The view presented here from a geopolitical perspective is intended as a set of arguments for two upcoming referendums that are of existential importance for Switzerland: The Framework Treaty with the EU and the Neutrality Initiative. At the very moment when the crisis of the EU and NATO and their failure in the Ukraine war are becoming apparent, the so-called centre-left majority in the Swiss parliament is pushing forward the rapprochement with these institutions of the former European colonial powers.

A set of arguments for the upcoming fateful referendums in Switzerland

by Peter Mattmann-Allamand*

It is important to make voters aware of the devastating consequences of such a course change in foreign policy during the referendum campaign. A Switzerland that accepts the failing reactionary strategy of Western supremacy and the associated warmongering would pay dearly for it. Just look across the border to Germany or France.

The US vassal EU has no realistic strategy of its own

It can’t get worse. As far as political strategy is concerned, the EU countries are at rock bottom. The EU elite marvels at the change of course long-announced by the Trump administration. While the new American administration assesses that the West cannot win the war in Ukraine without risking a nuclear war, the EU is senselessly sticking to its course of war. The EU countries are prepared to go even deeper into debt in order to arm themselves massively.
  Does this Eurocentric blindness have to do with this Eurocentric blindness connected to the fact that the EU itself is a project of the American strategy of global domination, as outlined by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997?1 The influential US foreign policy expert repeatedly emphasised that domination of the Eurasian continent was a prerequisite for real world domination. With the Single European Act(SEA), the former EEC took service with the major American and European corporations in 1986. The EU became their proconsul/representative in Eurasia. It was to enforce globalisation in Europe and, together with the USA, drive it forward worldwide. No country in the world would democratically enshrine the preference and supremacy of the most powerful economic players, the global players, in its constitution. With the EU, a sham-democratic, quasi-feudal supranational institution has been created that safeguards this supremacy and regulates the regional economy and national politics in favour of the global players: The free movement of capital, goods, services and people is the supreme maxim imposed on national constitutions. The ever-growing body of EU legislation in this area is not democratically legitimised. The EU legislator is the unelected executive, which is influenced by over 10,000 lobbyists.2
  The crisis of globalisation is now obvious. The EU countries are squandering billions on military armaments and the war in Ukraine. With their economic sanctions, they are primarily harming themselves. In many places, the local SME economy is withering away. A global “climate protection” campaign wants to replace fossil fuels by electricity, hoping to cover the massive future energy requirements of artificial intelligence and electric cars. Further environmental destruction is the order of the day. Wind farms and photovoltaic systems are being paved over nature by emergency legislation. The negative consequences of the EU’s spatial development policy, which was launched decades ago, are also being felt. The aim was to concentrate the population in larger centres along the main European transport axes in the interests of the transnational economy. While “peripheral areas” are depopulating, land prices and density stress in the centres are becoming unbearable.
  One symptom of the crisis of globalisation is the political blockade. Neither in Germany nor in France does the government represent a majority of voters. Firewalls prevent the growing forces critical of globalisation from participating in government. There is talk of “inclusion” while at the same time excluding a growing proportion of voters from the political process. The parties they vote for are defamed as “far-right” and therefore not capable of forming a coalition.
  It is becoming increasingly clear that the EU countries are paying a high price for their globalisation course. Why, despite all the outrage at the US government’s change of course, can the EU elites not think of a realistic strategy that could correct the current decline?

The reactionary project: The global supremacy of the West 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s, there was an opportunity for a world order based on the UN Charter, which would have put an end to the quest for supremacy by individual superpowers. At that time, the European elites decided to remain vassals of the USA.
  They allowed themselves to be drawn into the US project of global supremacy and created an institution to serve this purpose – the EU. Since the signing of the UN Charter in 1945, any project aimed at the domination of certain states is confidently to be described as reactionary. According to the Oxford Languagesdictionary, reactionary politics seeks to restore conditions that we considered outdated and no longer relevant”. The EU countries have embarked on a reactionary global political strategy. Their decline runs parallel to the failure of this strategy, as the war in Ukraine shows. Many EU countries are paying hundreds of billions for the war, accepting higher energy prices and losses due to sanctions and ruining their currency by running up debts. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that the war cannot be won.
  The NATO war propaganda – at kindergarten level – corresponds to what is known in psychological jargon as projection. There is not a shred of evidence that Russia is planning or could be capable of conquering other countries to create a new Russian empire.3 Global domination, however, has been the explicit economic and foreign policy strategy of the USA and the EU countries that cooperate militarily in NATO since colonial times.1 NATO has also implemented this strategy in recent times, waging wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in violation of international law. For its strategy of global domination, it has accepted millions of deaths and several countries destroyed for decades to come.

