100% for 100%

On September 27, 2020, Swiss voters approved the procurement of new fighter jets. By an extremely narrow margin of 50.1% to 49.9%. A rejection of the deal would probably have meant quite a crisis of purpose for the army. Because logically, it needs a protective shield.

I rejected the bill simply because of the volume. Some critics calculated that instead of 40 jets to be procured, about 12 would be sufficient to cope with the air policing tasks. And here I think that more would not be necessary. I would have agreed to this air force “light” without hesitation.

But actually, that’s not why I’m writing this blog post, not because of the fighter jets and not because of the vote, which was won so narrowly. The supporters won it. So it is clear to me that Switzerland will get a better umbrella. Namely one for six billion francs and several other billions for maintenance costs.

It is about armaments in general and their sense. I believe that such a deal, i.e., military investments, must always be counterbalanced by promoting peace. 100% for 100%! No matter where in our world. It would benefit Switzerland. From a security point of view, it could even bring much more than maintaining an army. In this case, 6 billion would go to the military and 6 billion to peacebuilding. I could well imagine that the “light” version would then have been put to the vote😉

I certainly believe in the sense of the military or some form of it. Many challenges could be addressed more strongly with a realignment. But I’m bumping into an even bigger issue there.

At the moment, however, things seem to remain as they are, or somewhat worse. Global arms spending is going up and up. We can destroy ourselves a hundredfold, and again the following generation will have to ask itself: Where to put all this junk! This only under the assumption that we will not destroy ourselves at least once in the coming years.