp. 213–269.

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The United States and its allies came to accept the Swiss refusal to join their military containment strategy for several reasons. To start with, they were aware that pressure on Switzerland to enter into such arrangements would be counterproductive and would likely diminish the Swiss appetite for cooperation even in the economic realm. Also, from the perspective of Western defense, Switzerland was of meager importance to NATO. The Alpine territory was an unlikely theater of operations for any Soviet advance to the West. Furthermore, even though the Swiss army lacked modern weaponry, Switzerland seemed better prepared than many other European countries for war and was likely to offer resistance to any attack from the East. Finally, the Federal Council made important concessions to Washington in areas in which economic and security cooperation merged. Giving in to intense U.S. pressure, the Swiss government in 1951 adopted controls over the export of strategic goods to the Soviet bloc similar to those adopted by the member states of the Coordinating Committee for Export Control (COCOM). The Swiss thus secretly linked up to NATO’s economic warfare system, forfeiting their economic neutrality rights.6 They also accepted an informal link between NATO and the OEEC, although they insisted that ties should be minimal so that neutral members of OEEC would not lose face.7

6. Andre´ Schaller, Schweizer Neutralitat¨ im West-Ost-Handel: Das Hotz-Linder-Agreement vom 23. Juli 1951 (Bern: Haupt, 1987); Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel, “Swiss Neutrality and the ‘American Cen- tury’: Two Conflicting Worldviews,” Beitrage¨ , No. 14, Forschungsstelle fur¨ Internationale Beziehun- gen, ETH Zurich (April 1998), p. 9, available online at http://e-collection.library.ethz.ch/eserv /eth:22581/eth-22581–01.pdf. Other examples of Swiss informal cooperation with the United States are listed in “Schweiz-USA im kalten Krieg,” special issue, traverse, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2009). Although a definitive historical study of Swiss exports of (military) strategic goods during the Cold War has yet to be written, the Swiss authorities could not conceal the pro-Western character of their actions in this field during Cold War crises. From what we have learned so far, Swiss exports of (military) strategic goods to the conflicting parties during the Suez Crisis—and later during the wars in the Middle East and in Vietnam—exhibited a clear pro-Western/Israeli bias. On the problem of unauthorized military overflights of Swiss territory and restrictions on weapons exports to Egypt but not to Israel in the context of the Suez Crisis, see Ann-Karin Wicki, “Kein Grund zur Anderung¨ der Aussenpolitik: Die Stellung der Schweiz wahrend¨ der Suezkrise 1956/1957 aus der Sicht der Schweizer Bundesbehorden,”¨ M.A. Diss., University of Berne, 1995, pp. 55–71. On the strategically important export of dual-use goods to the United States (in particular, fine tools from the Swiss watchmaking industry for deto- nator mechanisms) during Vietnam, see David Gaffino, Autorité et entreprises Suisses face alaguerre` du Viêt Nam, 1960–1975 (Neuchatel:ˆ Editions´ Alphil, 2006). See also Marco Wyss, “Abhangigkeit¨ wider Willen oder Drang zum Westen? Die einseitigen Rustungsbeschaffungen¨ und -lieferungen der Schweiz im fruhen¨ Kalten Krieg,” in Sandra Bott, Janick Marina Schaufelbuhl,¨ and Sacha Zala, eds., Die internationale Schweiz in der Zeit des Kalten Krieges (Basel: Schwabe-Verlag, 2011); and Marco Wyss, “Neutrality in the Early Cold War: Swiss Arms Imports and Neutrality,” Cold War History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (February 2012), pp. 25–49. 7. Peter Hug, Thomas Gees, and Tanja Dannecker, Die Aussenpolitik der Schweiz im kurzen 20. Jahrhundert: Antibolschewismus, Deutschlandpolitik und organisierte Weltmarktintegration—segmentierte Praxis und offentliches¨ Ritual (Bern: Programmleitung NFP 42, 2000), p. 19.

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Switzerland and NATO maintained informal secret contacts in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the Swiss occasionally signaled to representatives of Western militaries that the country might align with NATO if attacked by the Warsaw Pact.8 But no formal assurances were made, and no contingency plans were drawn up with NATO (nor did the Swiss undertake internal planning measures to that end). The fact is that the Swiss remained at a much greater distance from NATO than did other neutrals (e.g., Sweden), which is indicative of how eager they were to stress their neutrality.9 Switzerland’s determination to retain an autonomous defense policy even prompted the country to flirt with the idea of acquiring nuclear weapons or at least a nuclear threshold capability. Some Swiss analysts argued that for neutrality to remain credible Switzerland would have to respond to the nuclearization of the European theater of operations by obtaining nuclear weapons of its own. Accordingly, extensive studies were conducted both on the domestic production and on procurement abroad of nuclear weapons.10 However, various obstacles—in particular, lack of access to fissile material, financial difficulties with the acquisition of delivery systems, and domestic protests—ultimately kept the Swiss on the non-nuclear path. The nuclear issue also lost some of its urgency for the Swiss as the fear of war gradually receded in the late 1960s and 1970s in the context of nuclear parity and East-West detente.´ 11 In the end, the Swiss did not have to test the thesis that neutrality would leave their country unscathed in the event of an East-West military confrontation in Europe. Yet, throughout the early Cold War, fear was widespread in Switzerland that the Warsaw Pact was actively preparing a surprise attack against the West, one that would be routed through or involve at least a partial

8. Mauro Mantovani, “Another ‘Special Relationship’: The British-Swiss Early Cold War Coordination of Defence 1947–53,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol. 10, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 127–146. 9. Mauro Mantovani, “Die Schweiz und die NATO: Typologie einer ‘Nicht-Beziehung,’” in Hans- Joachim Harder, ed., Von Truman bis Harmel: Die Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von NATO und europaischer¨ Integration (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000), pp. 209–217; and Hans Rudolf Fuhrer, “Das Phanomen¨ der Verweigerung: Zur Frage der Beziehung oder Nichtbeziehung der Schweiz zur NATO 1949–1966,” in Herve´ de Weck, ed., La Suisse 1945–1990 (Bern: ASHSM, 2005). 10. A useful overview of historical research on the Swiss nuclear weapons option is offered by Peter Braun, Von der Reduitstrategie zur Abwehr: Die militarische¨ Landesverteidigung der Schweiz im Kalten Krieg 1945–1966, Der schweizerische Generalstab, Vol. 10, Teilband 2 (Baden, Switzerland: Hier und Jetzt, 2006), pt. IV. See also Mauro Cerutti, “Neutraliteets´ ecurit´ e:´ Le projet atomique suisse 1945–1969,” in Bott, Schaufelbuhl,¨ and Zala, eds., Die internationale Schweiz. 11. Although Switzerland signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969, it did not ratify the treaty until 1977. Reto Wollenmann, Zwischen Atomwaffe und Atomsperrvertrag: Die Schweiz auf dem Weg von der nuklearen Option zum Nonproliferationsvertrag, 1958–69, Vol. 75 of Zurich Contributions to Security Policy (Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 2004).

