Documents Diplomatiques Suisses . Vol. 23

The aims of the editors of this twenty-third volume of the Documents Diplomatiques Suisses are ambitious. The mere 184 documents selected from the extensive holdings of the Swiss Federal Archives are supposed to cover the entire spectrum, and the most important issues, of Swiss foreign policy in the years from 1964 to 1966. Thereby, the volume aims to provide a tool not only for historians, but also for policy-makers, analysts, and journalists, and to advance the understanding of Switzerland’s foreign relations in general and in the mid-1960s in particular. During this period, the conservative but internationally experienced Federal Councillor Friedrich Traugott Wahlen was succeeded by Willy Spühler, who became the first social democrat at the helm of the Federal Political Department. In their respective years as Foreign Ministers, they benefited from the easing of East–West tensions in Europe, but were confronted with the escalation of the Cold War in the Third World, namely in Vietnam, and an international system in which the newly independent African states were increasingly making their voices heard. They could work, however, from a position of strength. Switzerland’s western-oriented neutrality was—in contrast to the immediate post-war period—respected on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and its economic wealth provided a disproportionate bargaining power for a country of such a small size

Art · Economic history · Foreign policy · Neutrality · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · History · Law