Walter B. Gyger is a Swiss diplomat who entered the service of the Swiss Foreign Ministry in 1974. Over a career of more than thirty years, he held senior positions, notably as Head of the Swiss Mission to the United Nations in Geneva and as Ambassador of Switzerland to India, Türkiye, and the Russian Federation. He is the author of Dare We Hope?, a book reflecting on four decades of diplomatic practice and global governance.
Maria Kuznetsova, Guillaume de Sardes: You recently published Dare We Hope?, which guides the direction of our discussion. What did you seek to convey through this work?
Walter B. Gyger: This book is not a classical diplomatic memoir. Many former ambassadors publish accounts centered on anecdotes or memorable episodes from their careers. I wanted to do something different: to convey what forty years of diplomatic practice have taught me about how the world actually works.
We are living through a period of deep uncertainty. Traditional frameworks of analysis no longer suffice to explain today’s crises. When we focus exclusively on international law, institutions, and legal norms, we see only part of reality. My experience has shown me that two international orders coexist in parallel. On the one hand, an order based on rules, procedures, and institutions. On the other, an order based on power, where there is no referee, no shared value system, and no effective sanction mechanism.
I conceived this book as a set of analytical instruments to navigate this dual reality. International politics is shaped by deep and often contradictory forces. Change is constant, yet it inevitably provokes resistance because it alters balances of power. Attraction and repulsion explain many geopolitical realignments. Causality is equally central. Political decisions generate cascading effects, sometimes long after they are taken.
The aim is not to offer ready-made solutions, but to propose a method for thinking in terms of forces, balances, and consequences. Without such a method, it becomes difficult to understand contemporary conflicts and even harder to imagine credible forms of global governance. What I offer is not hindsight, but a way to read a world that no longer fits inherited categories.
You insist on thinking in terms of forces and interdependencies rather than purely legal schemes. This seems particularly relevant in the South Caucasus, where control over roads, pipelines, and corridors appears decisive. Has infrastructure become a central political factor?
Yes, infrastructure now plays a central political role because it has become a direct instrument of power redistribution. Transport routes, pipelines, and rail corridors are not merely economic projects. They determine who controls flows, who depends on whom, and therefore who holds leverage.
The South Caucasus lies at the intersection of historic circulation routes between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. This geography has acquired renewed importance in the context of global geostrategic shifts. One must understand, in particular, the logic of major external actors such as China. The Belt and Road Initiative is not ideological. It responds to a structural constraint. China’s access to maritime routes is vulnerable, and it therefore seeks alternative corridors toward Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In this logic, the South Caucasus becomes a key transit space.
This does not mean that diplomacy is disappearing. On the contrary, diplomacy has always been linked to infrastructure. What has changed is the scale of the phenomenon and its integration into global competition.
Within the region, power relations differ sharply. Azerbaijan enjoys significant room for maneuver thanks to its resources and position. Armenia, as a landlocked country, faces much tighter constraints and depends heavily on access routes and regional openings. Georgia oscillates between competing forces of attraction without yet stabilizing its strategic orientation.
Ultimately, diplomacy today is increasingly a diplomacy of flows and interdependencies. To understand the South Caucasus, one must situate it within the broader interaction between Russia, China, Europe, the United States, Türkiye, and Iran. Without this global lens, local choices and future balances remain opaque.
Given the competing interests of Russia, Türkiye, Iran, Europe, and China, can the South Caucasus preserve strategic autonomy?
We must be careful with the concept of strategic autonomy. In today’s world, no state acts in a geopolitical vacuum. All are embedded in economic, security, technological, and energy interdependencies. Even great powers are constrained. Smaller states located on transit routes even more so.
The real question is not whether these countries can be independent in an absolute sense, but how they manage external pressures. Azerbaijan has assets that allow it to pursue a relatively flexible strategy. Georgia has experienced alternating phases of attraction toward the West and recalibration toward its regional environment. Armenia faces the most severe constraints and cannot build a viable future without addressing regional blockages, particularly with Türkiye.
Strategic autonomy, in this context, is not a condition. It is a continuous balancing exercise. It depends on a country’s ability to navigate multiple relationships without provoking rupture and to transform its position from vulnerability into leverage. This capacity is unevenly distributed across the region.
Türkiye occupies a special place as both a regional power and a NATO member. Has the meaning of its NATO membership changed?
The meaning of Türkiye’s NATO membership has not fundamentally changed, but Ankara’s interpretation of it has evolved. Türkiye is no longer a disciplined ally in the classical sense. It behaves as a swing state, remaining within the Alliance while pursuing its own national interests, even when these diverge from those of other members.
The crucial question is whether NATO has an interest in excluding Türkiye. The answer is clearly no. Türkiye controls strategic straits, possesses one of the largest armies in the Alliance, and hosts critical military infrastructure. In an unstable environment, it is often preferable to keep a difficult ally inside a collective framework rather than face an unpredictable actor outside it.
Türkiye’s relationship with Russia illustrates this logic. Ankara has not aligned with Western sanctions and maintains economic and political ties with Moscow. This reflects rational calculation rather than ideological deviation. Türkiye can afford a degree of autonomy precisely because it is indispensable.
There is also an important distinction between Türkiye’s relations with NATO and with the European Union. The United States has historically approached Türkiye pragmatically. Europe’s relationship has been shaped by a more normative framework and by institutional constraints on both sides. The failure of the EU accession process at a critical moment contributed to Ankara’s strategic reorientation, but it also reflected deeper structural divergences.
NATO is a rule-based alliance, but its rules are applied pragmatically in light of strategic interests. As long as this balance holds, Türkiye’s membership remains both possible and strategically important.
Relations between Russia and Europe appear shaped by both interests and historical memory. How do these dimensions interact today?
They are inseparable. Since the end of the Cold War, strategic interests and historical perceptions have overlapped and reinforced one another, often negatively.
From a material perspective, Russia and Europe were long complementary. Europe needed energy. Russia needed markets, capital, and technology. This interdependence could have formed the basis of a stable relationship. However, political decisions were taken without sufficient consideration of long-term consequences.
Historical memory plays a decisive role. After 1989, many Russian elites experienced the end of the Cold War as a defeat. For a country with Russia’s history, this perception is particularly difficult. It was compounded by the feeling that Western actors did not sufficiently respect Russia’s security concerns or historical sensitivities.
Europe, by contrast, tended to view the post-Cold War moment as the definitive triumph of the Western model. The assumption was that extending liberal democracy and market principles would stabilize the continent. This underestimated Russia’s desire for modernization on its own terms and at its own pace.
Events such as NATO enlargement, the Kosovo intervention, and the absence of sustained dialogue on European security architecture deepened mistrust. Even when Russian proposals were unacceptable, the refusal to engage reinforced the perception that Russia’s concerns were dismissed.
Current relations are therefore shaped by an entanglement of interests and memory. Until this historical dimension is fully acknowledged and integrated into strategic thinking, any attempt at normalization will remain fragile and reversible.