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occupation of neutral Austria and Switzerland. Reﬂecting these threat percep- tions, all scenarios for military exercises and maneuvers of the Swiss army were geared toward potential enemy moves coming from the East. Because Warsaw Pact planning documents have become available from East European archives in recent years, we now know, that in fact Switzerland did not ﬁgure prominently in Warsaw Pact plans.12 Although the Danube Valley and Upper Austria would likely have been crossed by Warsaw Pact troops in the initial stages of a surprise attack, the scenarios give no indication of planned incursions into Swiss territory. Rather, all available evidence indicates that Soviet-bloc troops would have bypassed Switzerland in the north in a sweeping move to Germany, France, and the Atlantic, leaving out the Jura and northwestern Switzerland. From the Warsaw Pact’s strategic point of view, Swiss territory was not of great importance for a successful offensive against the NATO countries of Western Europe. The Warsaw Pact military planning documents suggest that what saved the Swiss from being included among the targets of a Soviet-bloc attack were overall military-strategic considerations rather than any particular Soviet respect for Swiss armed neutrality. At the same time, an all-out nuclear military confrontation between the blocs would inevitably have affected Switzerland in similar ways as its European neighbors. From this one can argue that Switzerland’s decision to stick with neutrality throughout the Cold War was driven more by identity needs than by strict security considerations.

Neutrality and Ideologization

Switzerland’s concept of neutrality as deﬁned in the 1954 “guidelines on the handling of Switzerland’s neutrality” was based on the strategic decisions taken by the Swiss government after 1945 with regard to the founding of the UN system, the emerging superpower confrontation, and the beginnings of the West European integration process.13 Drafted by the Foreign Ministry’s

12. Hans Rudolf Fuhrer and Matthias Wild, Alle roten Pfeile kamen aus Osten—zu Recht? Das Bild und die Bedrohung der Schweiz 1945–1966 im Licht ostlicher¨ Archive, Der schweizerische Generalstab, Vol. 11 (Baden, Switzerland: Verlag Hier und Jetzt, 2010); Hans Rudolf Fuhrer, “Neutral zwischen den Blocken:¨ Osterreich¨ und die Schweiz,” in Manfried Rauchensteiner, ed., Zwischen den Blocken:¨ NATO, Warschauer Pakt und Osterreich¨ , (Vienna: Bohlau,¨ 2010), pp. 193–251, esp. 240–245; and Peter Veleff, Angriffsziel Schweiz? Das operativ-strategische Denken im Warschauer Vertrag mit Auswirkungen auf die neutralen Staaten Schweiz und Osterreich¨ (Zurich: Orell Fussli,¨ 2007). 13. “Der Begriff der Neutralitat,”¨ 26 November 1954, in Documents Diplomatiques Suisses,Dodis Database, Doc. 9564, available online at http://www.dodis.ch/9564; ﬁrst published in 1954 in the

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influential legal adviser Rudolf L. Bindschedler, these neutrality guidelines were never officially endorsed by the Federal Council. Still, this internal document, also known as the “Bindschedler Doctrine,” largely set the scope of Swiss neutrality during the Cold War and influenced generations of politicians, diplomats, and domestic opinion leaders in Switzerland.14 Bindschedler stood in the tradition of eminent Swiss experts of international law advising the Foreign Ministry on questions regarding neutrality, such as Max Huber, Paul Guggenheim, Dietrich Schindler, Sr., Dietrich Schindler, Jr., and, most recently, Daniel Thurer.¨ 15 Their influence on the doctrinal handling of neutrality in the government, parliament, and administration reflects the predominantly legalistic interpretation of the neutrality issue in Switzerland at the time. The four-page “Bindschedler Doctrine” defined Switzerland as a perma- nently neutral country that not only must abstain from all military alliances but must also refrain from joining collective security organizations such as the UN in order to avoid endangering its status of neutrality in the event of international conflict or war.16 Participation in economic sanctions was considered incompatible with neutrality, as was accession to any customs union. Bind- schedler thus formulated a dogmatically abstentionist conception of neutrality. He did, however, take up the distinction between “political” and “technical” cooperation as first formulated by Petitpierre in his foreign policy motto of “neutrality and solidarity” of 1947. According to this distinction, Swiss neutrality did not rule out participation in “technical”—that is, economic, social, or cultural—multilateral bodies. The government was left to decide which ac- tivities were “political” and thus incompatible with neutrality, a dualism that allowed for some pragmatism in Swiss foreign (economic) policy and enabled the government to pursue a dynamic (foreign economic) policy and to join both UN special organizations and agencies as well as European institutions such as EFTA and, eventually, the Council of Europe.

collection of the federal authorities’ administrative decisions, Verwaltungsentscheide der Bundesbehorden¨ , Vol. 24 (1954), pp. 9–13. An English translation of the document can be found in Alfred Verdross, The Permanent Neutrality of Austria (Vienna: Verlag fur¨ Geschichte und Politik, 1978), pp. 35–40. 14. On the origins of the “Bindschedler Doctrine,” see Daniel Mockli,¨ “The Long Road to Membership: Switzerland and the United Nations,” in Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel and Thomas Fischer, eds., Swiss Foreign Policy, 1945–2002 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 46–73; and Trachsler, Bundesrat Max Petitpierre, pp. 211–213. 15. For short biographical sketches of these personalities and their contributions to the Swiss neutrality debate during the Cold War, see Georg Kreis, Kleine Neutralitatsgeschichte¨ der Gegenwart: Ein Inventar zum neutralitatspolitischen¨ Diskurs in der Schweiz seit 1943 (Bern: Haupt Verlag, 2004), ch. 2.2. 16. Conceiving of the UN as a collective security organization was much more plausible at the time Bindschedler was writing (in 1951 the UN was involved in the Korean War) than it is today.

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As for neutrality being incompatible with collective security and European integration, these positions clearly went beyond the rights and duties of a neutral state as outlined in the Hague Conventions of 1907. Remarkably, however, Bindschedler still argued in his guidelines that they constituted part of “neutral duties” for all permanent neutrals, as derived from neutrality law.17 This line of argument brought him close to ruling out Switzerland from joining the UN and the EEC not just on political but also on legal grounds, a view that contributed heavily to an ideological domestic understanding of Swiss neutrality. This process of ideologizing Swiss neutrality and making it the uncon- tested cornerstone of Swiss foreign and security policy in the postwar period had several aspects. In addition to framing political choices about foreign policy positions in legal terms, Swiss elites continually highlighted the virtues of the Swiss approach in their communications. The construction of a neutrality- based identity was also linked to the invention of a Swiss neutrality tradition. Already in the late nineteenth century, when Switzerland felt threatened by the growing nationalism of its neighbors, successful efforts were made to rein- terpret Swiss history through the lens of strict neutrality. After 1945, the main focus was on portraying Swiss neutrality during World War II in a positive light. Distinguished academics as well as other domestic opinion leaders were involved in this effort. For example, in 1961 the Swiss government commis- sioned a report from historian Edgar Bonjour, a professor at the University of Basel, on Swiss foreign policy during World War II.18 Bonjour was granted exclusive access to the documents in the Federal Archives in Bern. (Because of the strict archival access rules that prevailed at the time—prohibiting access to documents less than 50 years old—other historians were still prevented even from studying documents from the First World War period.)19 Bonjour

