A plea for a neutrality of the prudent (2/2)

by Verena Tobler-Linder,* Switzerland

(21 March 2023) (Ed.) The first part of this article was published in Newsletter No. 9 of 14 March and is available on our homepage. We are now publishing the final two parts of this article.

* * *

Part 2 – Swiss neutrality and immigration

People from all over the world live in Switzerland. They naturally also influence our social and political life. It is therefore important to look at the issue of neutrality from this point of view as well.

Neutrality requires Switzerland not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. As private citizens, on the other hand, Swiss people can of course continue to take sides and concern themselves with problems from around the world. However, as someone who has spent a lifetime working with migrants and refugees from all over the world and on the difficulties they face, I have long been convinced that there are two problems facing Switzerland. Two difficulties that also require prudence for their constructive solution.

Prudent neutrality is necessary so that our country does not end up in a hullabaloo

The Swiss population has almost doubled in the last seven decades due to immigration, which first came from the southern states of Europe and now increasingly from all over the world. In the meantime, a large part of the Swiss population is probably linked to foreign countries through immigration, parents or marriage. In short: Switzerland is multi-ethnic or multicultural, but also extremely heterogeneous in composition and meanwhile, just as much, socio-culturally polarised. One may rejoice or lament about this! Yet, if we do not manage to deal with these factors in a prudent manner, our country risks becoming politically disintegrated – further fragmented – falling apart – going under!

It is important for a foreign and domestic policy which seeks to resolve conflicts, to know that most newcomers to our country have moved up in the international system and have come to Switzerland because they are better off here. Even Germans immigrate because they earn more here. However, if the immigrants come from the poor part of the world, they or their parents usually belonged to the middle or upper class there. This even applies to refugees fleeing war and poverty, because the poorest can rarely leave!

If they have become naturalised Swiss in the meantime, and there are many of these people, they have often kept their passports or even have several passports. A Kurd advised me to call them “new Swiss”. Many of them, though not all, naturally continue to participate, often very actively, in the fortunes of their former homeland. That is a good thing and may remain so.

Their political commitment is honourable and it should and may remain an issue for immigrants.

Official Switzerland must not interfere in the conflicts of the countries of origin

Firstly, some immigrant groups have plans to overthrow their country of origin and have fierce political differences among themselves. This is not a reproach: both are allowed! Their political commitment is therefore honourable but official Switzerland should not get involved in this, otherwise we will not only have a party muddle but the hullabaloo in our country will increase massively. Iranian new Swiss are already calling for Switzerland to sanction Iran. Would-be Federal Council Daniel Jositsch immediately took up this request, significantly, just before the Federal Council elections. The fact that he is violating important principles of International Law¹ has probably escaped the Social Democrats just as much as the fact that immigrants from Turkey, Kurdistan, Eritrea or Sri Lanka could also demand this practice of interference.

Years ago, I read in the daily Zurich Tagblatt that the city of Zurich accommodates people from 157 nations. Directly linked to this was the crucial question: should Switzerland now interfere in the internal affairs of countries all over the world? This is a hubris that the neutrality initiative prohibits: Switzerland will only support unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), if they have been formally decided by the UN.

Secondly, it is not only unwise but counterproductive for economically powerful states to interfere in the domestic politics of poorer states. Such interference is neither democratic nor purposeful, because it is improper. Certainly, in many poor countries, just as here in Switzerland, systemic changes will be necessary in the future. Yet, the people of the countries concerned have to decide in favour of changes that are initiated independently and decided on democratically.

This is currently a struggle in which the upper and middle classes there are often in the minority. This does not only apply to Iran, from where the upper classes and many educated people have left for the West, to the USA, to Austria, to Switzerland. It applies in principle, namely everywhere in those states and for the populations placed at the bottom of the unequal world economy or those which have been marginalised.

Arab Spring failed

What interference from outside and from above brings, is illustrated by the example of Egypt: for what the liberal West called the “Arab Spring” in 2011 and actively supported. It was doomed to fail.

