Ryuu96 said:
Personally, I would not take that risk, I don't see much difference in equipment already being sold to another country (lets say Germany), meaning that said country now owns the equipment as they purchased it, so they should be allowed to decide on how it's used but Switzerland still blocks them from doing so. If I'm a country that has spent billions on Swiss equipment but they're still telling me that I don't own it and don't get to decide how it's used then I would question the security implications if my own country was at war, what the Swiss reaction would be to me using their weapons. I struggle to see how it would be okay in Switzerland's mind for a country to use Swiss equipment against another country directly but not for a country who owns Swiss equipment to send it to another country to use it on them, Swiss hands are clean even more-so in the latter scenario. Lets make it a cleaner comparison though, what if Poland was attacked, would Switzerland block Germany from being able to send military equipment to Poland or take it there themselves? What if a non-NATO ally was attacked? We would not be able to back them up with any type of Swiss equipment and it's unlikely Germany is ever attacked directly, Lol. So they have military equipment sitting rotting. Personally, I feel like Switzerland wants to have their cake and eat it too, in the sense that they want to hide behind being a "neutral" country but they also want to sell weapons because it brings them $$$. I don't think anyone should trust them anymore with buying military equipment from them, there is too much uncertainty around its usage now and I also think Switzerland just wants to maintain friendly relations with Russia for the $$$ not because they're afraid of them in any way. |
Running the rule over transferring your produced military equipment is standard practice across the world. Its not a thing inly Switzerland does. Its also why European countries needed US agreement to send certain arms to Ukraine - because many of them contain US-produced components so the US has a say in it as well.
The reason they can do that is because it will be part of the sale agreement, and there is good reason for it. Military equipment can often be very high-tech and countries don’t want to run the risk of it getting sold onto an enemy state or the like. So they get put in the re-sale clause so they are still consulted if they initial buyer wants to sell-on the equipment.