The Ukraine War: Consequence of EU-NATO eastern enlargement

If one does not ignore the history of the Ukraine war, there is no doubt that this war is a consequence of the so-called eastward expansion of the EU and NATO. In February 1990, Genscher promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. Nevertheless, in 1994, US strategists embarked on the “Black Sea Project.” The old British Empire idea of ​​encircling Russia in the Black Sea and denying it access to the eastern Mediterranean became the new US strategy: Since then, EU and NATO countries have sought accession by Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia. The bombing of Belgrade in 1999 was part of this project.4 The eastward expansion began in 1999 – despite Russian protests – with Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. In 2004, seven more countries joined: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At the 2007 Munich Security Conference, President Putin described this expansion, which was contrary to good faith, as unacceptable to Russia.
  In 2008, the EU and NATO declared their intention to expand to include Ukraine and Georgia. Under the name “Eastern Partnership,” they proposed an association agreement with the six former Soviet republics of Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Ukraine. These agreements provided for economic and, in some cases, military ties to the EU-NATO without membership. A closer exchange between elites, an energy supply independent of Russia, and an opening of markets to capital and goods from Western investors were the key goals of these agreements, which massively exacerbated the conflict with Russia. In 2011, Russia agreed to a free trade zone with Armenia, Moldova, Belarus, and Ukraine, among others.5 Since the Association Agreement with the EU was not very attractive for Ukraine, particularly with regard to energy prices, the Ukrainian parliament rejected this agreement in November 2013, so that President Yanukovych did not sign the agreement at the EU summit on 28–29 November in Vilnius.
  This resulted in a regime-change operation financed and co-organised by the US and the EU. A violent protest movement on the Maidan, led by Ukrainian nationalists, overthrew the democratically elected President Yanukovych. He was replaced by a NATO-loyal, Russo phobic interim government. This government intensified discrimination against the Russian-speaking oblasts in eastern Ukraine, leading to a civil war that resulted in thousands of deaths. The Minsk II agreement, which would have guaranteed these oblasts partial autonomy, was never implemented. Meanwhile, NATO massively rearmed Ukraine.
  At the end of 2021, President Putin proposed a security agreement to the US and NATO. Its main point was Ukraine’s neutrality, i.e., a long-term renunciation of NATO membership. The US and NATO rejected the offer. A few days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Putin offered Zelensky peace negotiations. Zelensky declared, just days after Russia’s invasion, that Ukraine was ready for neutrality. In March 2022, a peace agreement was almost reached under Turkish mediation. Following intervention by the US government and then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Ukraine unilaterally withdrew from an almost concluded agreement.4 Abandoning the strategy of global hegemony would have prevented the war in Ukraine.6
  By the end of 2024, it became clear that the US and the EU, despite massive economic and military support for Ukraine, could not win the war. The new US administration under Donald Trump is realistic in this regard and is striving to end it. With two exceptions, the EU countries remain on a war path. Why do they lack a realistic perspective and miss once again the opportunity to escape a reactionary geopolitical strategy that imposes enormous costs and burdens on them?

