The BBC website has a rather breathless piece about the joys of Geneva today, declaring that “a cosmopolitan city known for diplomacy (and watches), is now gathering steam as a business and corporate hub.” It suggests that the city’s reputation as a diplomatic center, hosting innumerable UN offices, is a big plus for its overall appeal:
“Business travellers like to come to Geneva because of the extensive presence of international organisations,” said Van Beurden, the manager of business development at the Crowne Plaza Geneva hotel. “This brings global movers and shakers, both commercial and political, to one small place. That’s why we see international companies investing in offices and headquarters here to be close to these decision makers and financial institutions.”
By pure chance, I have also just published something about Geneva for the Politico Magazine:
There are lots of fun things to see in Geneva. There’s the Jet d’Eau, a 140-meter-high waterspout. There are the Alps. And, if you are especially lucky, there is John Kerry.
The U.S. secretary of state has visited the Swiss “city of peace” five times since he took office in February 2013. It’s far from his most frequent destination. His website records 11 trips to Tel Aviv alone in the same period as part of his doomed effort to revivify the Middle East peace process. Yet Kerry’s appearances in Geneva have played an outsized part in his efforts to save Syria, strike a nuclear deal with Iran and forge a strategic partnership with his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov.
The city has thus served as the backdrop to Kerry’s effort to bring to heel an increasingly unruly world through his personal diplomacy. He sometimes seems more at home there—or in other historic centers of European diplomacy, like London and Paris with their ornate foreign ministries—than at the dowdy State Department in Foggy Bottom.
This year, Kerry’s diplomatie genevoise has started to go awry, with talks on Syria and Ukraine flopping. The Swiss backdrop can hardly be blamed for these failures—and the Swiss government has in fact done Kerry a huge service by directing European mediation and monitoring in Ukraine, keeping a lid on the crisis. But the secretary of state’s attachment to Geneva points to deeper flaws in how he views the world.