17. Such argumentation can still be found in Bindschedler’s contribution on “Permanent Neutrality of States,” in Rudolf Bernhardt, ed., Encyclopedia of Public International Law,Vol.3(Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1997), pp. 1011–1017. 18. On the government’s attempts to censor Swiss neutrality history after the Second World War, see Sacha Zala, Gebandigte¨ Geschichte: Amtliche Historiographie und ihr Malaise mit der Geschichte der Neutralitat,¨ 1945–1961, Bundesarchiv Dossier 7 (Bern: Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, 1998); and Sacha Zala, “Das amtliche Malaise mit der Historie: Vom Weissbuch zum Bonjour-Bericht,” in Georg Kreis and Bertrand Muller,¨ eds., Die Schweiz und der Zweite Weltkrieg (Basel: Schwabe & Co., 1997), pp. 759–780. The latter publication is also available in English translation: Sacha Zala, “Governmental Malaise with History: From the White Paper to the Bonjour Report,” in Georg Kreis, ed., Switzerland and the Second World War (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 312–332. 19. The restrictions on archival access were liberalized only in 1973, when the regulations for the Federal Archive reduced the access restrictions to 35 years, a limitation that was then

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subsequently integrated his report into his seminal nine-volume study on The History of Swiss Neutrality, published from 1965 to 1976. The title of the series shifted the focus from “foreign policy” to “neutrality.”20 Bonjour’s work had an enormous influence on the perception of Swiss neutrality. His study was widely read as an affirmation of the “rightness” of Swiss neutrality policy during World War II and after, and it dominated the historical interpretation of Swiss neutrality for the remainder of the Cold War in wider public and political circles. As Georg Kreis has observed, Bonjour and others unintentionally contributed to the national mystification of neutrality and to the equation of Swiss foreign policy with neutrality policy during the Cold War.21 Even as neutrality was being elevated to an axiomatic principle of Swiss foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s, Swiss security doctrine became almost exclusively militaristic, albeit bounded by neutrality and autonomous self- defense (expressed in the concept of armed neutrality).22

Testing the Room for Maneuver

In the early Cold War, Switzerland’s conception of neutrality and autonomous defense was a self-proclaimed working assumption rather than an internationally acknowledged policy. However, Swiss neutrality gradually regained international acceptance and legitimacy in the 1950s. First, the consolida- tion and nuclearization of East-West bipolarity provided third parties with some leeway. In 1953, the U.S. government asked Switzerland to make use of its neutrality by helping to implement the Korean armistice.23 In 1955, the Big Four held a summit in Geneva. Switzerland was increasingly appreciated

lowered to 30 years with the adoption of a new Federal Law on Archival Storage in 1998. See Bundesgesetz uber¨ die Archivierung (Archivierungsgesetz, BGA), 26 June 1998, AS 1999 2243, http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/as/1999/2243.pdf. 20. Edgar Bonjour, Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralitat:¨ Vier Jahrhunderte eidgenossischer¨ Aussen- politik, 9 vols. (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1965–1976). A one-volume short version of Bonjour’s study appeared in 1978. See Edgar Bonjour, Geschichte der schweizerischen Neutralitat:¨ Kurzfassung (Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1978). Bonjour had established his credentials for the job with his early writings in the mid-1940s on the history of Swiss neutrality. See Kreis, Kleine Neutralitatsgeschichte¨ , pp. 297–307. 21. Kreis, Kleine Neutralitatsgeschichte¨ , pp. 299–300. 22. Andreas Wenger, “Swiss Security Policy: From Autonomy to Co-operation, 1945–2002,” in Gabriel and Fischer, eds., Swiss Foreign Policy, pp. 23–45; and Kurt R. Spillmann et al., Schweizer Sicherheitspolitik seit 1945: Zwischen Autonomie und Kooperation (Zurich: NZZ, 2001). 23. Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel, The American Conception of Neutrality after 1941, Updated and Rev. Ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 132–141; Dreissig Jahre Schweizerische Korea-Mission

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as a neutral host for international conferences and a home for international organizations.24 That same year, the reinstitution of Austria’s sovereignty was conditioned on a policy of neutrality a` la Switzerland (this met with a mixed response in Bern, as Vienna decided to join the UN, in marked deviation from the Swiss interpretation of neutrality).25 All this indicated that neutral Switzerland might be able to play a positive role in the international system during the Cold War. Second, the Swiss government itself went to great lengths to emphasize that its neutrality did not mean indifference and indeed could be of service to the polarized international community. Based on the motto of (political) neutrality and (non-political) solidarity, Switzerland promoted itself as an active mediator and provider of good offices in international conflicts, advertising its neutral “reserve position” outside the UN, establishing equal relations with all states under the notion of “universality,” and engaging in international humanitarian and (albeit modest) development aid. The increased room for maneuver in the 1950s can be seen in official government declarations issued during international crises. In the early days of the Cold War, when the Swiss neutrality concept had not yet been fully accepted by the big powers, the Swiss government abstained from official declarations on international conflicts in order to strengthen the credibility of its neutrality policy. Such was the case during the 1948 Berlin Crisis and the war in Korea. This changed, however, when the Suez Crisis in late October 1956 escalated into the Suez/Hungary double crisis. In reaction to an almost unanimous condemnation of the Soviet intervention in Budapest by the Swiss public and political parties, the Swiss government on 4 November set aside its previous diplomatic restraint and declared its “consternation” at the “op- pression” of political freedoms of the Hungarian people and the “violations” of international norms and human rights. Furthermore, it called for the parties involved in both conflicts to end their hostilities and enter diplomatic negotiations.26 Although the Swiss had always understood that neutrality did not bind the individual citizen to moral indifference in matters of ideology,

1953–1983 (Zurich: Archiv fur¨ Zeitgeschichte, 1983); and Marius Schwarb, Die Mission der Schweiz in Korea in Korea (Bern: Peter Lang, 1986). 24. Guy Mettan, Genèvevilledepaix:Delaconférence sur l’Indochine alacoop` ération internationale (Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 2004). 25. Christian Jenny, Konsensformel oder Vorbild? Die Entstehung der osterreichischen¨ Neutralitat¨ und ihr Schweizer Muster (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1995). 26. The government declaration of 4 November 1956 is reprinted in Dietrich Schindler, Dokumente zur schweizerischen Neutralitat¨ seit 1945: Berichte und Stellungnahmen der schweizerischen Bundesbehorden¨ (Bern: Haupt, 1984), p. 428.

