Short Note: Switzerland Conducting Military Maneuver in Which the French Attack

All militaries undertake maneuvers. Typically, they want to train for a realistic scenario. In Germany it was "Red Land" attacks "Blue Land" in the past; and Germany being part of the latter was the first line of defence.

Switzerland, which has no enemies felt it had to get a bit more creative, according to Tages Anzeiger. Their scenario was that France breaks up due to the crisis in the eurozone. One of the new states thinks that Switzerland is responsible for their woes, so they try to acheive debt forgiveness by conducting terrorist attacks. [The simulated French "plan" sounds a bit mad, but so is shutting down a government to try to reach an unachievable goal, or breaking up a coalition to blackmail the president into giving amnesty to Berlusconi. Mad but not unrealistic, I'd say.]

A Swiss tank brigade had to fight off that enemy. Of course, France isn't happy with that scenario. Also, this isn't the first time that Switzerland has trained for a eurozone breakup. Last year, in a similar scenario the country simulated the army having to keep refugees out of Switzerland.

In my opinion, a euro breakup is the only realistic scenario in which Swiss troops would have to fight, since the country is strictly neutral and the army is used almost exclusively for defensive purposes, though they did participate in the KFOR mission in Kosovo. So, I don't understand the French criticism that Switzerland should rather train for "threats of the 21st century." They would have been right three years ago, but the utter incompetence of the leadership in the eurozone has turned such scenarios into possible "threats of the 21st century".