Office of the Historian

450.6031/6–1151

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Roswell D. McClelland of the Office of Western European Affairs

secret
[Washington,] June 11, 1951.

Subject: Switzerland: East-West Trade Position

The Swiss Minister1 called at his request at 11 a. m. He had not revealed in advance the purpose of his visit.

After a few preliminaries, Dr. Bruggmann said that he wished to reemphasize the importance his Government attached to the presence on a US delegation going to Bern to discuss East-West trade of an American representative with the necessary qualifications and authority to deal with Switzerland’s situation as a whole, in particular the larger political aspects of its problem. The Swiss Government hopes to avoid talks exclusively with what Bruggmann referred to as “traffic policemen”, that is technicians primarily concerned with the question of “which way materials go”. Switzerland wishes very much to be able to deal with someone who is not just an enforcement [Page 1104] agent, the Minister stressed, but who can take “a broader view” of the Swiss position. He wondered in this respect whether Mr. (Nat) King from the Embassy at Paris would be able to participate. I said that I did not know.

Dr. Bruggmann repeated a number of arguments which he has advanced before concerning Switzerland’s position of neutrality and the possible impact of our East-West trade policy thereon. The two principal ones, which are hot without validity, were:

1)
Switzerland is very desirous of maintaining international “confidence” in the genuineness and constancy of its neutrality. Once Switzerland embarks upon a course of “watering down its neutrality” by unilaterally embargoing exports to the East, for example, it will have undermined its reputation as a true neutral and its international status will no longer command the respect it now does.
2)
The Swiss are afraid of radical changes in US foreign policy in the future as a result of possible developments on the American domestic political scene such as a Republican Administration in 1953. They apparently consider a major shift in US foreign policy interest from Europe to Asia quite within the realm of possibility. If Switzerland now incurs increased Soviet and Satellite hostility by cutting off certain exports to those areas at US insistence it may later find itself holding the bag should US foreign policy change along the above lines. The Swiss counter the argument that the United States is firmly committed in Europe and hence unlikely to withdraw its interest in that area, regardless of domestic political changes, by recalling the striking reversal in US policy toward the League of Nations following the First World War.

  1. Karl Bruggmann.↩