Introduction

Neutrality constitutes one of the three fundamental institutions characterizing the Swiss political system. Today, only a few states in the world can be considered ‘neutral’ and in Europe only Austria, Finland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Sweden and Switzerland belong to this category. Switzerland's neutrality, however, is the most longstanding. Historians of neutrality, such as Paul Schweizer (1895) and Edgar Bonjour (1965), believe that the sources of Swiss neutrality reach back as far as 1515, the year in which the Swiss armies suffered a major defeat against the armies of François I, King of France, at the battle of Marignano. More recent research on the history of neutrality challenges the assertion of such a longstanding tradition, showing that the latter is disputable (Suter 1999). Scholars agree, however, on the crucial role of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 in relation to Swiss neutrality. It was during this watershed event, as the map of Europe was being redrawn in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, that Swiss delegate Charles Pictet de Rochemont succeeded in persuading the great European powers to recognize and guarantee Switzerland's self-imposed ‘permanent and armed neutrality’ (Widmer 2003).

Since 1815, the principle of neutrality has unquestionably been the keystone of Switzerland's foreign policy. Equally unquestionable is the fact that neutrality never constituted a goal per se but was considered to be a means to an end, or rather two ends: preserving Switzerland's independence from external threats and maintaining internal unity.