Austria and Switzerland

Since the end of the cold war, Austria and Switzerland have maintained their status of neutrality, but reinterpreted their neutrality policy in pragmatic yet different ways. Both, however, joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) initiative at an early stage. Within the EU and PfP, Austria focused on armed forces interoperability, whereas Switzerland increased its formerly very low contribution to international peace missions. Both alpine republics conducted three major reforms of their armed forces, which entailed a substantial downsizing of overall mobilization strength and weaponry, while maintaining territorial defence as the core mission. Austria and Switzerland both aim at slightly increasing defence expenditures up to the early 2020s as a consequence of widely increased threat perception (owing to mass migration, Islamist terrorism, and a reasserting Russia), yet they will still find it difficult to replace their rapidly ageing main weapons systems. Troop contributions to international operations are likely to remain at at the 2017 levels.