[Cumpiler69]

All of them at the same time, they want to eat their cake, have their cake, sell their cake and rent their cake. Neutral means you get to profit from doing business with all sides at the same time while spinning some virtuous BS PR how you don't take any sides while you deal under the table with bloody war lords. That's how Switzerland and later Austria got rich in the cold war, by being the middle men between the NATO and USSR deals. Today it's being a middle man between NATO, China, Russia.

There's always gonna be demand for middle men to wash dirty laundry of various countries' deals that they prefer to keep secret so they can pretend to stay clean on the public scene.

European countries would do well to stop being so complacent and relying on US for high-tech and defense since the US never hesitates to flip the switch from "you're a valuable ally" to "you're our bitch, whaddaya gonna do about it?" whenever it needs to strong-arm you into complacency, and so the EU should invest heavily on having a competitive local defense and high-tech industry, but who am I kidding, this is always falling on deaf ears and nothing's gonna change.

[aktuel]

To be fair, what country doesn't act like they have this cake replicator technology? Certainly the U.S. and England are firmly in cakeism territory.

[Cumpiler69]

I don't think it's too much wrong with using the exploits you've got since every country would do that if they could, just don't piss on peoples' heads and tell them it's raining.

Pretending you're neutral while you're dealing with all sides is a very hypocritical definition of neutrality that people aren't buying.

[brianstrimp]

> Pretending you're neutral while you're dealing with all sides

That's the very definition of it though.

[freehorse]

Switzerland is not that neutral anymore. For example, they have been adopting the same EU's sanctions against Russia, so they do not have the same role of middleman.

[genewitch]

> European countries would do well to stop being so complacent and relying on US for high-tech and defense, and invest heavily on having a competitive local defense and high-tech industry,

Yes, I like this speech better with the von der Lyon accent, when I heard it a couple days ago.

[Cumpiler69]

Got a source to that? Knowing VDL I don't doubt it, just would like to hear it for myself to have a laugh, since she's the most hypocritical, useless, corrupt, champagne socialist in Europe.

[genewitch]

Depends, do you want those words nearly verbatim? Here's a clip I heard today: https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaind...

Here's "its in no ones interest to break the bonds of global economy": https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737931650.953_queenursulaind...

Working backward: https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1737672200.295_davos-queenurs...

I may have conflated someone else talking about defense at Davos this week with her speech(as). Apologies.

[maeil]

Even when preceded by "champagne", the word "socialist" shouldn't be allowed to appear in the same sentence as her name.

[lukan]

It also means not wanting to interfere into other peoples buisness so much. Swiss has not invaded anyone in a long time.