EU and NATO: Institutions of the colonial way of life

With the exception of Austria, Ireland, Malta, and Cyprus, all EU countries are also NATO members. The strategy of hegemony is deeply rooted in the cultural heritage of NATO and EU countries: the descendants of North American and European colonialists constitute the core of these institutions.
  The colonisation of the world and nature has made the colonial way of life the predominant way of life on Earth. The EU and NATO institutions secure this dominance worldwide today. Colonialism lives on in the colonial way of life. This is more than just an epoch in world history. It is the basic pattern that permeates our contemporary global culture and makes the accumulation of crises within this civilisation understandable. The broad concept of the “colonial way of life” clearly illustrates the connection between various aspects of our civilisation: a monetary economy aimed at asymmetric profit, the compulsion to grow and innovate, industrialisation, globalisation, techno-plutocracy, asymmetry of development, the distribution of power and resources, the dismantling of democracy, exploitation, ecocide, the use of violence, war, etc.
  Based on the narrow definition of the occupation of foreign territories, the term “colonial” can be used more generally to describe the appropriation of foreign resources. This is asymmetric, exploitative, and aimed at one’s own advantage and one-sided profit. It corresponds to an unequal, unfair exchange, establishes a power imbalance, and leads to win-lose situations, conflict, and social division.
  Maximisation of profit is the basic pattern of the colonial way of life. Etymologically, the Old High German “winnan” is synonymous with “to achieve through effort.” It is related to “to wish, to desire, to strive.”7 In economic terms, “profit” means something different. Here, the term has a quantitative rather than a qualitative meaning. It describes profitability, i.e., the extent to which a surplus can be achieved in an exchange transaction.
  In an ideal local market with perfect competition and complete transparency for all market participants, no profit would be realisable. The participants’ profits would cancel each other out. Since there are no markets unaffected by power and dominance relations, some theorists such as Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Frank H. Knight believe that profits are ultimately always one-sided extra or monopoly profits.8  Long-distance trade has always been oriented toward this. The vast distances make it opaque and uncontrollable for many actors. Through arbitrary terms of trade, the elimination of competition, and monopolies, fair exchange conditions can be circumvented and one-sided profits can be achieved. Innovations are another source of extra profits. The development of a new product is tantamount to the elimination of competition and a temporary monopoly position. The privileging of certain economic actors through appropriate laws, state interventions, supranational institutions, military, and political measures also creates profitable monopolies for them.

Maximising profits through long-distance trade was not an invention of the West

They existed even before colonialism and industrialisation. As early as the 13th century, an extensive long-distance trade network developed in the Indian Ocean. The centres were China and India. Arab, Jewish and Persian merchants were involved. However, the conquests of the European colonial powers in the New World gave an immense impetus to the colonial way of life. The pursuit of profit from unequal exchange is the real cause of the compulsion for competition, growth and innovation that drives the colonial way of life and has led to today’s industrial civilisation and consumer society dominated by science and technology. The globalisation of the last thirty years has accelerated the process and exacerbated the problems. The colonial way of life has entered a comprehensive crisis: Endangerment of the ecosystem; huge concentration of wealth and growth in the hands of a few; dismantling of democracy; total commercialism; absolute dominance of the commodity world and dependence on technologies selected, developed and marketed by the most powerful economic actors. This development, often referred to as “modern progress”, the crisis of which we are currently experiencing, was by no means without alternatives. It is neither God-given nor natural, but the result of historical processes. Under different, less asymmetrical circumstances, history could have been more peaceful and eco-socially compatible.
  Against this background, the irrational, “masochistic” strategy of the EU becomes understandable. The elites of the European colonial powers are so entangled in the colonial way of life that they cannot realistically assess the change in the geopolitical balance of power. Russia and China, two countries that were able to escape colonial rule in the wake of the world wars instigated by the colonial powers of Europe, have become stronger.
  With the BRICS group of countries, another alliance is emerging between these countries and the former colonial countries of the global South, which are also growing in strength. Only 12 per cent of the world’s population live in the NATO/EU countries. Under these circumstances, it is irrational to cling to the global colonial supremacy of the West.

