No, Switzerland didn't break with past neutrality over Ukraine

The Swiss have never been as neutral as you think, and in recent decades Switzerland imposed economic sanctions on many countries and even deployed some troops here and there.

When King Francis I of France defeated the Swiss Confederacy in 1515 at the Battle of Marignano, he is said to have declared, “I have vanquished those whom only Caesar vanquished.” The Swiss Confederacy was an alignment of cantons within the Holy Roman Empire, and its military was a fierce one. But after this defeat the Swiss pledged to settle future disputes with France peacefully through arbitration, and for the next 500 years they stayed neutral. That’s the story, anyway.

In fact, the Swiss Army did battle with Napoleon’s troops in 1798 and lost again. The Congress of Vienna declared Switzerland a neutral country, and Switzerland remained mostly neutral through two world wars, though it traded with both sides (rather more with Germany) and declined to admit more than a few hundred Jews fleeing the Nazis. After World War II Switzerland didn’t join the United Nations because its charter authorized military deployments to protect nations under attack. But over time the tug of collective security and trade imperatives drew Switzerland closer to the U.N., which it finally joined in 2002, and closer to the European Union. As a result, Swiss troops deployed around the world (albeit in very small numbers) for various peacekeeping missions. As for economic sanctions, Russia is the 22nd nation or international organization on which Switzerland is imposing such measures at the moment, and Switzerland has slapped sanctions on many other countries in the past (including Russia in 2014 after it seized the Crimea). The Russia sanctions this time out are more extensive, but that’s the only substantive difference.

The little-understood evolution of Swiss neutrality, which at this late date isn’t really very neutral at all, is the subject of my latest New Republic column. You can read it here.