Sweden’s Commitment Problem

Internationella Studier (International Studies),
No. 1, Spring 2003, Stockholm

Cool-headed, moderate, forward-looking, diplomatic — such traits are most commonly associated with Swedes and Swedish politics. The country’s official postwar policy of non-alignment and neutrality helped create this image. But underneath this veneer persists a fierce left-right quarrel on security policy, one that embroils such national and international heavyweights as Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister, and Rolf Ekeus, former head of the first U.N. weapons inspection team in Iraq. Not only is this political debate intense and laced with personal attacks, it also focuses largely on the past rather than the present or the future.

Case in point: the continued squabbles over the foreign submarine intrusions that took place during the 1980s. The most spectacular of these incidents was the "Whiskey on the rocks" episode, in which a Soviet Whiskey class submarine strongly suspected of carrying nuclear weapons was grounded deep in the Swedish southeast archipelago in October 1981. This incident brought Sweden to the brink of armed conflict with the Soviet Union and also became a highly controversial domestic issue, in effect breaking up the traditional parliamentary consensus on security policy.

Sweden’s post–Cold War governments, Social Democratic and Conservative alike, have launched several public inquiries ostensibly seeking closure to the Cold War chapter of Swedish history by providing an official account of what "actually happened." In 1994, under Bildt’s right-wing regime, one commission reviewed Swedish security policy from the Second World War until 1968 and revealed that Sweden, contrary to the official rhetoric of neutrality, was prepared to seek military help from the West in the event of a Soviet attack. The most recent report, published in 2002 and authored by Ekeus, offers an extensive review of the country’s security policy from 1969 to 1989. As in the 1994 report, Ekeus documents Sweden’s informal military ties to the West.

If intended as therapeutic treatment of Sweden’s Cold War trauma, however, none of these commissions has succeeded. This failure is illustrated by a bracing debate in the most recent issue of Internationella Studier, a quarterly journal published by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. In one article, Bildt accuses Ekeus of writing a report that does nothing but hail former Prime Minister Olof Palme’s foreign policy and denigrate the professional threat analyses made by the Swedish military. In particular, Bildt blames Ekeus for claiming that the unidentified submarines that trespassed into Swedish waters could just as easily have come from NATO countries as from the Soviet Union — a claim Bildt considers ridiculous. Bildt himself has repeatedly accused the Soviet Union of being the culprit behind the submarine intrusions.

In another article, Pierre Schori, the Swedish ambassador to the United Nations, indirectly corroborates that Ekeus’s 2002 inquiry was meant to help perpetuate Social Democratic ideological hegemony. Schori applauds Ekeus’s report as an "impressive and most welcome tour de force," agreeing on the success of Swedish Cold War policy and the highly exaggerated nature of the security threat by the Swedish military and Conservative Party.

Political scientist Kjell Engelbrekt contributes a third commentary on Ekeus’s report. Engelbrekt questions the absence of any critical discussion of the non-alignment and neutrality policy. He argues that the Soviet failure to attack Sweden did not result from successful Swedish security policy but from fortunate circumstances over which Sweden had little or no control.

All three commentators agree on at least one thing: Sweden conducted a double policy during the Cold War, i.e., simultaneously preparing for a Soviet invasion, which included seeking military help from the West, and officially claiming to be non-aligned and neutral. The combination of these policies caused international confusion and made Sweden seem unreliable both as friend and as foe.

Even today, Swedish security policy remains confusing, despite the country’s membership in the European Union since 1995 and its corresponding abandonment of neutrality. On the one hand, the Swedish government and all political parties with the exception of the Liberal Party still claim nonalignment, refusing to put NATO membership on the agenda. On the other, Sweden willingly provides troops under NATO command to the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Thus, the dual and contradictory policy of the Cold War remains: Integrate as much as possible with NATO but don’t commit.