Trump versus EU – two controversial colonial strategies

The political turnaround in the USA is a consequence of this changed geopolitical balance of power. The political elites in European countries are at a loss. They are unable to see the Trump administration’s policy for what it is: a change in the strategy of colonial domination adapted to the changed balance of power. Trump’s policy is a response to the looming failure of the globalisation strategy, which enforces the market power of major Western corporations via supranational institutions such as the EU, NATO, WHO, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc. and disempowers, integrates and thus bypasses nation states. For the entrepreneur and dealmaker Trump, the economic, military and political costs of globalisation undermine the strategy of global dominance because they weaken the USA and the EU countries.
  The relocation of jobs abroad has had disastrous consequences in some areas of the US and EU countries. The same can be said of uncontrolled migration, coronavirus and “climate protection” policies, the war in Ukraine and economic sanctions. Although individual capital groups such as arms, pharmaceutical and digital companies benefit from them, they are a disaster for the economy as a whole. The citizens of the USA and EU countries are footing the bill: increasing insecurity and crime in the public sphere, higher energy costs, taxes and duties, unemployment, lower wages and inflation as a result of excessive debt. This is putting pressure on the firewalls of the West. Despite daily defamation in the globalisers’ media campaigns, more and more people are voting for anti-globalisation parties.
  Trump’s policy has a second, ideological component. Trump is fighting the so-called “woke culture” that has developed in parallel to the process of globalisation and which demands special attention for discriminated minorities. “Inclusion” is the slogan in the progressive, globalisation-friendly mainstream. At the same time, dissenting opinions are “cancelled”, i.e. “excluded”, erased, censored. Woke culture is a radicalised version of the individualisation and anti-discrimination policies of the 1968 movement. It has become the dominant ideology of globalisation because it is based on a strange alliance between the left and green successors of 1968 and the globalisers. This coalition has an objective basis: the educated urban middle classes of Western “service societies” are among the winners of globalisation. As the positions on the framework agreement with the EU show, it is primarily the left-wing and green parties that are pushing for Switzerland’s accession to the EU and thus indirectly to NATO. The European Social Democrats have been leading the way in the founding of the EU from the outset. In the 1990s, the Greens betrayed their own ideals with an abrupt swing into the camp of the globalisers. In doing so, they put an end to the peace movement and the first ecological movement, which paved the way for today’s warmongering and intensified environmental destruction.2 All this explains why a geopolitically clearly reactionary position comes across as left-green and progressive and can be used to divide the opposition critical of globalisation. The left-right polarisation is the most important ideological pattern that helps globalisation to break through and maintain it. The constant division of society prevents a majority alliance of anti-globalisation forces from all political camps.
  Whatever one may think about or puzzle over Trump’s policy, one thing is abundantly clear: it is not a rejection but a defence of the colonial way of life, the rule of one-sided profit and unipolar advantage. It is a deglobalized, nation-state-based variant of the dominance of the USA and its most powerful economic players. The globalised version of colonial politics, the “new type of hegemony ”1 that Brzezinski raved about, is finally over. According to this, global imperial supremacy was to be exercised indirectly and “seemingly by consensus” via an elaborate system of institutions, procedures and coalitions with “dependent foreign elites”, pretending a balance of power and influence. As developments in some African countries (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) and some of Russia’s neighbours (Georgia, Moldova, Romania) show, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the West to retain or find dependent elites in these areas. Trump is pursuing old-style colonial, imperial policies. Bluntly playing off economic and military power for spheres of influence, markets, exchange conditions, low-wage regions and natural resources is the opposite of seemingly consensus-driven hegemony.
  This does not mean that a colonial strategy geared towards deglobalisation cannot open up certain political opportunities. If a realistic assessment of the geopolitical balance of power were to lead to an end to the war in Ukraine, both the people in Ukraine and Russia as well as the Europeans would be spared a great deal. A different migration policy or a weakening of supranational institutions such as the EU, NATO, WHO and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change while at the same time restoring the sovereignty of nation states would also be conceivable. However, the globalisation-critical “right-wing” parties still have their moment of truth ahead of them. Genuine localisation, in which local actors all over the world would once again be sovereign and have an advantage, is only possible within the framework of a multipolar world order in which no state claims supremacy. It presupposes an overcoming of the colonial way of life. It is unlikely that the change in strategy pursued by Trump will restore the West’s damaged dominance in the long term. The West’s decline is not merely the result of a wrong colonial strategy, but primarily the consequence of a real change in the geopolitical balance of power.

Overcoming the colonial way of life – a hopeful political project for the future

After missing the opportunity in 1989, the current geopolitical turning point offers European countries another chance to abandon their strategy of global domination and pursue a policy of correcting and overcoming the colonial way of life. Subordinating oneself as a vassal to a declining hegemonic power does not pay off – as we have seen. It is absurd to bear the military costs of a colonial strategy that is failing due to changing power dynamics. Overcoming the colonial way of life, on the other hand, would be a very realistic way out of the civilizational crisis we are currently experiencing, as described above: Conflicts, wars, imperial rule, injustice, and inequality would be reduced, as would the associated refugee and migration problems. The economic model would no longer be geared to profit maximisation, excessive quantitative growth, and senseless innovation pressure (e.g., toward artificial intelligence), but rather toward qualitative prosperity for all everywhere, to the protection of the biosphere, and to global social justice. The doom and gloom in Western countries could give way to a hopeful vision of the future. Unfortunately, there is no longer any political force in the West that could be considered as the champion of such a project. Everything is hopeless because the West lacks a relevant political movement against war, decline, and colonial domination. The ‘68 generation had developed a hopeful critique of the colonial way of life. Their shift to the globalization camp brought an abrupt end to the environmental and peace movement of that time. Today’s problems are related to this.

