T H E SIT UAT ION R E PORT IN BR IE F For years, the challenges faced by the security agencies have become more complexity. The FIS’s situation radar tool is one of the instruments giving direction to Switzerland’s security policy and providing Switzerland’s inhabitants with an outline of the key issues from an intelligence viewpoint. ▪▪ Political stability and economic robustness in Europe are diminishing. Europe is spellbound by its own crises and global power struggles: against this background, the adverse impact on Switzerland’s security of the return of power politics and the hence growing power-political rivalry between the USA, Russia and China is becoming more and more evident. The growing insecurity in its surrounding is becoming more relevant to Switzerland with regard to security policy. ▪▪ Russia's increased confidence is based chiefly on its regained military strength and its tightly organized power apparatus under President Putin. It wants to be perceived as a superpower on an equal footing with the USA. Nonetheless, there are still limitations to its military capabilities. Russia will therefore continue to focus on influence operations, ranging from activities such as information campaigns, manipulation and propaganda to the exercise of overt political, military and economic pressure. The practices of extortion and, in certain cases, committing violent actions remain a possibility. ▪▪ Besides military strength, the USA relies heavily on the use of economic pressure to safeguard its security and its national interests in the global strategic competition. Secondary sanctions with extraterritorial effect are an important instrument. These are designed to force third countries and large companies operating internationally to accept the USA’s demands, particularly in the context of its policy on Iran. President Trump rejects restrictions on the USA’s national sovereignty by multilateral mechanisms, has a sceptical view of the USA’s alliances and is clearly keen for the USA to go it alone as a nation. ▪▪ China will continue to do everything in its power to keep growing economically and militarily. It remains very unlikely that it will depart fundamentally from its current course. Iran will try to wait out Trump’s presidency without capitulating. It remains unlikely that North Korea will completely renounce nuclear weapons and delivery systems suitable for deploying them, even though it intermittently sends out disarmament signals. SIT UAT ION R E PORT 2 0 1 9 | FIS 11