Annual Report 2020
This annual report provides an overview of our activities and is intended to encourage reading of our publications. Our publications are all freely available online here on our website. If you would like to receive regular updates on CSS publications, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter here www.css.ethz.ch/en/center/css-newsletter.html, or follow us on Twitter (@CSS_Zurich), Facebook (@css.zurich) or LinkedIn.
The Corona pandemic kept the world on edge in 2020 and beyond. For the CSS, Corona had a variety of consequences. The entire workday was converted to home office; teaching offers, our dialogue platforms, and our consulting formats with our partners were henceforth carried out online. Our employees mastered the challenges associated with these changes very well – we would like to thank them for their flexibility and patience! The changeover to online operation went surprisingly well overall, and many were even more productive than average in their paperwork. On the other hand, the joint development of new innovative research topics came up short and many projects with international and national partners had to be postponed.
In terms of content, our work also focused on the consequences of the pandemic for national and international policy. In many respects, Corona reinforced tendencies that had already become apparent, such as the growing competition between the major powers of the USA, Russia and China, which continues to gain in importance regardless of the pandemic. This also raises a variety of issues, some of them new, for Switzerland.
An important focus of our work in 2020 was the newly established special topic "The Security Policy Implications of the Coronavirus Crisis". The focus here is on national and international crisis management as well as the impact of the crisis on international relations and national and international security policy. The authors of Bulletin 2020 on Swiss Security Policy focused on the consequences for Switzerland. In addition to an interview with Army Chief Thomas Süssli on the role of the armed forces in the pandemic, the new volume contains six other articles that take stock of the situation and raise important questions about improving pandemic preparedness and crisis management. In contrast, the 2020 edition of Strategic Trends focuses on the implications of Corona for international politics, particularly with regard to the rivalry between the United States and China and its consequences for Europe.
We are looking forward to hopefully returning to our offices soon and to the direct exchange with our partners in science and politics.