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What is the strategic logic of so-called ‘total defence’? At first glance, total defence may appear as one coherent strategic concept. Indeed, it was predominantly small, non-aligned states that pursued total defence during the Cold War. In this article, however, we demonstrate that depending on how ‘total war’ is understood, there are subsequently different strategic logics ingrained in total defence. We show this by developing a typology of different total defences; and by empirically illustrating variation in strategic logics over time through a historical analysis of the total defence(s) in Sweden. Recognising the inherent variation of total defence is important since it helps us to understand that hidden behind a nominal pursuit of a total defence strategy are multifaceted strategies.

Who will win the war in Ukraine? For centuries the outcome of war has been described in terms of victory and defeat. Since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, scores of articles in the daily press have touched on the issue of the Ukraine war. At the same time, an increasing number of analysts and scholars argue that the concepts victory/defeat are not the most adequate to describe the outcomes of several modern wars. It is empirically rare with unequivocal outcomes where one side unconditionally surrenders and war almost never follows a clear template. Superpowers are seemingly defeated by poor developing countries and planned blitzkrieg operations get stuck in the mud and lack of maintenance. At the same time, it is easy to see that there is a significant interest for the parties involved in a war to continue using the concepts victory/defeat because one of the few things that can legitimize the enormous costs of that war is precisely victory. In this text, the outcome of the Ukraine war – as it looks like in early 2023 – is analyzed according to Johnson and Tierney’s model of the so-called score-keeping and match-fixing.

The existence of a clear-cut division between “civil and military” is in many ways a foundation for international law and diplomacy. It is also a given starting point in many studies on current issues relating to war and peace, as well as in historical interpretations of past conflicts. Yet the civil–military dichotomy is not always a useful way of approaching complex matters, and by adopting such a starting point, some issues risk being overlooked. There are numerous historical examples, from the American Civil War, to wars of national liberation ending colonialization, to insurrections shaking political status quo such as the Marxist–Leninist revolutions; all illustrate that neither the agents of war nor the victims fit neatly into one of two clear categories. In a contemporary setting, non-traditional forms of warfare that make use of cyber space or autonomous systems further serves not only to undermine ideas of internal–external security but also to blur the distinction between civil and military. In the everyday making and implementation of policy, these concepts are indeed fluid and the borders between them highly variable, continuously contested, and renegotiated. As concepts, they can be seen as co-constitutive in the everyday usage. Civil and military are therefore best understood as norms, whose contents and interrelationship are contextually determined. At the same time, civil and military are organizational principles of the state, and as such the distinction is, arguably, too important, too deep-seated within the modern state- system, and too engrained in how legal and political order are understood to disappear in the near future.

Contribution warfare removed the influence of Sweden's politics from the Afghanistan War (2001-14) and created learning conditions favoring case-specific, tactical lessons over the strategic ones. This article applies the concept of "contribution warfare" to analyze the lessons from Sweden's involvement in the war. The inconsistent application of this knowledge resulted largely from the political and operational realities of a small nation contributing to an alliance dominated by a single actor.

Strategic studies deals intimately with the topic of power. Most scholars in the discipline work with a concept of power as an adversarial zero-sum competition. This is natural and necessary. However, other conceptions of power developed within political science and sociology could enrich strategic studies. Approaching two typical, traditional tasks of strategy – alliance building and war-fighting – this article demonstrates the heuristic mileage of theories of collective power. In particular, we can shed new light on the post-Cold War transformation of NATO as well as state-building as a strategy in counter-insurgencies with new ideas of power. Broadening the palette of theories of power is thus valuable if strategic studies is to prosper as an independent field of study.

In this article, we develop the strategic rationale behind weak party escalation against stronger adversaries. There are, we suggest, four main strategies: to provoke a desired over-reaction from the stronger adversary; to compartmentalize conflict within a domain in which the weak party has advantages; to carve a niche with a stronger ally, and to forge a reputation of not yielding lightly. Spelling out these different logics contributes to the literature on small state strategies and escalation. It also suggests, contrary to much of the existing literature, that it can be rational for weak parties to escalate against great powers.