Cassis visit reflects Switzerland’s shift to public diplomacy

Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis’s visit to North Korea reflects how Switzerland’s diplomatic work has moved into the public eye, SRF reports. His stated aim was to revive political dialogue. Switzerland’s office in Pyongyang, whose reopening the Swiss government attended, is expected to help.

A meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was not planned. Still, few Western government representatives have travelled to Pyongyang. Swiss foreign policy figures interviewed by 20 Minuten expressed views ranging from scepticism to support. Liberal Party lawmaker Hans-Peter Portmann said Swiss mediation made sense, but warned against becoming part of a “puppet show” like the friendship US President Donald Trump has presented with Kim. Trump has said, “He is a friend: I like him, he likes me.” The relationship has cooled, and Trump secured few concessions from North Korea.

Switzerland’s “good offices” have long been part of the country’s diplomatic tradition. Political scientist Michael Hermann said their defining feature for many years was “maximum discretion”: they came from the system and were not tied to an individual.

Since the turn of the millennium, Swiss foreign ministers have increasingly put their diplomatic efforts in the spotlight, though in different ways. Micheline Calmy-Rey’s 2008 visit to Tehran drew criticism. Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had said in 2005 that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” Calmy-Rey’s headscarf also drew objections: then Christian Democratic People’s Party president Christophe Darbellay said she had failed to show respect for women’s equality, while the Neue Zürcher Zeitung accused her of falling into a “propaganda trap.” Calmy-Rey said she had followed the host country’s rules while representing Switzerland’s position on human rights. “I did it and I would do it again,” she told NZZ am Sonntag.

Calmy-Rey, Didier Burkhalter and Cassis have each brought Swiss diplomacy into greater public view. Hermann said this reflects a broader cultural shift in politics, encouraged by the growth of communications teams in government departments and shaped by the media age. He identified the 1990s debate over dormant assets as a turning point, saying Swiss discretion came to be viewed differently.