Left versus right or right versus left: Sham battles in the service of the colonial strategy of domination

It is impossible to predict whether Trump’s policies will bring about the turnaround his supporters in the US and the Western camp hope for. America’s “new type” of hegemony may be over. The hegemony of the globalisation forces in the Western media, however, remains unshaken. Trump’s attempts at deglobalisation could trigger a backlash, as the recent elections in Canada and Australia demonstrate. The Western media will promote increased globalisation as a remedy against Trump. For example, the EU turbochargers in Switzerland hope that Trump’s policies will generate yes votes for the framework agreement with the EU. The dispute over the correct strategy for Western hegemony is ultimately likely to strengthen globalisation. It exacerbates the left-right polarisation, and this polarisation blocks any kind of change. I also see this as the only function the left-right pair still serves in politics today. Left versus right has become an empty ideological formula for the exclusion of critics of globalisation. Why should a policy that supports the reactionary EU/US/NATO project of Western hegemony and the associated warmongering be considered “left-wing”? Why is the techno-plutocrat and transhumanist Elon Musk, who places the future of humanity on Mars, considered “conservative” or “right-wing”?
  The Western mainstream media will limit the political strategy discussion to the sham battles in the service of the colonial hegemony strategy and will continue to marginalise voices that challenge this strategy and question the colonial way of life. This makes it all the more important to include geopolitical context in discussions about the EU Framework Treaty and the Neutrality Initiative. • 

1 Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard. American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books: New York, 1997
2 Mattmann-Allamand, Peter. Deglobalisierung. Ein ökologisch-demokratischer Ausweg aus der Krise.
(Deglobalisation. An ecological and democratic way out of the crisis). Promedia Verlag: Vienna 2021.
3 Osthold, Christian. “Russland wird Europa kaum auf breiter Front angreifen” (Russia is unlikely to attack Europe on a broad front). In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of 5 May 2025, p. 19
4 Sachs, Jeffrey D. “War is over” Speech before the EU-Parliament on 19 February 2025.
5 Hofbauer, Hannes. Im Wirtschaftskrieg. Die Sanktionspolitik des Westens und ihre Folgen. Das Beispiel Russland(In economic warfare. The West’s sanctions policy and its consequences. The example of Russia). Vienna: Promedia Verlag 2024
6 “Ich hätte dasselbe getan wie Putin”. Interview mit John Mearsheimer, Prof. für Politikwissenschaft Universität Chicago USA. (“I would have done the same as Putin.” Interview with John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, USA.) In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of 6 May 2025, p. 4-5
7 Kluge, Friedrich. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (Etymological dictionary of the German language) 24th Edition. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter-Verlag, 2002
8 Lenger, Friedrich. Der Preis der Welt. Eine Globalgeschichte des Kapitalismus (The cost of the world: A global history of capitalism). München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2023

* Peter Mattmann-Allamand, born in Ebikon (a municipality in the canton of Lucerne) in 1948, is a former member of the executive committee of the Progressive Organisationen Schweiz (Progressive Organisations of Switzerland, POCH), the most important group of the German student movement of the 1960s. He was a long-standing elected representative in the cantonal and city parliaments of Lucerne. In 1995, he left the Green Party after it changed its position on EU membership. Specialist in general internal medicine and homeopathy. Book publications: Heile dich, Helvetia! Plädoyer für das Weiterbestehen der Schweiz (Heal thyself, Helvetia! A plea for the continued existence of Switzerland). The ecological and globally solidarity-based “no” to the EC. Arguments against EC accession.Lucerne 1992; Deglobalisierung. Ein ökologisch-demokratischer Ausweg aus der Krise (Deglobalisation. An ecological and democratic way out of the crisis, Vienna: Promedia Verlag 2021

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