Austrian YouTube channel Kraut who makes quite thoroughly researched videos about geopolitics and history talks about the differences, values, and the international influence of several neutral countries in Europe, including Switzerland. The second half is particularly interesting because he proposes that Switzerland should use its neutrality more actively as Sweden and Finland are joining Nato, and thereby potentially giving up their role as a european moral conscience. Any thoughts about this?
> Switzerland provided trade services to the Nazis. (paraphrased)
Mostly trade with the allies – they knew too. Also, Switzerland’s economy was going to collapse. Also on top of that 1/4-1/3 or so were probably going to starve on discontinuing trade – Plan Wahlen or not. Never mind the chance of getting invaded – usually no one blames tiny surrounded dependent countries for making concessions to one of the most powerful alliances in the world but in this case it became somehow fashionable years later.
Really: Any of these complaints about my ancestors by EU members / the USA who currently can’t even find consensus to discontinue trade with Russia (for fear of what, ~5% of their GDP and no starvation?) come across as extremely hypocritical to me. And it’s also not at all like this is the one singular example in recent history.
> parasitic profiteering from conflict
Much in the spirit of the above: Same in history, same now – for example this time Ukraine is holding up the mirror with a very simple metric: https://leave-russia.org/bi-analytics.
Making this about neutral nations or Switzerland is completely depending on using cherry-picked examples. Other cherry picks will easily be able to show how horrible non-neutral / non-Swiss nations are. I am not aware of any fair metrics for this BTW, just observing that it is oh so easy.
> Neutral countries can sometimes do good with active behavior
Frankly we might have influenced even more things in the world than Sweden, do some research. I find it unlikely we can *also* fill the role Sweden had at the same time if they choose to give these roles up.
Besides, some of these were supported/enabled by the rest of the Swiss system and government but ultimately *individual* achievements by diplomats, officials, or normal people few or no other individuals might have pulled off. It makes it even more dubious we could jump in for Sweden since I quite strongly think that for them it was the same.
Seems like I cannot agree with many of the implied or explicit premises and therefore also basically not with any of the ideas and conclusions. I do not see what specific difference could be simply imposed, we already voted on a lot of this and you *can* see the difference between generations. At the same time, is not actually *another rule set to military neutrality* being offered by the UN, so this specifically remained within the given constraints.
2 comments
Austrian YouTube channel Kraut who makes quite thoroughly researched videos about geopolitics and history talks about the differences, values, and the international influence of several neutral countries in Europe, including Switzerland. The second half is particularly interesting because he proposes that Switzerland should use its neutrality more actively as Sweden and Finland are joining Nato, and thereby potentially giving up their role as a european moral conscience. Any thoughts about this?
> Switzerland provided trade services to the Nazis. (paraphrased)
Mostly trade with the allies – they knew too. Also, Switzerland’s economy was going to collapse. Also on top of that 1/4-1/3 or so were probably going to starve on discontinuing trade – Plan Wahlen or not. Never mind the chance of getting invaded – usually no one blames tiny surrounded dependent countries for making concessions to one of the most powerful alliances in the world but in this case it became somehow fashionable years later.
Really: Any of these complaints about my ancestors by EU members / the USA who currently can’t even find consensus to discontinue trade with Russia (for fear of what, ~5% of their GDP and no starvation?) come across as extremely hypocritical to me. And it’s also not at all like this is the one singular example in recent history.
> parasitic profiteering from conflict
Much in the spirit of the above: Same in history, same now – for example this time Ukraine is holding up the mirror with a very simple metric: https://leave-russia.org/bi-analytics.
Making this about neutral nations or Switzerland is completely depending on using cherry-picked examples. Other cherry picks will easily be able to show how horrible non-neutral / non-Swiss nations are. I am not aware of any fair metrics for this BTW, just observing that it is oh so easy.
> Neutral countries can sometimes do good with active behavior
Frankly we might have influenced even more things in the world than Sweden, do some research. I find it unlikely we can *also* fill the role Sweden had at the same time if they choose to give these roles up.
Besides, some of these were supported/enabled by the rest of the Swiss system and government but ultimately *individual* achievements by diplomats, officials, or normal people few or no other individuals might have pulled off. It makes it even more dubious we could jump in for Sweden since I quite strongly think that for them it was the same.
Seems like I cannot agree with many of the implied or explicit premises and therefore also basically not with any of the ideas and conclusions. I do not see what specific difference could be simply imposed, we already voted on a lot of this and you *can* see the difference between generations. At the same time, is not actually *another rule set to military neutrality* being offered by the UN, so this specifically remained within the given constraints.