Neutrality: almost nobody understands it the way Switzerland does

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the deterioration of the international security environment have put the principle of neutrality under pressure. With Finland joining NATO in 2023 and Sweden in 2024, around ten neutral countries remain, according to the list kept by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The comparison shows that the same word covers very different realities.

Switzerland is the oldest neutral country. Its neutrality has been recognised by the great powers since the Congress of Vienna in 1815, with origins traced back to the defeat at Marignano in 1515 and the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648. It is permanent, because it applies in peace as in war, and armed, because the country must be able to defend its territory and its status on its own. The international law of neutrality forbids it from taking part in a war, from supporting a party to a conflict militarily and from joining a military alliance that could drag it in. Not being a member of the European Union, it also has a wider margin of manoeuvre. On 27 September the people will vote on an initiative that seeks to write a stricter definition of this principle into the Constitution.

Ten statuses, ten different histories

In Europe only Austria shares with Switzerland a status of permanent neutrality recognised in international law, with an army charged with defending the territory. Its neutrality dates from 1955, however, and arose as a condition set by the Soviet Union for ending the occupation of the country. Since 1995 Vienna has been in the European Union and reconciles the two through constructive abstention, which allowed it, for instance, not to take part in decisions on arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Ireland has no formally recognised status: its neutrality rests on a political tradition tied to the sovereignty won after independence. It has never joined NATO, but since the 1950s it has taken part in UN peacekeeping missions and for decades has allowed United States military aircraft to refuel at Shannon, a practice that contrasts with the Swiss ban on overflights by American aircraft during the conflict with Iran.

Malta wrote neutrality into its constitution in 1987, in flexible wording that successive governments have interpreted pragmatically. Some observers now call the country militarily neutral but politically aligned. The Vatican bases its neutrality on the Lateran Accords of 1929, San Marino on a long tradition of diplomatic caution. Moldova bans foreign troops in its constitution, yet Russian soldiers have been stationed in Transnistria since 1992. Turkmenistan is the only state whose permanent neutrality has been explicitly recognised by a UN General Assembly resolution, in 1995, and the government also uses it to justify one of the most isolationist policies in the world. Costa Rica, finally, proclaimed an unarmed neutrality in 1983 and relies in a crisis on the protection of the United States.