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the government, with its declaration on Hungary, for the first time stated that it would not succumb to a form of ethical neutrality in East-West crises in the European context.27 As for Switzerland’s self-declared vocation as a “super-neutral” mediator outside the UN, recent historical research paints a more nuanced picture of the possibilities and limitations of Switzerland as a bridge builder in the Cold War.28 In many respects the Suez/Hungary double crisis defined the future course of action. In addition to the official government declaration of 4 November 1956, the Swiss government two days later, at the height of the Suez Crisis, called on the United States, France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and India (as the leading non-aligned power) to gather for a peace conference in Geneva.29 This appeal greatly irritated UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold,¨ as it interfered with his own efforts to find a peaceful solution. The Western powers were equally upset about the Swiss initiative, as they blamed the Soviet Union for unduly interfering in the Middle East and the Canal region.30 With the initiative bluntly rebuffed, the Swiss government decided to take a much more cautious approach in the future.31 Thus, during the 1958–1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Swiss officials

27. The Swiss reaction to the Suez and Hungarian crises is among the best-studied cases in Swiss Cold War history. See Andreas Boesiger, “Die Doppelkrise Suez/Ungarn 1956 und ihre Rezeption in der Schweiz,” M.A. Thesis, University of Berne, 1991; Wicki, “Kein Grund zur Anderung¨ der Aussenpolitik”; Sebastian Hueber, “Die Schweiz und die Suez-Krise 1956,” M.A. Thesis, University of Berne, 2002; and Eva Pfirter, “Gute Dienste als Kompensationsstrategie: Die Schweizer Schutz- machttatigkeit¨ fur¨ Grossbritannien in Agypten¨ 1956 bis 1959,” M.A. Thesis, University of Berne, 2010. See also Robert Christian van Ooyen, Die schweizerische Neutralitat¨ in bewaffneten Konflikten nach 1945 (Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 86–105; Katharina Bretscher-Spindler, Vom Heissen zum Kalten Krieg: Vorgeschichte und Geschichte der Schweiz im Kalten Krieg 1943–1968 (Zurich: Orell Fussli,¨ 1997), pp. 238–247, 253–257; and Trachsler, Bundesrat Max Petitpierre, pp. 277–287. 28. Thomas Fischer, “From Good Offices to an Active Policy of Peace: Switzerland’s Contribution to International Conflict Resolution,” in Gabriel and Fischer, eds., Swiss Foreign Policy, pp. 74–104; Daniel Trachsler, “Gute Dienste—Mythen, Fakten, Perspektiven,” in Andreas Wenger, ed., Bulletin 2004 zur schweizerischen Sicherheitspolitik (Zurich: Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich 2004), pp. 33–64; and Reto Borsani, “Die Schweiz und die Guten Dienste: Ein weiterer Grund fur¨ den Alleingang?” Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur¨ Politische Wissenschaft, Vol. 1, No. 2–3 (Fall 1995), pp. 113–138. 29. For the text of the government’s appeal of 6 November 1956 as well as the reactions of the invited powers, see “Les reactions´ officielles et officieuses a` l’appel du Conseil Fed´ erales,”´ Notice interne du Departement´ politique, Bern, 19 November 1956, in Documents diplomatiques Suisse / Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz / Documenti diplomatici svizzeri (DDS), Vol. 20, Doc. 92, http://dodis.ch/12315. 30. Through perusal of British and U.S. sources, Mantovani declares the Swiss peace initiative a “diplomatic fiasco” in light of the negative international reactions it caused and given the fact that it had absolutely no influence on the course of events. See Mantovani, Schweizerische Sicherheitspolitik, p. 211. 31. Thomas Fischer, “Die Guten Dienste als Kompensationsstrategie zur Nicht-Mitgliedschaft bei der UNO,” Politorbis, No. 44 (January 2008), pp. 27–31, esp. 30–31; available at http://www.eda.admin .ch/politorbis.

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preventatively disclaimed any notion of putting forth a peace initiative on their own account, for fear of potential damage to Switzerland’s reputation as a neutral country.32 With the limits of an independent peace policy becoming obvious after Korea and Suez, Switzerland—despite continued rhetoric of solidarity and good offices—came to the conclusion that the best way to preserve its neutral status was by pursuing a passive foreign policy rather than exposing itself to risk by actively promoting peace initiatives.33 The Swiss government continued at the domestic level to praise aloofness from the UN as an asset in providing the world with special assistance in the search for peaceful solutions to international crises, but historical analysis has since shown that the concept of “active neutrality” promoted at the time had its limits under the prevailing Cold War circumstances and that the argument about “neutrality as a source of peace” suffered from rhetorical overstretch. Switzerland had come to acknowledge the dominance of new, influential players such as the UN and the superpowers in international mediation and peace politics. In consequence, the Swiss authorities mainly concentrated on three complementary fields of action during Cold War crises in the 1960s: engagement in humanitarian relief, financial and logistical support of UN peacekeeping operations, and provision of more-passive forms of good offices, such as the protection of foreign interests. The government’s repeated decisions to contribute financially to the med- ical and food aid deployed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a typical example of its reaction to the humanitarian consequences of Cold War crises.34 Humanitarian relief aid was never much disputed among the population and the political parties, having been seen as the “twin brother”

32. Mantovani, Schweizerische Sicherheitspolitik, pp. 215–217; Eric Flury-Dasen, “‘Zum Konzentra- tionslager gewordene Stadt’: Die schweizerische Haltung zur Berlin-Krise und zum Mauerbau 1958– 1961,” in Heiner Timmermann, ed., 1961—Mauerbau und Aussenpolitik (Munster:¨ LIT, 2002), pp. 269–292; and Thomas Fischer, “Die guten Dienste des IKRK und der Schweiz in der Kuba-Krise 1962,” Beitrage¨ , No. 30, Forschungsstelle fur¨ Internationale Beziehungen, ETH Zurich (October 2000), available online at http://e-collection.ethbib.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:23628/eth-23628-01.pdf. See also Stephanie Popp, “Switzerland and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No. 17/18 (Fall 2012), pp. 728–749, available online athttp://www.wilsoncenter.org/ 33. Soon after its instigation in 1953, the Korea mission had become an unsatisfactory operation for Switzerland, which together with Sweden came to be considered a “Western neutral” in Korea, with Poland and Czechoslovakia representing “Eastern neutrals” in the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. Moreover, the international mandate in Korea turned out to be impossible to implement, which is why the Swiss presence was reduced from 140 personnel to a symbolic ﬁve ofﬁcers as early as 1956, when the delegations were withdrawn from their deployment in North and South Korea to the armistice line on the 38th parallel. 34. In the wake of the Hungarian crisis, the government also agreed to grant asylum in Switzerland to 14,000 refugees from Hungary. This offer was repeated during the 1968 crisis in Czechoslovakia,

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of neutrality since the end of the nineteenth century. The ICRC was likewise viewed as complementary to neutral Switzerland (and not just because of the symbolism of its emblem, an inversion of the Swiss flag).35 From a historio- graphic point of view, however, the critical account of the intricate relationship between the ICRC in Geneva and the federal administration in Bern remains to be written.36 The question of how Switzerland should support the newly established peacekeeping operations in the Middle East and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s posed some difficulties, however. Sending troops was definitely out of the question for Switzerland, a neutral non-member of the UN. During the settlement of the Suez Crisis, the UN asked Swissair, the national airline carrier, to take over transport of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) from Naples to the UN’s area of operations in Egypt. The Swiss government, after prolonged internal debate, decided to pay for the cost of the chartered airplanes. The decision was made only after vocal accusations were raised from UN headquarters in New York that neutral Switzerland would realize an undue financial profit from the international peace mission if Swissair charged the UN full rental for its planes.37 The Swiss had learned their lesson, and when the UN some years later asked for air transport capacity and logistical support for the UN operation in Congo, the earlier precedent inducedthe Swiss government to issue a swift and positive answer.38 Domestically, the argument was now made that, because of Switzerland’s long-standing humanitarian tradition and status of neutrality, Switzerland had an obligation to give support to international peace efforts under the lead of the UN; however, the government always made sure that the requested support entailed absolutely no risk to the country’s official policy of neutrality.39 The one area of good offices where Switzerland played a key role throughout the Cold War was in the protection of foreign interests when other states

