TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.029

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.2 KB | 103 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 70

SWITZERLAND

The Swiss Army Gets Knifed


Once a revered institution, the militia suffers flesh wounds as
the country's citizens reassess its role


    Although it has long been famously neutral, Switzerland, as
an English scholar once wrote, "has been in a state of war
every weekend since 1945." The gibe has more than a little truth
to it. On weekends rifle ranges around the country resound with
the din of thousands of Swiss practicing their marksmanship. At
the same time, Northrop F-5E Tiger fighter jets skim along
mountain faces and blue-gray-uniformed figures clamber down
couloirs and across alpine meadows. With a militia of 625,000
men, Switzerland, as the well-worn saying goes, does not have
an army, it is an army.

    The Swiss military has not engaged foreign troops since
1815, when Napoleon's army withdrew after a 17-year occupation.
As a result of Switzerland's extraordinary military
preparedness, no aggressor since then has seen fit to challenge
its control of the mountain passes. Last week, however, the
Swiss army suffered a rare setback -- not in battle, but at the
polls.

    In a referendum, 35.6% of voters backed a proposal to
abolish the military. The results shocked the country's
political and military establishment. Few expected the measure
to garner more than 25% of the tally. President Jean-Pascal
Delamuraz once called the initiative "an idiocy as big as the
Matterhorn." Swiss voters, though, viewed the issue with great
seriousness: 68.6% of them turned out, more than have shown up
for any other of the country's incessant referendums in the past
15 years. The army will remain, but it has been sharply shaken
and irrevocably affected.

    Dismantling an army, of course, is an extraordinary step.
The only precedent is provided by Costa Rica, which discarded
its military in 1949. In Switzerland any such development would
change the fabric of the nation, given the unique and even
mythic status the army enjoys. For a country that has so many
fault lines involving competing religions and languages and a
federal government that is weak by design, the army is that rare
thing, a truly national institution. The experience of military
service is the most common denominator among Swiss men (women
are not conscripted), and creates a strong sense of citizenship.

    Virtually every man serves -- and serves and serves.
Currently, all those who are able-bodied go through a 17-week
training course when they are 20 years old and annual refresher
courses and deployments of three weeks or more, depending on
their rank, until they are 32, when the demands lessen a bit.
For those who refuse to join up, the options are grim. Each year
several hundred Swiss are convicted of refusing to serve, and
many of them spend three to twelve months in jail.

    Thus, considerably more was at stake in the referendum than
the $3 billion spent each year by the military. One survey by
the Lausanne-based research institute MIS showed that only 15%
of voters really wanted to get rid of the army. The rest wanted
the army reformed and defense spending trimmed, a clear-cut
result of lessening East-West tensions.

    "Many voters just thought of the opening of the Berlin
Wall. They thought, `O.K., we can get rid of arms because
there's no danger,'" suggests Kurt Spillmann, a professor at the
Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. But the willingness
of so many Swiss to vote, in effect, against the army indicates
a disaffection that would once have been unimaginable.

    Resentment against the army's influence over civil society
almost certainly played a role. In a recent survey, 73% of
those questioned said officers have a better chance of promotion
in civilian life, 59% thought their boss was an officer, and 34%
added that he continued to treat them like soldiers in the
office. The cooler new military mood may also reflect the
"feminization" of Switzerland. Women did not receive the vote
until 1971, and they have become a more powerful presence in the
workplace and in politics. "There's a male network to which
women don't belong," says industrial psychologist Anita
Calonder-Gerster. And their new prominence has not dissipated
their hostility to the old-boy military system.

    Individualism in the young is also a large factor. "The
majority of young people are having increasing difficulty
seeing the army as the school of the nation," says sociologist
Karl W. Haltiner of the Military Affairs Department in Zurich.
Spillman agrees: "There is a weakening of the nation-state
feeling and the need to defend it."

    Even before the referendum, the army began a campaign of
self-rehabilitation. It announced that some reforms were being
considered, including, at last, alternative service for
conscientious objectors and an end to reserve service at 42.
After the voting, General Heinz Hasler, who will take command
of the military on Jan. 1, averred that the army had much to
do: "Everything must be done to restore the people's conviction
that military defense is needed" -- a clear acknowledgment that
even the leadership of a citizens' army cannot long ignore great
changes in the citizenry.