Switzerland facing the law of the strongest

Published on November 10, 2024 at 08:11. / Modified on November 10, 2024 at 08:13.

“Liberty through prisons, peace through war, democracy through autocracy and Enlightenment through cretinism… It is through this reactionary arsenal that we obtain general progress,” enumerated, angry with his time, half a century ago, the writer and poet Claude Roy. It has been almost ten years, sometimes more, in Russia, China, India, Turkey and Hungary that strong men, autocrats and the law of power relations have reigned. When it’s not that of violence. Since Tuesday, with the election of Donald Trump, we can add “debate through insult, human relations through brutality, trust through cynicism, free trade through protectionism, multilateralism through isolationism and law through arbitrariness. If Switzerland ever had one, it must abandon its illusions. And adapt to the rule of the law of the strongest. By the force of reality.

Switzerland, which is coming to the end of its mandate on the UN Security Council, has had the bitter experience of this: “The generous dissertations only underline the impotence of the Security Council to act in the area which it is assigned”, i.e. the maintenance of peace and international security, noted former ambassador François Nordmann in these columns. At the end of his presidential year, in 2019, before the UN General Assembly, Ueli Maurer insisted on “the importance of the UN Charter” and noted in particular that “the international community must protect the rights of small states. He had “invited the international community to follow universal benchmarks”. Switzerland knows how much its security and prosperity owe to respect for international law and open free trade with rules limiting protectionist measures. Interdependence, multilateralism and international law, in particular the rules of international trade, are of vital importance for Switzerland, insisted the Minister of the Economy, Guy Parmelin, for the 25th anniversary of the WTO. in Geneva in 2020.

Le Temps publishes columns, written by members of the editorial staff or external people, as well as opinions and columns, proposed to personalities or requested by them. These texts reflect the point of view of their authors. They in no way represent the position of the media.

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