when 11,000 Czechs and Slovaks were permitted to take up residence in Switzerland. See Van Ooyen, Die schweizerische Neutralitat¨ in bewaffneten Konﬂikten, pp. 95–96, 111–112. 35. Daniel Frei, “Sendungsgedanken in der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik,” in Schweizerisches Jahrbuch fur¨ politische Wissenschaft, No. 6 (Lausanne: Schweizerische Vereinigung fur¨ Politikwissenschaft, 1966), pp. 98–113. 36. See David P. Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 239–240. For an illuminating study relating to this subject, see Dominik Matter, “SOS Biafra”: Die Schweizerischen Aussenbeziehungen im Spannungsfeld des Nigerianischen Burgerkriegs,¨ 1967–1970 (Bern: Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz, 2015). 37. Wicki, “Kein Grund zur Anderung¨ der Aussenpolitik,” pp. 80–86; and Robert Diethelm, Die Schweiz und friedenserhaltende Operationen 1920–1995 (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1997), pp. 162–163. 38. Diethelm, Die Schweiz, pp. 164–170; and Marisa Birri, “Die Schweiz und der Kongo in den ersten Jahren der Unabhangigkeit¨ 1960–1963,” M.A. Thesis, University of Berne, 2007, pp. 55–58. 39. Fischer, “From Good Ofﬁces to an Active Policy of Peace,” pp. 90–93.

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broke off mutual diplomatic relations.40 Although Switzerland welcomed the opportunity to offer such services as a way to demonstrate the “usefulness” of its neutrality, neutrality was not the only reason that Switzerland came to act in this capacity. Other factors equally accounted for this choice, such as the country’s long-standing experience in handling such mandates during the two world wars, the global network of Swiss embassies, and the government’s willingness and capacity to assume the workload of these mandates with its diplomatic service.41

Stuck with Bindschedler in the Later Cold War

Foreign policy conducted in accordance with the Bindschedler guidelines worked fairly well for the Swiss until the 1970s. After that, changes in the international system brought about growing pressure to revisit the neutrality concept and to become more open toward “political” multilateralism. Overall, however, changes in Swiss foreign policy in the later Cold War were limited by domestic resistance to major adaptations as well as continuing international instability. Theriseofdetente´ between the superpowers and in Europe, the new dy- namics in European integration, and the growing North-South dimension in international relations prompted Switzerland to reconsider its foreign policy in the early 1970s. A free trade agreement with the EEC in 1972 quickly removed the need for strategic rethinking with regard to Switzerland and Eu- ropean integration, the issues of a less restrictive neutrality policy, Switzerland’s position vis-a-vis` European detente,´ and the future of its UN policy, became major items on the foreign policy agenda.42 In March 1971, a “Study Group on Foreign Policy,” comprising government representatives as well as eminent personalities from academia, business, and trade associations, former diplomats, and the military elite was set up to determine, in a prospective report, possible alternatives to the established course of “neutrality and solidarity.”43 The government wanted the study

40. For statistical data, see the chart in Trachsler, “Gute Dienste,” p. 41. 41. For speciﬁc case studies, see the contributions on Switzerland as a protecting power in “Die Schweiz als Schutzmacht,” special issue, Politorbis, Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik, Vol. 1 (2006), available online at http://eda.admin.ch/politorbis; and “Entre guerres et ruptures, la protection dans les relations internationales—II,” special issue, Relations internationales, No. 144 (2010). 42. Thomas Fischer, Die Grenzen der Neutralitat:¨ Schweizerisches KSZE-Engagement und gescheiterte UNO-Beitrittspolitik im Kalten Krieg, 1969–1986 (Zurich: Chronos, 2004). 43. Ibid., pp. 78–80.

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group to clarify whether neutrality was still the best means of defending the country’s national sovereignty in a changing global context or whether new forms of international cooperation were required. Given the world’s growing interdependence, academics such as Daniel Frei and Alois Riklin had criticized the exclusive focus on neutrality in Swiss foreign policy and advocated a shift toward greater multilateral action. However, against the background of the war in the Middle East in 1973 and the onset of a crisis in superpower detente,´ the neutrality guidelines promulgated in 1954 came in for less questioning by the study group than had initially been expected. Internal differences proved insurmountable and prevented the group from completing a final report. The government soon lost interest in the exercise and quietly dissolved the group in 1976, but two things remain noteworthy about these expert deliberations. First, none of the participants advocated an abandonment of neutrality, not even the more critical and progressive voices such as Frei and Riklin. Rather, they wanted to give more weight to other principles, such as solidarity (international engagement for peace and human rights) and availability (Switzerland as a meeting place for international negotiations, good offices). Second, the study group resulted in an affirmation rather than a critical reevaluation of the Bindschedler guidelines.44 The best expression of this revalidation of the “old” conception can be found in the fact that Bindschedler himself set the tone of a debate on the meaning of contemporary neutrality with Swiss and Austrian colleagues in 1976–1977 in the Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik.45 Despite the stagnation of the conceptual debates, Swiss foreign policy took on a new dynamism when it came to concrete policy issues such as European detente´ and the UN. In the negotiations on the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which culminated in the signing of the Helsinki Final Act on 1 August 1975, Switzerland—having overcome its initial skepticism—came to play a remarkably active political role not only

44. Ibid., pp. 133–140. 45. Rudolf Bindschedler, “Neutralitatspolitik¨ und Sicherheitspolitik,” Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik, Vol. 16, No. 6 (1976), pp. 339–354. The Austrian position was given by Karl Zemanek, “‘Zeitgemasse’¨ Neutralitat?”¨ Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik, Vol. 16, No. 6 (1976), pp. 355– 367. Both articles were widely commented on in the following issue of the journal by prominent Swiss and Austrian experts. See Felix Ermacora et al., “Immerwahrende¨ Neutralitat¨ im letzten Viertel des 20. Jahrhunderts—Kommentare zu den Aussagen Rudolf L. Bindschedlers und Karl Zemaneks,” Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik, Vol.17, No. 1 (1977), pp. 3–22. The discussion was closed in a third issue with replies from Bindschedler and Zemanek. See Rudolf Bindschedler, “Immerwahrende¨ Neutralitat—Bemerkungen¨ zu den Kommentaren,” Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik,Vol.17, No. 2–3 (1977), pp. 132–133; and Karl Zemanek, “‘Zeitgemasse’¨ Neutralitat—Schlussbemerkungen,”¨ Osterreichische¨ Zeitschrift fur¨ Aussenpolitik, Vol. 17, No. 2–3 (1977), pp. 134–136.

