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Sicherheit 2019: The Trend of Opinions on Foreign, Security, and Defense Policy

On Tuesday 28 May 2019, the Military Academy at ETH Zurich and the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich published the annual survey “Sicherheit 2019”. Since 1999, the study has evaluated long-term trends and tendencies in public opinion on foreign, security and defense policy issues in Switzerland.

“Sicherheit” is based on representative surveys conducted each year. As well as including a core set of questions that are always addressed or asked at irregular intervals, the survey also deals with current issues of security policy. In line with this, “Sicherheit 2019” focuses on the relations between the US and Switzerland, the global political situation, attitudes towards equal opportunities within the Swiss Armed Forces and communication efforts by the Swiss military. Here, we provide a summary of the findings of this year’s survey.

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From Belarus with Love: The Limits of Lukashenko’s Dalliance with the West

Image courtesy of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly/Flickr. (CC BY-SA 2.0)

This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 3 April 2019.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its intervention in Eastern Ukraine demonstrated not only its unpredictability but also its willingness to violate agreements and use force to alter borders and destabilize countries in its neighborhood. These events not only shocked the West; they also shook Russia’s allies to the core, not least Belarus. Long branded as “Europe’s last dictatorship,” this Eastern European state is considered Russia’s staunchest ally. And indeed, no country is culturally closer or politically, militarily, and economically more integrated with Russia than Belarus.

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The ‘Regime Security Dilemma’ in US–China Relations

Image courtesy of The White House/Flickr.

This article was originally published in The Strategist by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on 21 March 2019.

Today’s debates on whether US–China relations are deteriorating towards a ‘new cold war’ often involve disagreement over the extent to which there’s an ideological dimension to this competition. By some accounts, it’s purely about power and security, resulting from the historical inevitability of rivalry, if not outright conflict, between rising and ruling powers near a moment of transition.

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A Middle Path? US Public Opinion and Grand Strategy

Image courtesy of Presidio of Monterey/Flickr.

This article was originally published by E-International Relations (E-IR) on 3 March 2019.

In recent years, a sharp debate dominates the scholarly literature on American foreign policy and grand strategy: should the United States retrench from the expansive commitments undertaken in the aftermath of World War II as a globe-spanning military superpower, or should it renew its efforts to pursue the present strategy of global leadership? This issue is not merely of parochial interest to academics; rather, it represents the key dilemma faced by Washington foreign policymakers in the aftermath of the 2016 election campaign and the changes brought by the anti-establishment Trump presidency. Both sides of this debate contend that the American public supports their preferred strategy. However, a closer examination of recent public opinion date actually shows that the American people favor a “middle path” rather than either of the two preferred grand strategies advanced by proponents of Global Leadership and Restraint, respectively.

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America’s Two Track Asia Policy

Image courtesy of The White House/Flickr

This article was originally published by Pacific Forum on 5 February 2019.

President Trump came into office with strong prior beliefs about the failure of US alliance policy and the need for allies to pay for US defense efforts on their behalf. Some feared that he presaged a rising isolationism among the American public that would support a president seeking to pull back from US commitments overseas. But Trump is failing to lay the groundwork for a new approach to the Indo-Pacific. Instead, the US is pursuing a two-track Asia policy, with Congress and the administration reading from different scripts. And the public is only on board with one of those approaches.

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