The Military and Liberal Society by Tomas Kucera

Author:Tomas Kucera [Kucera, Tomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317219392
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2017-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

4 Swedish armed forces

From a citizen-army to a cosmopolitan force

In Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of Summer Night, attorney Fredrik Egerman ridiculed an aristocratic captain of dragoons with a single question, whether there would be a war. Indeed, it was the seizure of Norway in 1814 that saw Sweden last time in a war for over two centuries. Together with Switzerland, Sweden is the only European country that has been enjoying uninterrupted peace for over 200 years. Sweden avoided entanglement into both the First and Second World War, though its neutrality in either case was not upheld consistently. Its policy of nonalignment in peace and neutrality in war was also fostered during the Cold War and has lost practical significance only recently when Sweden’s government promised an active assistance if an EU or Nordic country becomes a victim of aggression.

In what way, then, has liberalism shaped the military policy of Sweden? Fredrik’s remark suggests that the raison d’être of the Swedish military was to provide adequate pastime for aristocrats. Indeed, as late as the 1920s, 72 per cent of all cadets at the War College had an upper-class origin (Danielsson and Weibull 2008, 98). Yet, the aristocratic and conservative elements in Swedish society that controlled the officer corps and country’s military policy during the nineteenth century and beyond had to cede the military ground to progressive social forces in the first half of the twentieth century. Regarding the progressive elements, it was the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP), which dominated Sweden’s politics during most of the last century, that was of particular importance. The SAP took on the effort to re-construct Swedish society and its identity. Nationalistic and martial aspects of the Swedish history were to be replaced with the struggle of ordinary working people for freedom and social justice (Åselius 2005, 26). ‘Transmutation’ of the military, to use Huntington’s terms, was an essential step in the advance towards the new model of society.

The progressive political elements, no doubt, exposed the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) to a strong pressure of societal imperatives. However, it would be wrong to assume that in the peaceful Sweden the SAF was little more than a playground for bored aristocrats or a mirror of the developing welfare state. Swedish military preparations significantly contributed to the preservation of peace within the country’s borders during the Second World War and military power was considered a necessary pillar of Sweden’s Cold War policy of nonalignment. In the 1950s and 1960s, the military power of Sweden ranked high in the world league table both in quantity and quality. Moreover, until the present day about 80,000 members of the SAF have taken part in various humanitarian, peacekeeping and peace-support operations (Regeringskansliet 2015), 67 lost their lives in the UN services (United Nations 2016a), and other ten were killed in NATO-led operations in Bosnia and Afghanistan (iCasualties 2016).

The following sections portray the individual elements of Sweden’s military policy: mission of the SAF, its composition, and institutional culture. The first section contrasts Sweden’s tradition

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