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as a mediator between the blocs but as an initiator of proposals of speciﬁcally Swiss provenance.46 However, despite implementing new elements of Swiss foreign policy, including active engagement in politically disputed issues such as human rights, the government was careful to depict its participation in the CSCE in terms of a continuation of its traditional neutrality policy. One of the central goals for the Swiss delegation to the CSCE negotiations was to safeguard the “status of neutrality” in the catalog of principles guiding the relations among participating states. The Swiss insisted on special mention of the “right of neutrality,” and the inscription of that principle in the CSCE Final Act was a major success for Switzerland, even if it did initially cause friction with the Austrian Foreign Ministry, which saw no need to reopen the discussion on neutrality. (The Austrians later dropped their objections but made clear they still saw no need for the clause.) Since the Versailles Treaty in 1919, no multilateral document had made explicit reference to “special status” of neutrality internationally.47 As in the case of the CSCE, the Swiss also attempted to combine a more active policy with an unaltered commitment to neutrality with regard to the UN. This time, however, the attempt failed. By 1977, the government had ba- sically come to the conclusion that the disadvantages of non-membership were beginning to prevail and that UN accession had actually become “desirable” in light of the organization’s growing membership (now almost universal). The government thus quietly moved away from the Bindschedler paradigm of non-participation in political multilateral structures, acknowledging that any issue in contemporary international relations naturally had a political dimension. Yet it refused to qualify neutrality. Switzerland did modify its sanctions policy by arguing that it would now support economic sanctions when they did not contravene the law of neutrality.48 However, rather than acknowledge the primacy of modern UN law over neutrality in the case of collective security

46. On Switzerland in the CSCE, see Thomas Fischer, Neutral Power in the CSCE: The N+N States and the Making of the Helsinki Accords 1975 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009); and Christoph Breitenmoser, Sicherheit fur¨ Europa: Die KSZE-Politik der Schweiz bis zur Unterzeichnung der Helsinki-Schlussakte zwischen Skepsis und aktivem Engagement, Vol. 40 of Zurich Contributions to Security Policy (Zurich: Forschungsstelle fur¨ Sicherheitspolitik und Konﬂiktanalyse, ETH Zurich,¨ 1996). 47. Fischer, Neutral Power in the CSCE, pp. 254–262. 48. This was the consequence of the Swiss experience with UN sanctions against Rhodesia in 1967 and various sanctions imposed against the apartheid regime in South Africa from 1963 onward. In both cases, Switzerland had “autonomously” aligned with the embargoing parties under pressure from the UN and Western public opinion. Rudolf Letsch, Rhodesien, die Vereinten Nationen und die Schweiz (St. Gallen: Hochschule, 1983); Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel, “Switzerland and Economic Sanctions: The Dilemma of a Neutral,” in Marko Milivojevic and Pierre Maurer, eds., Swiss Neutrality and Security (New York: Berg, 1990), pp. 232–245, esp. 240–241; and van Ooyen, Die schweizerische Neutralitat¨ in bewaffneten Konﬂikten nach 1945, pp. 299–313.

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systems (as Sweden did), the Swiss government merely argued that UN membership was now possible because the UN security system was ineffective and existing Cold War realities made a collision between neutrality and collective security unlikely. Parliament and the electorate did not accept this line of argument and rejected the government’s proposal for UN membership when it was finally put to a public referendum in 1986.49 The return of the Cold War to Europe in the early 1980s, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and NATO’s decision to deploy new nuclear missiles to counter Soviet missiles, not only contributed to the negative outcome of the Swiss vote on UN membership; but also cemented the view that Switzerland still had room to carry out its classical role as neutral meeting place and provider of good offices for the superpowers. This perception was nourished when the Swiss took up the “protecting power” mandate for the United States in Teheran during and after the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1980, as well as when the first superpower summit between Reagan and Gorbachev was hosted in Geneva in 1985.50 However, beneath the surface, Switzerland, as in the early Cold War years, came under pressure to follow suit when the United States renewed all the strategic embargo measures in a reinforcement of the original COCOM regime.51 Although neutrality remained the undisputed paradigm of Swiss foreign policy in the 1980s, its precise meaning was growing unclear. Under Foreign Minister Pierre Aubert, who had taken office in 1978 and advocated a “dy- namization of foreign policy,” with a focus on international solidarity and human rights, a new generation of diplomats came to the top echelon advo- cating a more modern and pragmatic interpretation of neutrality.52 Formerly

49. On the failed attempt to join the UN in the 1980s, see Fischer, Die Grenzen der Neutralitat¨ , pp. 304–337, 384–455; Daniel Mockli,¨ “Vor einer neuen UNO-Abstimmung: Drei Erkenntnisse aus der Niederlage von 1986,” in Kurt R. Spillmann and Andreas Wenger, eds., Bulletin 2000 zur schweizerischen Sicherheitspolitik (Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 2000), pp. 53–87; and Carlo Moos, Ja zum Volkerbund—Nein¨ zur UNO: Die Volksabstimmungen von 1920 und 1986 in der Schweiz (Zurich: Chronos, 2001), pp. 41–46, 97–136. 50. On the Swiss role in the Iran crisis, see Thomas Fischer, Die Rolle der Schweiz in der Iran- Geiselkrise 1979–1981: Eine Studie zur Politik der Guten Dienste im Kalten Krieg (Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 2004), also available online at http://e-collection.ethbib.ethz.ch/eserv/eth:27411 /eth-27411-01.pdf. 51. The issue has yet to be studied in detail, but there is enough evidence to assert that Switzerland, under U.S. pressure, aligned with Western embargo measures in 1979 to avoid becoming a loophole for strategic technology transfers. See Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel, Schweizer Neutralitat¨ im Wandel: Hin zur EG (Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Huber, 1990), pp. 86–93; and Paul Luif, “Strategic Embargoes and European Neutrals: The Cases of Austria and Sweden,” in Vilho Harle, ed., Challenges and Responses in European Security, TAPRI Yearbook 1986 (Tampere, Finland: TUP, 1986), pp. 174–188, esp. 187–188. 52. Swiss foreign policymakers in the 1970s no longer were just paying lip service to neutrality and humanitarianism. They began to take into account the norms of an international human rights policy

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dominant figures such as Bindschedler retired, and State Secretary Albert Weitnauer, the top-ranking diplomat in the Foreign Ministry and another representative of the traditional school of neutrality thinking, was dismissed from his position.53 An expression of the slowly changing understanding of neutrality policy within the federal bureaucracy was the government’s explicit condemnation of the proclamation of martial law on 13 December 1981 by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland. The Swiss government was among the first Western states to voice public condemnation in an official statement, denouncing the repressive measures as a violation of basic human rights. The declaration was remarkable by the standards of Swiss neutrality, both for its early publication one day after the events took place and for its open criticism of a foreign government. Switzerland’s decision to join the United States in condemning the downing of the South Korean civilian airliner KAL 007 over Soviet territory in 1983 as an “act of barbarism” was also remarkable in this respect.54 Even as Swiss diplomacy quietly developed new instruments to come to terms with the realities of international multilateralism and the renewed Cold War atmosphere between Washington and Moscow in the 1980s, a more traditional neutrality conception prevailed within parliament and the public at large until the end of the Cold War. When, in the context of the government’s efforts to join the UN in 1984, the parliamentary committee for foreign affairs of the National Council initiated a new debate on the interpretation and handling of neutrality, the attempt to formulate a common paper on the basis of “50 theses on neutrality” had no substantial results because the parliamentari- ans were unable to overcome their differences of views on the basic elements of a redefined neutrality. Unlike the study group on foreign policy a decade earlier, which at least theoretically reconsidered the basic validity of neutrality in a changing global context, the parliamentary debate of the 1980s focused exclusively on how best to adapt neutrality, the “undisputed principle of Swiss foreign policy,” to the conflicting contemporary international environment. The debates were an indication of the extent to which the foreign and security policy credo of strict neutrality and autonomous defense had become a national myth and a quasi-religious principle.55

