On tuesday, at the Forum des 100 hosted by @LeTemps in Lausanne, we were asked whether Switzerland is still safe. The assumption that greater security comes from buying more weapons deserves much closer scrutiny.
My conviction is that Switzerland’s security will depend increasingly on the quality of its diplomacy and on its command of technologies the world needs.
Why buying more weapons will not make us safer
Rearmament has an immediate political appeal. It gives governments something visible to purchase and a figure they can present as evidence of preparedness. The return on a diplomatic relationship, or on twenty years of scientific work, is harder to display.
There is also an economic interest in presenting rearmament as the natural answer. The world’s largest arms producers recorded their highest combined revenues yet in 2024. I am uneasy with how readily our insecurity becomes somebody else’s growth story.
For Switzerland, this raises a practical question. When we spend billions on foreign weapons systems, where do the most valuable capabilities accumulate? Swiss companies can benefit from industrial participation. The deeper issue is who retains the knowledge, the technology and the power to decide how the system evolves. A defence budget is also a choice about whose industry we want to build.
I believe Switzerland needs armed forces capable of protecting its population and making aggression costly. Buying our way to military parity with a major power would be a fantasy. Would a few dozen F-35s give us the ability to prevail in a confrontation with Russia, or even with the United States?
They also bind us to a foreign industrial system for decades. Armasuisse itself acknowledges that complete independence from the manufacturer and its country is impossible. Long-term support, spare parts and specialist knowledge remain part of the relationship.
The same reasoning applies to drones. A Swiss drone capability may be valuable. Sustaining a war of attrition against Russia or Iran would require an entirely different scale of industrial capacity.
What Credit Suisse showed us
Credit Suisse should haunt this debate. Years of managerial failure had weakened the bank. Rumours, collapsing confidence and withdrawals at digital speed helped turn that vulnerability into a national crisis. The parliamentary inquiry placed responsibility for the loss of trust squarely with the bank’s leadership.
I see its collapse as a warning about the vulnerabilities that hybrid conflict can exploit. A country can lose an institution through which it exercises influence, and see its freedom of decision narrow dramatically, while its borders remain untouched. Confidence and financial stability belong inside our understanding of national security. Switzerland’s military capabilities offered scarcely any protection against the forces at work. That should make us think much harder about where we invest in our capacity to defend ourselves.
Where I would invest instead
I would begin with diplomacy. Switzerland has accumulated an unusual ability to keep communication possible between countries that struggle to speak to each other. Its good offices have given it responsibilities far beyond what its size would suggest. That role deserves renewed political commitment. The ability to help resolve a conflict is a form of power.
We should also move substantially closer to Europe. Our scientific and industrial ambitions need partners, markets and the scale to endure. Europe needs countries capable of building the technologies on which its future will depend. Switzerland should help shape that effort, with the confidence to take responsibility for shared capabilities.
Building the technologies the world needs
I think above all of artificial intelligence, semiconductors and biotechnology. We should aim to create technologies that other countries need, and retain the competence to develop them here. Deep expertise belongs in the very definition of sovereignty: a country’s freedom to decide rests partly on its ability to understand what it depends on, improve it and keep it working.
This requires us to take the passage from research to industry seriously. Switzerland should be prepared to finance difficult technologies over long periods, buy from promising domestic companies and give them room to grow. Scientific excellence becomes a source of strategic influence when it reaches hospitals, factories, public institutions and infrastructure around the world.
The terms on which we distribute those technologies matter too. I want Swiss technology to earn trust by giving its users durable capabilities and control over their own operations. A country that helps others become more capable gives them a reason to value its continued independence. Technological leadership can attract pressure, and dependence on a single market can become a vulnerability of its own.
I would put our greatest ambition into that combination of diplomatic skill and technological depth. It draws on strengths we understand and gives us a serious role in the world that is taking shape.
