Switzerland’s neutrality vote is asking the wrong question
The real question is what neutrality can still do for Switzerland.
Senior Researcher at the Centre on Conflict Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Geneva Graduate Institute.
On September 27, Switzerland votes on whether to lock a stricter definition of neutrality into its constitution. The initiative would bar Switzerland from cooperating with a military alliance unless it were under military attack or such an attack were being prepared, and prevent it from imposing sanctions on a belligerent state unless those sanctions were mandated by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Polls suggest it will fail, with 63 percent intending to reject it. But that result says less about Swiss faith in neutrality — which remains overwhelming — than about how badly the vote and the surrounding debates miss the real issue: the vote asks whether to restrict sanctions and alliances; the real question is how neutrality can still deliver security and prosperity.
Neutrality has shaped Swiss identity since 1815, when the European powers recognised Switzerland’s permanent neutrality after the Napoleonic Wars. It survived two world wars and the Cold War on a basic premise: keeping foreign armies off Swiss territory would keep Switzerland out of other countries’ wars, while trading with all sides would keep its diverse economy connected to the markets on which its welfare depends.
The second change is US foreign and trade policy. In 2022, Switzerland could still assume a relatively stable relationship with its major trading partners. That is harder now. In 2025, Washington imposed a 39 percent tariff on many Swiss exports. The shock and disbelief remain, even after the tariff was reduced to 15 percent following negotiations and major Swiss investment commitments. The episode showed that neutral status buys no economic goodwill: Washington’s trade policy is driven by its own interests, not by Switzerland’s neutrality. And if neutrality cannot shield Switzerland from a partner’s tariffs, abstaining from sanctions will not shield it either. For Bern, the practical response should therefore be not stricter neutrality but greater economic diversification.