Experts offer competing views on whether rearmament brings peace

As Switzerland’s parliament debates how much to expand the army, SRF asked two experts whether more weapons make the world safer or increase the risk of war.

Laurent Goetschel, a political science professor at the University of Basel and director of the peace foundation Swisspeace, said there was no simple answer. “Without weapons, there are no wars,” he said, but added that more weapons did not automatically mean war, nor was rearmament alone enough to secure peace. The outcome depended on the context.

Lars-Erik Cederman, a conflict researcher at ETH Zurich, said rearmament could act as a deterrent but could also encourage escalation and a loss of control. The key question was whether the weapons were intended to defend existing borders or change them by force, he said. The intentions of political leaders were decisive.

Asked why Europe had embraced the idea in the early 1990s that fewer weapons meant greater security, Goetschel said the Cold War had ended after military build-ups in both the West and the East had reached unprecedented levels. Both sides had the capacity to destroy each other repeatedly, using nuclear and conventional weapons. Ending the arms race was also intended to reduce economic costs.

Cederman said the situation had since changed significantly. The world had become less secure again, particularly because of the emergence of revisionist powers, he said. International agreements alone were therefore no longer sufficient as a political strategy.

Rearmament could help secure peace when dealing with imperialist leaders who were unwilling to compromise, Cederman said. He cited Russia’s attack on Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin had promised not to attack the country following its renunciation of nuclear weapons. Negotiations remained important, he said, but not at any price.

Goetschel said security also had a strong subjective element. In the United States, many people felt safer owning a gun even though this did not increase objective security. Ultimately, perceptions depended on the intentions attributed to an opponent: the same quantity of weapons could be viewed as a threat or not, depending on those assumptions.

Cederman said disarmament was still possible. Europe had shown that a system based on trust could be built. Germany and France had fought two world wars, yet an attack between them was now unthinkable, he said. What was needed was a combination of defence and peace policy, supported by diplomacy and international institutions. Switzerland was well placed to contribute to this, he said.

Goetschel said efforts in the 1990s had sought to develop a shared European approach to security, known as “cooperative security”. This required a minimum level of trust between the parties and a new approach that took the security needs of all European states into account.