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This chapter discusses how Sweden has relearned three lessons from the Cold War in light of ongoing transformations in its regional security environment. It compares and contrasts the security dynamics and policies of three distinct eras: the Cold War; the post-Cold War period; and the post-2014 period. It identifies changes in Sweden’s security environment that explain the timing and sequencing of those adaptations, discusses the basis for its ambiguous policy of neutrality during the Cold War, and why it contrasted from those of Denmark, Finland and Norway. It concludes that Sweden has relearned three lessons from the Cold War, i.e. that: (i) armed conflict on its territory will be associated with war on the Scandinavian Peninsula and in Finland; (ii) it needs realistic threat assessments in its defence planning; and (iii) it needs a concept of Total Defence to maintain the level of social resilience needed to discourage Russian attempts to attack, control or exploit its territory. While we often see the post-Cold War period as an anomalous gap in the history of Swedish security policy, this chapter establishes that Sweden’s process of abandoning its policy of neutrality in the 1990s actually serves as a strategic bridge in its ongoing implementation of an element of transparency in its security policy. In 2021, it became clear that if security on NATO’s northern flank were to deteriorate, Sweden would draw closer to NATO.

Rysslands anfallskrig mot Ukraina och de smältande isarna i norra ishavet ökar spänningarna i Arktis. Med ett försvagat Ryssland flyttar Kina fram sina maktpositioner och de nordiska länderna har all anledning att stärka skyddet i de norra delarna av den skandinaviska halvön.

Cet article examine comment la Suède est en train de réapprendre trois leçons de la Guerre froide à la lumière des transformations en cours dans ses conditions de sécurité régionales. Il compare et met en contraste les dynamiques et les politiques de sécurité de trois ères distinctes : la Guerre froide, la période d’après-Guerre froide, et la période d’après 2014. Il identifie dans l’évolution de l’environnement sécuritaire de la Suède les changements qui expliquent le calendrier et l’enchainement de ces adaptations. Cet article examine également les fondements de la politique de neutralité ambiguë de la Suède pendant la Guerre et pourquoi elle différait des politiques de la Finlande, du Danemark et de la Norvège. Il conclut que la Suède réapprend trois leçons de la Guerre froide : a) les conflits armés sur son territoire vont dégénérer en une guerre sur toute la péninsule scandinave et la Finlande ; b) elle a besoin d’évaluations réalistes pour planifier sa défense ; et c) le concept de « défense totale » est la clé pour maintenir le niveau de résilience sociale nécessaire afin de décourager des tentatives russes visant à attaquer, contrôler ou exploiter son territoire. Alors que la période d’après-Guerre froide est souvent considérée comme un vide et une anomalie dans l’histoire de la politique de sécurité de la Suède, cet article établit que le processus qui a fait abandonner à la Suède sa politique de neutralité dans les années 1990 sert en fait de pont stratégique pour l’implémentation actuelle d’un élément de transparence dans sa politique de sécurité. Si la sécurité sur le flanc nord de l’OTAN devait se détériorer, la Suède se rapprocherait sans doute davantage de l’OTAN.

This article examines the consequences for Sweden’s state identity by the decision of Finland and Sweden to apply for membership in NATO. Taking its starting point in Sweden’s shattering loss of its easternmost provinces in the 1809 Treaty of Fredrikshamn, it explores Sweden’s initial formulations of a policy of neutrality and its evolution until the end of the Cold War. The article then directs attention to how Social Democratic leaders managed to institutionalise a Swedish “active foreign policy”, exerting a lasting, formative influence on Sweden’s state identity. It also addresses the rapprochement of Finland and Sweden after the end of the Cold War and the consequences of the bilateral dynamics that characterised their EU-membership applications. The article critically discusses how Sweden reformulated its concept of neutrality into a nebulous concept of nonalignment and adopted a security policy rooted in a cooperative security approach. Based on key findings drawn from this historical account, this article addresses the processes that lead to Finland and Sweden unexpectedly deciding on jointly applying for NATO membership. It concludes with a forward-looking assessment of how a Swedish NATO membership will ultimately stabilise Sweden’s adaptable state identity and its implications for the Nordic countries’ regional military strategy.

