ZURICH. In the winter of 2022, when Switzerland adopted the European Union's sanctions against Russia, a certain kind of commentator declared neutrality dead. In the months since, a certain kind of traditionalist has demanded its resurrection, intact and untouchable. Both are wrong, and both are wrong in the same way: they treat neutrality as a sacred object rather than what it has always been, a tool of statecraft.
Neutrality was never a commandment handed down on the Rütli meadow. It was a pragmatic settlement, codified by the great powers in 1815 because a buffer suited them, and adopted by the Swiss because it spared a small, divided country from being torn apart by its neighbours' wars. Its purpose was survival and room to manoeuvre, not moral purity, and it has served that purpose precisely because it was never confused with one.
The strongest case for treating neutrality as untouchable deserves to be stated fairly. Trust is Switzerland's only real diplomatic currency, and trust compounds slowly and devalues fast. The good offices that let Swiss diplomats represent foreign interests where others cannot, and host talks that would otherwise never happen, rest on a reputation for not taking sides. Spend that reputation once, the argument goes, and it is gone for a generation.
There is real force in this. A country of nine million with no alliance membership has no leverage except credibility, and credibility is easier to lose than to earn. The traditionalists are right that neutrality cannot be switched on and off like a heating system. And they are right that a reputation for reliability, once traded away for short-term applause, cannot be bought back at any price.
But the historical record does not describe a shrine. It describes an instrument, tuned and retuned by each generation. Switzerland stayed out of two world wars yet traded with belligerents on all sides; it refused to join the United Nations until 2002 yet sat in the League of Nations from the start; it enforced sanctions against some regimes and declined them against others. The decisions were never identical, because the circumstances never were.
The quarrel over re-exported ammunition showed the same pattern in miniature. Bern refused to let Swiss-made war material pass to a country at war, cited the law, and was accused across Europe of hiding behind it. The law was applied correctly and the optics were dreadful, which is what happens when an instrument is mistaken for an idol: the letter is defended while the purpose, a credible and useful Switzerland, goes begging.
What the current debate gets wrong is the direction of the risk. The danger to Swiss neutrality is not that Bern applies sanctions; it is that Switzerland comes to be seen as a free rider, enjoying the security others pay for while invoking a principle to avoid awkward choices. A neutrality that reads abroad as convenience is the neutrality that dies.
The cost of the shrine mentality is paralysis dressed as principle. If every calibration of policy must first survive a theological dispute about what neutrality permits, Switzerland will always arrive late. And late arrivals do not get asked to host the talks. The country would become a spectator at the very moment its services are most needed.
A better approach would codify the practice Switzerland already follows when it is honest with itself. Neutrality governs armies, not opinions: it bars joining wars and military alliances, and it does not bar judging aggression, enforcing sanctions or arming one's own defence credibly. Parliament could say so plainly, in law, and end the recurring melodrama.
That clarity would protect the good offices rather than endanger them. Mediators are useful when they are predictable, and predictability comes from stated rules, not from mystical reputation. A Switzerland that explains its reasoning is a better intermediary than one that hides behind incense.
None of this requires abandoning what makes the country distinctive. The militia army, the refusal of permanent alliances, the habit of hosting the uncomfortable conversation: all of it survives. What does not survive scrutiny is the claim that these things forbid thought. It is a claim that comfort is the same thing as virtue, and it should be retired.
The sanctions of 2022 did not kill neutrality, and repealing them would not save it. Tools do not die; they are used well or badly. Switzerland should worry less about whether neutrality is being worshipped correctly and more about whether it is being used skilfully. The tool is only as good as the hand that holds it, and the hand needs practice, not prayer.