Launched by young net activists, inspired by the urban middle classes and supported by George Soros’ “Open Society Foundation”,² Mubarak, undoubtedly a despot, was toppled. He had expanded the military into an economic power factor, so that other economic agents could hardly run or set up businesses. Democratic procedures were also impossible.

Yet, it was predictable what would happen in democratic elections. For the majority of the population, especially the many poor in the cities and in the countryside, there were no state-organised redistribution and solidarity institutions.

For decades, the supra-family financial compensation had been organised by the mosques and the Muslim Brothers on the basis of religious rules, something that the West and Cairo’s liberal-oriented children of affluence had overlooked, even detested and fought against. They were system- and structure-blind to the fact that in a state where formal paid work is reserved for a minority. Modernist or individualist values cannot, or can only rarely, be democratically enforced for structural reasons.

Particularly embarrassing for the West was the following situation. When General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew the democratically elected President Mursi, there was widespread relief. When the president, who had usurped power, had hundreds of Islamists murdered, put the democratically elected Mursi and his government members in prison and had numerous death sentences executed without sufficient legal basis, everyone looked the other way!

All those who are supposedly committed to democracy, the rule of law and human rights. What about Switzerland? It regularly participates in this shirking policy. Its economic interests are too important; it is too blind to the shadows of the liberal world economy.

Anyone who is sufficiently system-conscious also knows that the Western aid programmes in Afghanistan or Haiti do not solve the problems of poverty there in any way, because they are not appropriate. On the contrary, they lead to sham façade states, promote vertical integration and in the long run lead to economic, social and political disaster.³

As mentioned above, the liberal perspective focuses on individuals and ignores the fact that individual freedoms and rights require economic capacities lacking in poor states. The world cannot be integrated from the outside and from above! Except on the basis of extreme imbalances and, directly linked to this; a monstrous totalitarianism.

1 UN General Assembly 24 October 1970: Declaration on Principles of International Law: The one important principle concerns the duty, in accordance with the Charter, not to interfere in matters which belong to the internal competence of a State. The other is the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.

2 Cf. NZZ, 14 May 2019: “How George Soros went from messiah to enemy of the people”.

3 I take the liberty of making a detailed comment because by “vertical integration” I am referring to that multi-dimensional process which captures those rules, processes and mechanisms which, under economic liberalism, ensure that the economic, political and social imbalances between and within states continue to increase. The result of “vertical integration” is that economic and political power is increasingly concentrated in the transnational upper spheres, i.e. it is at the disposal of fewer and fewer but more powerful companies, individuals and states. “Vertical integration” describes the vicious circle that constantly reinforcing imbalances. “Vertical integration” happens:
a) via the market: through companies that are equipped with more capital and better energy-efficient-technological apparatus and a more refined scientific know-how and a more efficient organisational capacity is at their disposal. In the transnational context, they have the effect that weaker enterprises do not even emerge, are forced out of the sector or are “gobbled-up”.
b) via transnational structures: export of agricultural products and raw materials from the less developed countries; export of high-tech products from the highly developed countries, with correspondingly diminishing terms of trade for the agricultural products of the poor states and an enormous amassing of power by the government in the export-financed poor state.
c) via transnational migration: the unequal living standards in rich and poor states or regions trigger migration from South to North. It results in emigration from poor states, immigration to rich states, thus brain gain for the highly developed country (HDC), brain drain for the lesser developed country (LDC). It is madness for all these people to move from places where one usually still has a small ecological footprint to those states that consume three, four or even six and more planets for their prosperity.
d) via international aid, development cooperation, the struggle for human rights can, but must not, contribute to “vertical integration”. Development cooperation can provide important preconditions in the development of education, bridges; road construction, health care, etc. If, however, the economic rules are not changed in such a way that horizontal economic linkages with local capital accumulation, commercial enterprises, SMEs and a sufficient number of jobs, local markets and similar demands become possible in the poor state, then “vertical integration” will also be the result. For as long as the majority of the population has no formal employment and can pay neither taxes nor duties, then neither state-organised solidarity institutions nor democracies worthy of the name are possible. Development cooperation not ensuring effective development “only” whets appetites. When they are out of their work or no-longer employed by NGOs, they migrate to highly developed states. The most recent example of this form of “vertical integration” is the exodus of former Western aid workers from Afghanistan.

