Swiss Watching: Inside the Land of Milk and Money

by Diccon Bewes

From the age of 20 a Swiss man must complete 260 days of compulsory military service,12 either all at once or in annual stages, before he reaches 34. After his active service time is up, he remains in the reserves for a further ten years and must regularly practise shooting his rifle. Objectors used to go to jail, but in the 1990s the law was finally changed to allow community service instead, though it’s a longer stint of 390 days.13 The Swiss government is looking into extending this obligatory service to women too, but currently they can join in voluntarily; unsurprisingly few do, so that women make up less than 1 per cent of Swiss soldiers.14 It all adds up to an army of over 200,000 that can be called up at any time to defend the country. But the big question is, against whom? Having a permanent army in waiting doesn’t come cheap. Defence annually eats up over 4.5 billion Swiss francs, 7 per cent of the national budget, or more than agriculture.15 Admittedly agriculture now only accounts for 4 per cent of the Swiss economy (despite all those cows) but it’s still quite an achievement for a neutral country that hasn’t been attacked in over 200 years. When a Swiss man is away on his military service, the government pays 80 per cent of his salary.16 Given that, in total, 6.5 million days are needed every year,17 that’s quite a bill for the taxpayer. Not only that, each soldier gets his own rifle and two uniforms to keep at home, so that he is ready at a moment’s notice to...