{"id":190952,"date":"2009-10-11T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T03:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/11\/swiss-to-hold-referendum-on-banning-arms-export\/"},"modified":"2009-10-11T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T03:20:00","slug":"swiss-to-hold-referendum-on-banning-arms-export","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/10\/11\/swiss-to-hold-referendum-on-banning-arms-export\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss to Hold Referendum on Banning Arms Export"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img34.imageshack.us\/img34\/1463\/soldatenmesser082795217.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"400\" \/>For people who don&#8217;t follow history, the idea that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviationweek.com\/aw\/blogs\/defense\/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&amp;plckScript=blogScript&amp;plckElementId=blogDest&amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3A20d9df06-956d-4a96-8b6b-701a57399766\">Swiss would ban arms exports<\/a> seems to have little significance, but this is wrong, both historically today.<\/p>\n<p>Swiss neutrality was a product of the fact that their main export from the 15<sup>th<\/sup> century or so was <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Swiss_mercenaries\">Swiss Mercenaries<\/a>, the finest pikemen in Christendom, and so one of the motivations for neutrality was the ability to sell their services without regard to any alliances at home.<\/p>\n<p>These days, of course, the Swiss are still in the war business:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>MOWAG, whose Pirinah 8X8 AFV being the basis of both the Marine Corps LAV and the Army&#8217;s Stryker.<\/li>\n<li>Oerlikon Contraves and its light cannon.<\/li>\n<li>Wenger S.A. and Victorinox A.G., producers of the &#8220;Swiss Army Knife&#8221; (shown)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Though the last one would likely not be covered by such a ban.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, it goes to Swiss voters on November 30, and is a part of an overall campaign by GSoA (Group for a Switzerland Without an Army) to demilitarize the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For people who don&#8217;t follow history, the idea that the Swiss would ban arms exports seems to have little significance, but this is wrong, both historically today. Swiss neutrality was a product of the fact that their main export from the 15th century or so was Swiss Mercenaries, the finest pikemen in Christendom, and so &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008,1000,984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-procurement","category-elections","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}