Part 3 – Neutrality or interference in internal affairs of foreign states

Democracy and human rights cannot be implemented from outside and from above

A prudent neutrality refrains from moralising in a system- and structure-blind manner!

At present, more and more voices are interfering in a simple-minded way in internal affairs and disputes all over the world from the economic and legal high realm of the Western welfare states.

Even official Switzerland is in danger of adopting this arrogant course towards states in Africa and Asia and of moralising in a system- and structure-blind manner towards the poor or traditional rest of the world.

Prudent old and new Swiss warn against singing the praises of human rights and Western values without considering the economic preconditions and framework conditions for a Western legal standard. We are confronted with contradictions and ambiguities. Tolerance of ambiguity is required.

The following is not a plea against the human rights! I am pleading for a closer look.

For as early as 1948, when the catalogue of human rights was drawn up, the representatives of the six socialist states pointed out that some of the human rights were tied to economic conditions. They therefore demanded a human right to economic participation, a right blocked by the then powerful and far superior west. That is why the socialist states abstained in the final vote.

Finally, the gender equality and the “One Love” campaign illustrate just how unprofessional and arrogant the system- and structure-blind moralising from the global economic higher sphere is.

Gender equality needs economic, technological and infrastructural preconditions

Nota bene, gender equality is an important goal to achieve social and environmental sustainability. What the West however persistently ignores are the preconditions of financial, energy-technological, medical and institutional preconditions needed for this equality.

Specifically, what has liberated me as a woman?

Running water and electricity, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, automatic dishwashers, sanitary pads, tampons and “the pill” as well as a good education with academic or vocational training. Added to this, it takes a sufficient number of paid jobs that do not require heavy muscle work. Then there are the kindergartens and schools, the crèches and after-school care places where our children are looked after.

Equally expensive is the elaborate legal apparatus that now ensures order in Switzerland both in the public sphere and in the family, sometimes even in the marriage bed. All those achievements are not available to the majority of women in the poor part of the world for economic reasons.

The “One Love” campaign

The “One Love” campaign reached a new peak in 2022 at the Football World Cup in the Arabian Gulf state of Qatar. A campaign carried by a movement that for three decades has been making itself heard loudly, just like at the Zurich Street Parade, has been accompanied by much publicity. In Qatar for example, the German interior minister succeeded in publicising the campaign even more effectively thanks to the new media. When the footballers were asked to wear a “One Love” armband, FIFA stopped this public staging of Western values and thus reinstated a quasi-order “on the spot”.

What is more important is how the whole campaign is frighteningly system- and structure-blind, while I personally understand and recognise the concerns of the LGBTQ community. Once again, we are dealing with moralising instead of a morality that respects the economic preconditions and sticks to its institutional framework.

After all, the LGBTQueers, never ask about the costs for fertilisation or artificial fertilisation, surrogacy; sex transformation, etc.

Nor how and by whom their “anything goes” desires are to be financed.4 Instead, it is unethically ignored, neither related to the context nor to the available resources, that in 2021, 4100 million people had to survive without monetarily secured solidarity networks.5 Until today this means that for half of humanity their own children are their old-age pension, unless churches, mosques or temples can offer some support.

In practice this means that when people become old and weak in the poor part of the world, they depend on the support of their biological children. That is why, for highly rational reasons, homosexuality is often frowned upon or even punished in poor states.

Nota bene, the non-monetary secured solidarity institutions are an important reason why in many places in the poor part of the world, binding kinship, generation- and gender-roles are adhered to.

