4 ms·
Do the Swiss want to be considered someone's ally or neutral?
by kleton 2y ago
Do the Swiss want to be considered someone's ally or neutral?
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoYes.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoAll of them at the same time, they want to eat their cake, have their cake, sell their cake and rent their cake. Neutral means you get to profit from doing business with all sides at the same time while spinning some virtuous BS PR how you don't take any sides while you deal under the table with bloody war lords. That's how Switzerland and later Austria got rich in the cold war, by being the middle men between the NATO and USSR deals. Today it's being a middle man between NATO, China, Russia. There's always gonna be demand for middle men to wash dirty laundry of various countries' deals that they prefer to keep secret so they can pretend to stay clean on the public scene. European countries would do well to stop being so complacent and relying on US for high-tech and defense since the US never hesitates to flip the switch from "you're a valuable ally" to "you're our bitch, whaddaya gonna do about it?" whenever it needs to strong-arm you into complacency, and so the EU should invest heavily on having a competitive local defense and high-tech industry, but who am I kidding, this is always falling on deaf ears and nothing's gonna change.
- aktuel 2y agoTo be fair, what country doesn't act like they have this cake replicator technology? Certainly the U.S. and England are firmly in cakeism territory.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoI don't think it's too much wrong with using the exploits you've got since every country would do that if they could, just don't piss on peoples' heads and tell them it's raining. Pretending you're neutral while you're dealing with all sides is a very hypocritical definition of neutrality that people aren't buying.
- brianstrimp 2y ago> Pretending you're neutral while you're dealing with all sides That's the very definition of it though.
- lukan 2y agoIt also means not wanting to interfere into other peoples buisness so much. Swiss has not invaded anyone in a long time.
- genewitch 2y ago> European countries would do well to stop being so complacent and relying on US for high-tech and defense, and invest heavily on having a competitive local defense and high-tech industry, Yes, I like this speech better with the von der Lyon accent, when I heard it a couple days ago.
- Cumpiler69 2y agoGot a source to that? Knowing VDL I don't doubt it, just would like to hear it for myself to have a laugh, since she's the most hypocritical, useless, corrupt, champagne socialist in Europe.
- genewitch 2y agoDepends, do you want those words nearly verbatim? Here's a clip I heard today: https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaindavoscheapenergydaysaregone.mp3 https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaind... Here's "its in no ones interest to break the bonds of global economy": https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaindavoswewillneedtoworktogethertoavoidaglobalracetothebottom.mp3 https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaind... Working backward: https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737672200.295_davos-queenursual-thisisnotatimeforconflictsorpolarization.mp3 https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737672200.295_davos-queenurs... I may have conflated someone else talking about defense at Davos this week with her speech(as). Apologies.
- maeil 2y agoEven when preceded by "champagne", the word "socialist" shouldn't be allowed to appear in the same sentence as her name.
- freehorse 2y agoSwitzerland is not that neutral anymore. For example, they have been adopting the same EU's sanctions against Russia, so they do not have the same role of middleman.
- dtquad 2y agoBeing from Denmark I have always been puzzled by how US/UK media portray us as neo-Hitlers for being slightly more critical of MENA immigration than our neighbors. Meanwhile Switzerland has been doing what almost amounts to white-only immigration to the point that their "troublesome" immigrants are Europeans from Albanaia and Serbia. Neutrality is good for PR.
- sschueller 2y ago[flagged]
- motaforever2019 2y agoThe first non white country there is Eritrea at 14.
- true_religion 2y agoTIL that Turkey is considered a white nation. Either case Switzerlands demographics don't seem too different from their neighbors like Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Austria I won't doubt that they have a Euro-centric immigration policy, but I'm curious why a landlocked nation in the center of Europe really needs anything else. I'm from a West African country and our immigration policy is arms open to our neighbors, and non-existant for European countries except for the UK.
- egeozcan 2y ago> TIL that Turkey is considered a white nation. What is a white nation?
- true_religion 2y agoSorry, I know it sounded like sarcasm but it's a real 'today i learned'. https://aeon.co/essays/the-fantastic-science-of-turkeys-whiteness-campaign https://aeon.co/essays/the-fantastic-science-of-turkeys-whit... Apparently, there's a LOT of debate over if the Turkish are white, middle-eastern, or their own thing. I just always thought of them as being middle-eastern due to the ottoman empire.
- exitb 2y agoThis article makes it seem like the Swiss have been somehow singled out, but the same restriction applies to a number of countries, many of which are firmly US allies.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- adastra22 2y agoThe URL is Swiss.
- input_sh 2y agoIt applies to everyone except 18 countries. Gonna post them here as many articles mention "18 key alies" without naming all of them: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
- maeil 2y agoI'm stunned they put Korea on the list, given this is dressed up as an anti-China measure, and Korean leaderships flipflops between anti-China and pro-China every ~4 years when the opposition replaces the government. There's also lots of cases of e.g. Korean Samsung employees happily moving to Chinese companies to leak IP for a boatload of cash.
- maxglute 2y agoTW semi employees also happily move to PRC. Korea got clipped too hard by CHIPs, Samsung needs AI unless you want PRC phones proliferate even more globally.
- teew 2y agoI'm just one Swiss guy but here's my two cents... Are you asking in a war-related scenario or about regular non-wartime trade? I think the "we trade with allies only"-rhetoric makes the discussion sound much more martial than the trade-related language Switzerland would have expected (notice how the Swiss response only uses economic and commercial terms). Totally understandable if either country was at war or the products in question were directly arms-related. But as it stands, moving the discussion from CH buying AI-chips to military neutrality feels a bit besides the point from a Swiss perspective. So to your question, I think Switzerland wants to be considered as: someone's trade partner, generally yes (or maybe we call it "trade allies" now?), but not someone's potential ally in war. Military neutrality has always been the number one principle in the Swiss Confederation's foreign relations. If this now is supposed to be an unspoken economic sanction against Switzerland then is the message behind it: "Hey everyone, be our military ally or have nothing to do with us"..?