Sweden's Security Policy in the 1980s

SWEDEN'S SECURITY, POLICY IN THE 1980s Paul M. Cole Vo 'iolations of Sweden's territorial waters, airspace, and mainland by foreign powers not only challenge the credibility of Sweden's defense and security policy but raise fundamental questions about the determination of the political leadership and the capability of the armed forces to assert Sweden's sovereignty. Unlike its Scandinavian neighbors Denmark and Norway, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Sweden has no allies on which to depend. Sweden has chosen independent nonalignment in peacetime to enhance its claims to neutrality in the event of war. This means that Sweden must resolve its security policy problems without any formal political assistance from, or military cooperation with, another nation. The price it must pay for self-reliance is partial isolation. Swedes must be the masters of their own home if their neutrality is to have any meaning to outsiders. Yet Sweden's borders continue to be systematically violated, particularly by submarines belonging to the Soviet Union and its allies. Unless Sweden is able to establish its territorial integrity, armed neutrality will continue to lose validity as a model of small-state behavior. The issue is not whether Sweden should abandon its traditional policy of armed neutrality. There is a consensus across the political spectrum and among the public at large that Sweden's foreign policy orientation is correct. Instead, the issue in the Swedish debate is how to make traditional Paul M. Cole is a Ph.D. candidate at SAIS. He is also a fellow in international security studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington , D.C. He has published a number of articles and coedited books on European security issues, including Northern Europe: Security Issuesfor the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985). 213 214 SAIS REVIEW policies effective in the midst of somewhat unconventional circumstances. The limits of diplomacy and the role of force in Sweden's security policy are the general issues at stake, but they will not be resolved in the abstract. Sweden shares a Nordic identity, characterized by geographic isolation and a common history with Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway, which contributes to a sense ofseparateness from both Europe and Russia. This identity has played in the past and continues to play an important role in the formulation of Sweden's security policy. Nordic Security Throughout most of their history the five Nordic states of today were only two: Denmark-Iceland-Norway and Sweden-Finland. These two conglomerate nations spent most of their time fighting for supremacy in the region. In recent times the competition has been of a more peaceful nature. Their cultural and ethnic homogeneity has to some degree, of course, been influenced by recent immigration from many other European and Asian countries. For example, about 10 percent of Sweden's population is foreign-born. As half of these are Finns and other Scandinavians, however, the basic characteristics of the Nordic setting remain intact. It is tempting to castigate Swedes for meddling in international issues that some consider to be none of their business. Sweden provides substantial economic support to Nicaragua and North Vietnam and is a harsh critic of U.S. policy in Central America. There is, however, a rationale for this behavior that is one of the keys to understanding the approach of Sweden and the other Nordic nations to international affairs. While the idealist tradition in international affairs has influenced the Nordic countries heavily, the realist tradition tends to coexist with the idealist, though less visibly. The mixture of idealist and realist elements in the foreign and defense policies of the five nations may vary with time, according to domestic political situations and the level and type of tension in relations between the great powers. No doubt there is a connection between idealist tendencies and the fact that parties on the moderate Left have dominated the Nordic scene since the end of World War I. Although they have not been in power for the entire period, the Social Democrats and various parties of a distinctly leftist or liberal persuasion in Scandinavia have formed far more governments than the conservatives and other nonsocialist parties. In...