🇨🇭 Moscow Liked This One

Yesterday Switzerland voted on the Neutrality Initiative, a text pushed by Christoph Blocher (billionaire, former minister, the man who built the right-wing SVP into the country's largest party) that would have written "permanent and armed" neutrality into the constitution and, more to the point, banned any sanctions not decided by the UN Security Council. The Security Council. Where Russia holds a veto. Read plainly, the proposal said Switzerland may sanction an aggressor only with the aggressor's permission. The posters showed an irenic white dove and the words "No to war". The result was 71% no, 29% yes, and a failed cantonal majority on top, which under Swiss rules (an initiative needs a majority of voters and of the 26 cantons) means it lost twice.

In August the no side polled 54%. Early September, 63%. At the ballot box, 71%. The more people read the text, the fewer wanted it, which is not a poll so much as a comprehension test. Moscow helped, in its way: the Kremlin openly cheered the initiative and Swiss authorities reported covert Russian activity around the campaign. (If the country your neutrality proposal would most benefit sends flowers, you have not designed a neutrality proposal. You have designed a discount.)

Bern, meaning the seven-member Federal Council that runs the country by committee, keeps the unglamorous version: it looks at each EU sanctions package and adopts it in full, in part, or not at all. It has taken 20 Russia packages so far and frozen north of CHF7B in Russian assets. Its campaign argument was, literally, that it needs "room to manoeuvre", the least inspiring slogan in political history, and it won by 42 points. Brussels needs 27 governments and a Hungarian mood to renew a package. Washington sanctions by executive order and unsanctions by the next one. Switzerland decides on a Sunday, by post, with lunch afterwards.

I mean, the fantasy was always seductive: a country that never takes sides, never freezes anything, asks no questions. Sure. It does not exist, and 71% of voters just said so in writing. For anyone who parked money in Zurich on the theory that "neutral" meant "incurious" (the Swiss Bankers Association itself once put Russian client money at up to CHF200B), Sunday was about you. Same ballot, a demand for 70% food self-sufficiency lost by 72%. Grand designs had a bad Sunday. Blocher spent voting day at home. Roughly half the electorate turned out, read the clause about the Security Council, voted no, and moved on.