Jacques Pitteloud, the former Swiss ambassador to Washington and now based in Brussels as Switzerland’s permanent representative to NATO, has had a remarkable career. He started in Swiss intelligence and, in his free time, helped rescue the relatives of Swiss citizens from the Rwandan genocide and tracked down war criminals across Europe. His diplomatic experience is equally vast, having served in multiple ambassadorial roles.
In an interview with the Swiss publication Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Pitteloud highlighted what he considered the worst-case scenario: the potential withdrawal of America’s nuclear shield from Europe. Yet, he emphasised that the ultimate determining factor would remain Washington’s stance.
“If the US firmly upholds Article 5 of the NATO treaty, there is a high chance that there will be no war in Europe,” he said. “But if the White House’s message is that Europeans must fend for themselves, even in the face of further aggression from Russia, that will be dangerous.”
Pitteloud also recalled a conversation he had two years before the full-scale war began with a senior member of the US administration, during which he warned that Vladimir Putin was preparing to initiate a conflict soon.
“He asked me why I thought that way. I replied, ‘Why would a country with an economy the size of Italy’s build such a massive army if there’s no visible enemy and there never has been? This is basic intelligence. Today, the Russian economy is entirely a war economy. It won’t be restructured that quickly,'” says the diplomat.
Looking at the current world order, Pitteloud believes power politics is making a sharp return. The world, he argues, is becoming more Bismarckian, where the laws of the strongest hold sway and the era of a value-based system built on rules has come to an end. And it is precisely when international law loses its clout that the powerful begin to entertain the idea of redrawing borders.
“If the International Criminal Court is discredited, war crimes will increase. I see an important diplomatic role for neutral Switzerland here: it must champion the adherence to international law,” he says.
Earlier, in a conversation with The Ukrainian Week, human rights activist and program director of the Centre for Civil Liberties, Volodymyr Yavorsky, warned that sanctions against the International Criminal Court could grind global investigations to a halt and severely stymie the ICC’s development. “We would be stepping back 30 years, to a time when the world lacked any structure to even slightly deter international crimes,” he said.
Meanwhile, when discussing Switzerland’s role in Europe’s security architecture, Pitteloud acknowledges that while the country once boasted one of the largest armies in Europe and a robust defence industry during the Cold War, today it would be vulnerable to ballistic missile attacks from the Mediterranean.
“We are not connected to the continental warning and detection system. We hardly produce weapons domestically. Moralism has prevailed: don’t produce or export your own weapons, if possible! The Finns and Swedes show that it doesn’t have to be this way. They were neutral before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and no one doubted their neutrality, even though they were far more closely aligned with NATO back then than we are today. This example also proves there can be no partial entry or ‘salami slicing’ tactics: you’re either in NATO, or you’re not,” Pitteloud stresses.