more consciously. See Jon A. Fanzun, “Swiss Human Rights Policy: From Reluctance to Normalcy,” in Gabriel and Fischer, eds., Swiss Foreign Policy, pp. 127–158. 53. Fischer, Die Grenzen der Neutralitat¨ , pp. 268–285. 54. Ibid., pp. 265–268. 55. The initiator of the debate, National Councilor Peter Sager, was convinced that “perpetual neutrality is the only stance that fully lives up to the standards of the categorical imperative: If every country in

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Shadows of the Past in Post–Cold War Switzerland

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the strategic context of Swiss foreign and security policy changed drastically. This paved the way for a critical academic reevaluation of Swiss neutrality during the Cold War. On the political level, the Swiss government in 1993 reconceptualized neutrality and signiﬁ- cantly limited its scope, emphasizing participation and cooperation rather than neutrality as the main guiding principles of Swiss foreign policy. However, with identities changing more slowly than foreign policy designs, the Swiss electorate backed the new approach to a limited extent only, with Bindschedler-type in- terpretations of neutrality still playing a major role in Swiss foreign policy debates. Some academics had already criticized Switzerland’s heavy focus on neutrality during the Cold War.56 However, only the end of East-West antagonism led to a broader reevaluation of the Swiss conception of neutrality, in particular with regard to internationally imposed UN sanctions.57 Parallel to the political debates on the future of neutrality after 1989, and in the wake of the opening

the world were perpetually neutral as well as both willing and able to defend itself, that would ipso facto mean the achievement of world peace.” Ibid., p. 366. 56. Among the first to express public criticism of the ideologization of neutrality after the Second World War was Daniel Frei. A historian by training, he belonged to the first generation of Swiss political scientists who took up the study of the issue of neutrality from a theoretical perspective and challenged the wisdom of the strict neutrality doctrine imposed by the 1954 neutrality guidelines on the country’s foreign policy. See Daniel Frei, “Die Ara¨ Petitpierre, 1945–1961—Ruckblick¨ auf eine Epoche schweizerischer Aussenpolitik,” in Louis-Edouard Roulet, ed., Max Petitpierre: Seize ans de neutralité active: Aspects de la politique étrangère de la Suisse (1945–1961) (Neuchatel:ˆ La Baconniere,` 1980), pp. 165–174; Daniel Frei, “Grunde¨ und Scheingrunde¨ fur¨ die schweizerische Neutralitat,”¨ Wirtschaft und Recht, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1974), pp. 106–120; and Daniel Frei, Dimensionen neutraler Politik: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der internationalen Beziehungen (Geneva: Droz, 1969). Besides Frei, Alois Riklin, with his analysis of the different functions of neutrality, and Jurg¨ Martin Gabriel, with his emphasis on the changing character of Swiss neutrality policy in the course of history, substantially contributed to this debate during the later Cold War years. See Alois Riklin, Grundlegung der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik, Arbeitsheft 10 der Reihe W (Geneva: Schweizerischer Aufklarungs-Dienst,¨ 1975). On the functions of neutrality, see Alois Riklin, “Die Neutralitat¨ der Schweiz,” in Alois Riklin, Hans Haug, and Raymond Probst, eds., Neues Handbuch der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik, Schriftenreihe der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft fur¨ Aussenpolitik 11 (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1992), pp. 191–209; and Gabriel, The American Conception of Neutrality after 1941. For Gabriel’s notion of the changing conception of neutrality, see his Schweizer Neutralitat¨ im Wandel;andJurg¨ Martin Gabriel, Sackgasse Neutralitat¨ (Zurich: vdf Hochschulverlag, 1997), which reassembles a set of articles on the subject published from 1985 to 1995. On Frei, Riklin, and Gabriel and their contributions to the Swiss neutrality debate, see Kreis, Kleine Neutralitatsgeschichte¨ , pp. 307–313, 316–321, 325–328. 57. See Gabriel, “Switzerland and Economic Sanctions,” pp. 232–245; Andre´ Schaller, Die Teilnahme der Schweiz an den gegen den Irak gerichteten wirtschaftlichen Massnahmen der UNO: Wandel und Kontinuitat¨ in der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik (St. Gallen: Institut fur¨ Politikwissenschaft, 1992); and Dietrich Schindler, “Kollektive Sicherheit der Vereinten Nationen und dauernde Neutralitat¨ der Schweiz,” Schweizerische Zeitschrift fur¨ internationales und europaisches¨ Recht, Vol. 4 (1992), pp. 435– 479. For an English version of this article, see Dietrich Schindler, “Changing Conceptions of Neutrality

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of archival materials, historical research during the 1990s focused strongly on the mystification of neutrality and the question of “missed opportunities” to join the UN and participate in European integration in the early postwar period.58 Academic research on Swiss Cold War neutrality during this stage was pro- pelled by two major political debates: first, the rejection by the electorate of a governmental decision to join the European Economic Area (EEA) in 1992, which led to a heated discussion of Switzerland’s relationship to the European integration process; and second, the controversy, starting in 1996, surrounding the issue of “dormant bank accounts,” which resulted in a broad public debate and a critical reevaluation of Swiss neutrality policy during the Second World War in particular. In both instances the government reacted by initiating large research programs.59 Research by a new generation of historians was wont to depict Switzerland’s Cold War neutrality conception as a mere chimera, allowing for complete integration of the country into the Western capitalist camp, with full economic benefits, while only officially abstaining from parti- sanship in international politics under the pretense of neutrality and acting as a humanitarian benefactor. Unlike during the Cold War period, Swiss foreign and security policy was defined much more broadly in these studies to include non-state actors, sociocultural aspects such as strong anti-Communism, and far-reaching cooperation below the level of official participation. As a result, Swiss neutrality was depicted as no more than rhetoric and “morally inflated functional argument,” allowing the country to trade freely and unscrupulously with all sides while taking moral sides in the ideological battle.60