It is true that these are ideas of order which contradict human rights and are incompatible with the expectations of the LGBTQ community and many feminists! If we take a closer look, it is for economic reasons. It has to do with global imbalances and the associated lack of energy-technological equipment, with the low number of formally paid jobs and correspondingly with the lack of supra-familial solidarity institutions.

Prudent new Swiss from poor countries therefore do not measure the conditions in their old home country against the Swiss standard of living. Nor do they measure it against the “de-luxe legal situation” here. They know the causes of poverty in their country of origin and are familiar with the reasons for its “human rights characteristics”. Just like the prudent among the old Swiss, they know that every right is tied to economic preconditions if it is to be applied reliably and constructively.

Both the prudent old and new Swiss are aware that the objectionable and problematic imbalances have developed within the framework of the Western world economy. Those who once had more capital and the more efficient energy-technological power apparatus were able to colonise the world in the past. They can still dominate it today.

The only difference is that since decolonisation this has happened through free trade and since the 1970s even more effectively within the framework of the four neoliberal freedoms. These are the foundations not only for Blocher’s economic empire, but for all Swiss corporations that are successful abroad and, of course, also for the benefit of our welfare state.

So, it has, not only, to do not with company-specific interests, but also with national interests, with the energy-technological, financial and legal power apparatus that is available to our country to access resources. If you look even closer, you will be irritated or even shocked to find that, then and now, the power imbalance associated with the power apparatus and the inhumane impositions associated with it are legitimised with a supposedly higher culture, better morals and Western values in terms of civilisation.

Conclusion and outlook

Karl Marx once said, history always repeats itself twice. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Colonisation, slavery, exploitation are the above mentioned tragedy. What is today’s farce? The system- and structure-blind moralising practised today by the Woke Left and numerous Western heads of state and officials. A babble of values that obscures the real interests.

Those who are truly sensitive will realise that this talk devalues not only communities and societies as well as the majority of women and men on the global economic margins and brings them ever deeper into hardship and distress. If you look even closer, you will also realise that even those people in the US who were called the “deplorables” by Hillary Clinton, are also in the same boat.

Changes are urgently needed! Here in Switzerland and of course also in the poor world. It is definitely not wars that are needed for these changes. Nor do we need any system- and structure-blind moralising, certainly not in the name of human rights!

What is urgently needed instead for the necessary changes and for universal human rights, are new world economic rules, rules that enable a balance between rich and poor and allow us to tackle social and ecological sustainability worldwide.

Prudent old and new Swiss would stake their lives on it.

Therefore, in democratic Switzerland, let us leave stereotypical thinking and black-and-white mind-sets behind us. Let us stand-up for the popular initiative “YES to neutrality”. It will open the door to that informed and cosmopolitan prudence in Switzerland which, I am almost sure, is the dream not only of prudent old and new Swiss, but also of system- and structure-blind old and new Swiss.

(Translation “Swiss Standpoint”)

* Verena Tobler Linder is a sociologist, ethnologist, consultant and expert in intercultural communication and integration. Her work has taken her to many Muslim countries: Sudan, Liberia, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Pakistan. She has worked for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), among others. For many years she was a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences for Social Work in Zurich. She has taught, given courses and provided counselling for hospital, psychiatric and prison staff, for schools, staff of social welfare offices, municipalities, courts and the Federal Office for Refugees and Immigration. She has been working independently since 2002. Her homepage is www.kernkultur.ch.

4 In 2000, I was invited to a feminist congress to speak about the situation of women in the poor part of the world. At the end of the conference, LGBTQ activists demanded a new human right: every person should be able to determine their own gender after birth. In the final round, I asked who should be financing this right. The lawyer Rainer Schweizer chaired the discussion and closed it with the remark: “now we have answered all the questions except the one from Verena Tobler. And I must admit, I have never asked myself this question either. But I assure her, I’m taking it home with me now!”

5 One World No. 2 / June 2022; SDC Magazine for Development and Cooperation: p. 25