Due to the ever-increasing expansion of English language integration into content courses within higher educational institutions (HEIs), this study seeks to gain insights into how domestic students, as well as content and language lecturers perceive integrating English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) in an academic/vocational military university using Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). We investigate firstly on how mostly domestic, non-native English speaking students perceive learning academic military content in an English Educational Environment (EEE), and secondly, how content and ESAP lecturers perceive collaborating within CLIL at the Swedish Defense University. Using a mixed-methods approach with data gathered from students and lecturers, the results are useful for HEIs looking to increase their English integration. Our results indicate that NNES students indeed learn content and language knowledge simultaneously using CLIL because communicative ESAP tasks enable them to process, and increase content knowledge. However, as this article will show, students prefer drastically different CLIL methods for reasons that we argue can be traced to varying L2 proficiencies. Meanwhile, lecturers had different expectations of, and perceived, interdisciplinary collaboration differently. This study concludes by suggesting that CLIL step 3 is inherently flawed due to a mismatch of implicit methods and explicit expectations of language proficiency, which consequently complicate lecturer roles and interdisciplinary collaboration.

This report, Conflict Prevention and Security Cooperation in the Arctic Region: Frameworks for the Future, captures consensus of the Newport Arctic Scholars Initiative 2020 scholars. Building upon the 2018-2019 NASI work on the limitations of the current cooperative security fora in the Arctic region, this cohort explored existing international frameworks and assessed their abilities to ensure freedom and security in the Arctic through political-military means. NASI 2020 also examined existing frameworks to determine whether they enabled increased dialogue and maritime security cooperation in the region. The frameworks were further evaluated for their abilities to prevent and manage conflict and enhance cooperation on areas of common security and defense interests in the region. Scholars were tasked to identify new frameworks that could be useful in establishing – and maintaining – open channels of communication, preventing conflict, and enhancing cooperation on areas of common security and defense interests among nations and navies in the Arctic region. Finally, the group sought to identify practical arrangements for a future meeting or summit that could bring together states to enhance dialogue on security and cooperation in the Arctic region.

Small states have always been at risk when great power competition intensifies in a region, those in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) and the Arctic being no exception. Sweden and Finland are located at a strategic cross-roads between Russia and NATO, which “Northern Flank” once again receives serious attention from defence planners. Russia is pursuing a strategy of military dominance in the BSR and the European Arctic, and its perceived assertiveness is a major concern among its neighbours. China, for its part, pursues a multilateral approach as a “near-Arctic state”, seeking to make the BSR a strategic springboard to the Arctic by invest-ing in joint ventures with small states. The U.S. more competitive stance on China globally, and on China and Russia in the Arctic, has implications for the security dynamics in the BSR. In the resulting Baltic-Arctic Strategic Space, Finland and Sweden opts for navigating jointly.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military contribution to deter Russian aggression in the Baltic region should begin with an overall strategic concept that seamlessly transitions from deterrence through countering Russia’s gray zone activities and onto conventional war, only if necessary. NATO should augment its ongoing program to enhance the denial-based deterrence for the region with threats of punishment that demonstrate to Russian leaders they cannot achieve their aims at acceptable costs. Rather than forward-position military forces in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), NATO should consider keeping forces further back to take advantage of strategic depth to limit vulnerability to Russian attack and increase operational flexibility. To support the overall denial-based deterrence concept, the Baltics must commit wholeheartedly to the concept of total defense including significant increases to their active and reserves forces.

The Baltic Sea and the Arctic have once again become scenes for geostrategic great power competition, influencing regional economic, military and environmental security. Here, international relationships span a spectrum from friendship to fear. We observe that a host of different units of analysis currently compete for our attention in this part of Europe. But while “Scandinavia”, “the Nordic area”, “the Baltic Sea region”, “the High North” and “the Arctic” help focus strategic analysis on important and sometimes overlapping components of this area, security complex theory prescribes that we must adopt a broader, multi-layered view in order to understand how great and small power interests play out in this part of the world today. Such analysis must consider China’s global role, NATO’s increasingly elaborate military planning and the Russian Federation’s perception of vulnerabilities and opportunities, in an area that stretches from the Suwalki gap in East-Central Europe to the Barents Sea. In addition, security complex analysis benefits from including the perspectives of small states that control key territories – such as resource-rich continental shelves and exclusive economic zones – and from taking relevant international bodies into account as enabling and constraining factors. As part of a larger project, this paper reviews several sets of open source documents indicative of the incentive structure of such key players, published over the past five years. We delve into the political, economic and military dimensions of aims and actions by three categories of actors, namely: i) China, Russia, the United States; ii) Denmark, Norway; Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada; and iii) the EU, NATO and the Arctic Council. We conclude that, while smaller units of analysis still make sense for limited research purposes, the concept of a Baltic-Arctic security complex is necessary for meaningful strategic analysis.