in Switzerland,” Austrian Journal of Public and International Law, Vol. 44 (1992), pp. 105–116. The contributions to Riklin, Haug, and Probst, eds., Neues Handbuch der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik, mostly depict the issue of neutrality in classical Cold War terms. 58. Georg Kreis, ed., Die Schweiz im internationalen System der Nachkriegszeit 1943–1950, Itinera, Fasc. 18 (Basel: Schwabe-Verlag, 1996). For two contemporary publications resulting from the debate on the future of neutrality in Switzerland, see Stephan Kux, ed., Zukunft Neutralitat?¨ Die schweizerische Aussen- und Sicherheitspolitik im Umbruch (Bern/Stuttgart/Wien: Haupt, 1994); and Gunther¨ Bachler,¨ ed., Beitreten oder Trittbrettfahren? Die Zukunft der Neutralitat¨ in Europa (Chur, Switzerland: Ruegger,¨ 1994). 59. Nationale Forschungsprogramm (NFP), “Grundlagen und Moglichkeiten¨ der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik,” NFP 42, available online at http://www.snf.ch/de/fokusForschung/nationale -forschungsprogramme/nfp42-grundlagen-moeglichkeiten-der-schweizerischen-aussenpolitik/Seiten /default.aspx. A synthesis of the results of the project has been published in Laurent Goetschel, Magdalena Bernath, and Daniel Schwarz, Schweizerische Aussenpolitik: Grundlagen und Moglichkeiten¨ (Zurich: NZZ, 2002). See also Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland—Second World War, Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War: Final Report (Zurich: Pendo Editions, 2002), http://www.uek.ch. 60. Hans Ulrich Jost, Europa und die Schweiz, 1945–1950: Europarat, Supranationalitat¨ und schweizerische Unabhangigkeit¨ (Zurich: Chronos, 1999), p. 141. See also Jakob Tanner, “Die Schweiz und

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Questioning the morality of the Swiss Cold War neutrality strategy, these studies led to a further series of topical analyses testing the new hypotheses against in-depth archival research on the interwoven questions of neutrality, conceptual foreign policy decisions in the postwar period, Swiss military cooperation with the West, and further compensation strategies for the Swiss absence from important multilateral schemes during the first half of the Cold War period.61 While this research further explored the “dualistic” approach of decision-makers in foreign policy, it also illustrated how the process of ideologization on the level of public speech elevated neutrality to a core element of national identity in the early Cold War period.62 Parallel to such—predominantly critical—academic reassessments of Swiss neutrality, the 1989 watershed also compelled policymakers to reconcep- tualize Swiss foreign policy. The Federal Council in its foreign policy report of 1993 self-critically admitted an overfixation with neutrality during the Cold War and distanced itself from the Bindschedler doctrine. The report in fact limited neutrality to its legal core of non-participation in war and made the case for Swiss accession to the EU and the UN, as well as significant Swiss contributions to international peacekeeping and European security cooperation.63

Europa im 20. Jahrhundert: Wirtschaftliche Integration ohne politische Partizipation,” in Paul Bairoch and Martin Korner,¨ eds., Die Schweiz in der Weltwirtschaft (15.–20. Jh.) (Zurich: Chronos, 1990), pp. 409–428; Jakob Tanner, Grundlinien der schweizerischen Aussenpolitik seit 1945, Arbeitspapier der schweizerischen Friedensstiftung (Bern: sFs, 1993); Hans Ulrich Jost, “Switzerland’s Atlantic Perspec- tives,” in Milivojevic and Maurer, eds., Swiss Neutrality and Security, pp. 110–121; and Hug et al., Die Aussenpolitik der Schweiz im kurzen 20. Jahrhundert. 61. On conceptual foreign policy decisions in the postwar period, see Mockli,¨ Neutralitat,¨ Solidaritat,¨ Sonderfall; Trachsler, Neutral zwischen Ost und West?; and Trachsler, Bundesrat Max Petitpierre.On Swiss military cooperation with the West, see Mantovani, Schweizerische Sicherheitspolitik im Kalten Krieg (1947–1963). On compensation strategies, see Peter Hug and Martin Kloter, eds., Aufstieg und Niedergang des Bilateralismus: Schweizerische Aussen- und Aussenwirtschaftspolitik, 1930–1960: Rahmenbedingungen, Entscheidungsstrukturen, Fallstudien (Zurich: Chronos, 1999); Maurhofer, Die schweizerische Europapolitik vom Marshallplan zur EFTA 1947 bis 1960; and Martin Zbinden, Der Assoziationsversuch der Schweiz mit der EWG 1961–1963: Ein Lehrstuck¨ schweizerischer Europapolitik (Bern: Paul Haupt, 2006). 62. Research on Swiss neutrality policy during the ﬁrst three decades of the Cold War has in the meantime become possible through the publication of Documents diplomatiques suisses, 1945–1972, Vols. 16–25 (Zurich: Chronos; Locarno: Dado;` Geneva: Zoe,´ 1997–2014); and the building up of the related Dodis database (www.dodis.ch), including a highly useful bibliography of more than 3,000 titles on the history of Switzerland: http://db.dodis.ch/. Historical studies on the later Cold War period based on primary sources remain scarce. Exceptions include Fischer, Die Grenzen der Neutralitat¨ ; Moos, Ja zum Volkerbund¨ ;andGeorgKreis,Die Schweiz und Sudafrika¨ 1948–1994: Schlussbericht des im Auftrag des Bundesrats durchgefuhrten¨ NFP42+ (Bern: Haupt, 2005). A solid basis for tracing the main course of events in Swiss foreign policy in this period is provided by Manfred Linke, Schweizerische Aussenpolitik der Nachkriegszeit (1945–1989): Eine von amtlichen Verlautbarungen des Bundesrates ausgehende Darstellung und Analyse (Chur, Switzerland: Ruegger,¨ 1995). 63. The report is available at http://www.ssn.ethz.ch/.

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However, in a political system marked by direct democracy, such a pro- found reorientation of foreign policy proved impossible to implement. Al- though the name of Bindschedler is largely forgotten nowadays, the traditional Swiss neutrality conception is still remarkably popular. Although Switzerland has implemented UN sanctions since the early 1990s and joined the UN in 2002, a majority in favor of EU membership has not materialized. In contrast to the other neutral states that in 1995 joined the EU, the Swiss are still pursuing a strategy of bilateral sectoral agreements with Brussels. Nor is there broad support for Swiss contributions to peacekeeping, which is why Switzerland has sent far fewer troops abroad than have the other European neutral countries.64 Efforts to deemphasize neutrality in public discourse after 1989 proved to be counterproductive for the Federal Council and only boosted those in favor of sticking with Switzerland’s traditional foreign policy conception. This is why even proponents of a more active foreign policy today base their arguments on the notion of neutrality. The omnipresence of neutrality in the political debates conceals, however, the domestic divisions concerning Switzerland’s role in the world today. Although a staggering 95 percent of the Swiss expressed support for neutrality in 2016, Swiss citizens do not share a common understanding of what this concept means today.65 Nor do the Swiss agree on the extent to which neutrality can still serve as a viable security strategy in today’s strategic environment. Neutrality continues to be a major identity booster in Switzerland, while also helping to position Switzerland as a bridge builder and mediator. But neutrality has offered little guidance for how Switzerland should position itself in a globalized world marked by continuous integration processes as well as new polarization and political fragmentation.

64. Although many factors account for this peculiarity, it is also a reﬂection of the strong Swiss sense of neutrality that has endured despite the end of the Cold War. See Clive H. Church, ed., Switzerland and the European Union: A Close, Contradictory and Misunderstood Relationship (London: Routledge, 2007). 65. See the annual survey “Sicherheit” published by the Center for Security Studies and the Military Academy at ETH Zurich,¨ http://www.css.ethz.ch/.

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