Germany, Austria, Italy and France: With friends like these who needs enemies? :)
They also could've joined the EU somewhat earlier, but have refused to do so until the EU changed its rules about NATO membership. Up until 1995, every EU member was also a NATO member.
The last two wars between the Swiss and their neighbours were in 1531 and during Napoleon - who in the end admired the Swiss confederacy and helped rebirth it in its modern form.
That they weren’t waging war does result in excess men who someone else can pay to wage war for them though.
Mercenaries outsource the problem.
Patently wrong: Swiss Neutrality explicitely bans mercenary work by any Swiss citizen.
“The young men who went off to fight, and sometimes die, in foreign service had several incentives—limited economic options in the still largely rural cantons; adventure; pride in the reputation of the Swiss as soldiers; and finally what military historian Sir Charles Oman describes as a pure love of combat and warfighting in and of itself, forged by two centuries of conflict.”
Either way, being a mercenary is explicitly the opposite of ‘fighting for your country’, which is the point I was making.
>The Swiss Guard is considered an elite military unit and highly selective in its recruitment: candidates must be unmarried Swiss Catholic males between 19 and 30 years of age,...
No, but you just haven't understood that they were talking about the past :-).