Berset like Delamuraz: when federal councilors sideline Switzerland

He didn’t mean it that way. In interviews with “Le Temps” and the “NZZ am Sonntag”, Federal President Alain Berset had diagnosed a “war frenzy” in certain circles. It was his response to increasingly urgent demands at home and abroad that Switzerland should allow third countries to transfer arms and ammunition to Ukraine.

Reactions to this statement were violent. Even from the SP there was sharp criticism. Berset was only applauded by the SVP and the “Friends of Peace”, who demonstrated on the Bundesplatz on Saturday. This apparently made Berset think that he was giving another interview to the “Tages-Anzeiger” on Tuesday at short notice.

In it, the Federal President recognized Ukraine’s right to self-defense and tried to dispel the impression that she should immediately negotiate with Russia: “The conditions for this are not there.” He distanced himself from the term ‘war madness’, at least half-heartedly: ‘The reactions showed that that was not the right choice of words.’

Note the wording: Alain Berset apparently only thinks the term is wrong. Yet he still considers his diagnosis to be correct, as evidenced by other statements in the interview. This is wrong on two counts.

In the “NZZ am Sonntag”, Alain Berset felt reminded of “the climate at the beginning of the First World War”. Many people at the time were “enthusiastic” about the idea that the existing tensions and frustrations could only be released in a war. However, the minister of culture peddled more clichés than reality.

Historians such as Australian Christopher Clark, author of the acclaimed masterpiece The Sleepwalkers, have long shown that the supposed wartime euphoria of 1914 was a product of propaganda. “There have been sporadic expressions of chauvinistic enthusiasm for the coming battle, but these have been exceptions,” Clark wrote.

The news of the mobilization came as a “deep shock” to most people and in most places. Even the powerful were concerned. The German Emperor Wilhelm II, the main culprit of the massacre, wavered until the very end between the determination to go to war and the hope that it could be avoided.

In view of the war in Ukraine, the alleged “war madness” is even more irritating. At best, such a person can be found in the Kremlin and among its propaganda screamers. But there is no sign of enthusiasm for the war among the Russian population. And the West is arming Ukraine not out of enthusiasm, but out of sheer necessity.

Even the United States is far from providing everything Kiev would like (fighters, intermediate-range missiles). Even the biggest supporters of Ukraine – Poland and the Baltic States – do not act out of euphoria, but out of fear for the appetite of the Russian bear, with which they have already had painful experiences.

Against this background, a term like ‘war madness’ seems completely out of place. However, Alain Berset would not be the first Federal Councilor to sideline Switzerland with a false analogy. Jean-Pascal Delamuraz did the same in 1996. Like Berset today, the epicurean from Vaud was in his second year as president.

It was a turbulent time. The major Swiss banks had come under enormous pressure from the US and from organizations such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC) for their handling of alleged accounts of Holocaust victims. For decades they had brushed aside such requests, but after the Cold War they could no longer do so.

In an interview at the end of the year with “Tribune de Geneve” and “24 Heures”, Delamuraz talked his frustration out. The United States is “about nothing but the destruction of the Swiss financial center,” lamented the liberal economy minister. When he hears certain people talking, he sometimes wonders ‘if Auschwitz is in Switzerland’.

It was the reaction of a spared Swiss who was not sensitive to the crime against humanity of the extermination of the Jews. Critics abroad were appalled and increased the pressure. “Joseph Goebbels would be proud of a student like Delamuraz,” the Israeli newspaper Maariv responded in the same vein.

In Germany, on the other hand, the Federal Council of the FDP received strong support. “Finally someone said it”, many Swiss said. At the same time, there was a wave of anti-Semitic attacks. Sigi Feigel, the most famous representative of Swiss Jewry at the time, was insulted and threatened with death.

Finally, Delamuraz managed to make a blunt apology in a letter to the president of the WJC. But the damage was done. In August 1998, the banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to Holocaust survivors and the descendants of victims in a settlement with the United States Department of Justice.

Jean-Pascal Delamuraz had already resigned by then, not because of “Auschwitz”, but because a cancer disease he thought had been defeated had broken out again. He has only been able to enjoy his retirement for half a year. In the case of Alain Berset, too, the question arises whether he should retire as the longest-serving member of the Federal Council.

In the “Tages-Anzeiger” interview, he spoke “of a climate of pure war logic that worries me”. He also got that impression at many meetings in Davos and New York. Indirectly, the Federal President admits that Switzerland’s neutrality abroad is not as “well understood” as he has repeatedly claimed.

Perhaps the Federal Council as a whole should listen to Secretary of Defense Viola Amherd, who is directly feeling the pressure on the gun issue. She spoke bluntly to the Swiss Officers’ Society on Saturday: The fact that Switzerland does not exercise “considerable freedom of action in terms of neutrality policies” is not understood abroad.

It wasn’t very collegial. But de Valaisan suspects the outcome for Switzerland could be similar to that of the 1990s Holocaust controversy. And analogies like those of Delamuraz and Berset are “useless”.