Competing Imperatives: Swiss Neutrality, Collective Security, and the Gulf Crisis of 1990 to 1991

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 forced the Swiss government to make a choice. Abstaining from economic sanctions against Iraq for reasons of neutrality risked isolating Switzerland diplomatically. Participating in economic sanctions risked compromising Swiss neutrality by taking sides in an armed conflict. The Federal Council – the executive body of the Swiss government – responded to this dilemma by imposing economic but not military sanctions on Iraq in response to the Gulf Crisis from 1990 to 1991. Yet this left a number of important questions unresolved. The Swiss authorities understood that economic sanctions tended to yield mixed results. The Gulf Crisis showed that they can have devastating humanitarian implications for the local population, and each permanent member of the Security Council can exercise its veto over UN sanctions in response to armed aggression. The present article shows that the Swiss government’s decision-making process in relation to the Gulf Crisis of 1990 to 1991 involved a considerable degree of conceptual flexibility vis-à-vis the competing imperatives of permanent neutrality and collective security in Swiss foreign policy against the backdrop of massive geopolitical uncertainty at the end of the Cold War.