Neutral Is Beautiful
"In stark contrast to the foreign policy of the United States, which is thoroughly grounded in the principles of full spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch," writes Thomas Naylor, "stands the foreign policy of four small European nations which are committed to political neutrality – Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland" — Small Nation Neutrality. "Maybe it’s high time we examine the nonviolent neutrality of small countries like Sweden and Switzerland?" he writes, noting:
- Switzerland has not been involved in a foreign war since 1515, and although it is heavily armed, it has remained neutral since 1815. It has never been part of a larger empire. Sweden became neutral in 1814.
Swiss foreign policy is based on four premises: (1) Switzerland will never initiate a war. (2) It will never enter a war on the side of a warring party. (3) It will never side in any way with one warring party against another. (4) It will vigorously defend itself against outside attack.
Labels: America the Beautiful, Foreign Policy, Republic Not Empire, Scandanavia, Terrorism, The Swiss Confederation, War and Rumors of War, Österreich
2 Comments:
Switzerland and Sweden, both of which possess robust militaries and could stoutly defend themselves if need be, nevertheless did have the luxury of residing under the U.S. protective umbrella during the Cold War. And in the decades before that, they made it clear to the mitteleuropean belligerents that they were much too dear deer to be worth hunting.
All I can say about "the U.S. protective umbrella during the Cold War" is what Justin Raimondo dad to say in Seeing Reds:
"Such an ardent McCarthyite and Taft Republican as the novelist Louis Bromfield, in his forgotten classic A New Pattern for a Tired World (1954), referred to the Soviets’ 'ramshackle empire,' and characterized the Marxist movement as an 'international psychopathic cult,' which could not long survive without infusions of technology and aid from the West. The alleged 'threat' posed by the Soviet Union was minor, he declared, compared to the threat to our old Republic represented by militarism, the arms race, and the distortion of our economic and political life by the rise of an American empire."
The bit about "infusions of technology and aid from the West" brings to mind Antony C. Sutton's thesis in Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.
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