A Rup­ture in the World Eco­nomic Sys­tem?

The rup­ture in the world eco­nomic sys­tem is un­de­ni­able. Up to this point, for more than sixty years, the US and Eu­rope have suc­cess­fully pro­moted the open­ing and in­te­gra­tion of global mar­kets. This suc­cess­ful model had geopo­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions as well. The ev­i­dent suc­cess of the mar­ket econ­omy paved the way for first re­forms in China which, ex­panded step by step, brought about the coun­try's un­prece­dented eco­nomic rise. And as the East­ern bloc im­ploded be­cause of its own in­abil­ity to ini­ti­ate re­forms, the lure of the Eu­ro­pean sin­gle mar­ket turned into a po­tent in­cen­tive to bring down the iron cur­tain. By en­rolling al­most all the world's coun­tries as mem­bers, the WTO ef­fec­tively turned into a global world trade or­ga­ni­za­tion. Last week it be­came clear: the West is now being chal­lenged by the world­wide suc­cess of its own eco­nomic sys­tem.

Now what? Are many in the West in­creas­ingly hop­ing for sal­va­tion by turn­ing to sim­ple for­mu­las in a world that keeps get­ting more tightly net­worked and com­plex? Is it a good thing if pol­i­tics is guided by a dis­taste for the fu­ture? The iso­la­tion­ist rhetoric sweep­ing some west­ern coun­tries is no help in fac­ing the nu­mer­ous chal­lenges of today. Hide­bound na­tion­al­ism in search of an al­legedly hap­pier past is a use­less con­cept and leads down the wrong path.

Pro­tec­tion­ism ul­ti­mately erodes the pros­per­ity of broad lev­els of the pop­u­la­tion. Pros­per­ity is not a per­ma­nent con­di­tion but has to be earned in the mar­ket­place day after day. An open so­ci­ety of­fers the in­di­vid­ual a bet­ter chance to suc­ceed in the global com­pe­ti­tion. That's also true for Switzer­land. We need to be for­ward look­ing and em­power our cre­ative drive: Our pros­per­ity was, is, and will con­tinue to be the re­sult of count­less im­prove­ments and ad­just­ments in all areas of the econ­omy and of so­ci­ety.