Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Nordic defence cooperation has evolved from UN mission coordination and force production towards an alliance adapted model following Finland and Sweden's NATO membership, characterized by interoperability, shared exercises, and joint acquisition. This creates four planning layers: national, bilateral, minilateral, and multilateral. Three challenges exist: the modern battlefield's demand for technological integration, extensive lead-times for capability development despite rearmament ambitions, and uncertainty about the transatlantic link under the Trump administration. Given that the national layer remains weak, the bilateral uncertain, and the multilateral delayed, minilateral cooperation appears most ripe for development – concretized in the Vision for Nordic Defence Cooperation (April 2024), including operational planning in a Nordic format. Signs of an emerging alliance integration model exist, where NATO capabilities are organized as Nordic rather than national, offering unity of command and resource optimization. However, full denationalization is unlikely due to a "Nordic paradox" – deeply held national interests make sovereignty pooling improbable. The most likely path remains continued development along the alliance adapted model.

The article by Magnus Christiansson (senior lecturer at the Swedish National Defence University) argues that multi-domain operations (MDO) — adopted as a NATO concept in 2023 with an implementation target of 2030 — are not a military paradigm shift but the latest version of a recurring idea of network-based warfare, similar to the Swedish NBF at the turn of the century, which failed. The driving force is global power politics: technological levelling (AI, drones, quantum technology) threatens Western military superiority, and the core of the battlefield is now data management in an electromagnetically vulnerable network — something that the war in Ukraine confirms in practice. The central warning is that Sweden risks repeating the NBF fiasco if MDO is not linked to strategic realities and organisational change. The conclusion is that the Armed Forces must build both a battlefield network and an innovation network — and that the ability to organise and adapt is more important than individual weapon systems or doctrinal abbreviations.

Det här kapitlet visar att det svenska Nato-medlemskapet påverkar både hur Regeringskansliet och Försvarsmakten arbetar, men också syns i propositioner såväl som i Försvarsmaktens dokument. Kapitlet inleds med en kort strategisk analys av läget 2025, innefattande den globala miljön, den transatlantiska länken och Sveriges närområde. Konsekvensen av läget innebär att Sverige hamnat i ett helt nytt läge för hur försvarspolitik måste tänkas, formuleras och organiseras. Därefter tecknas grunddragen i Natos två centrala processer (försvarsplanering och operationsplanering) och hur de påverkar Sverige. Efter detta diskuteras försvarsbudgeten i ljuset av de uppgifter som tillfaller Sverige inom alliansens gemensamma planering. Resursbegränsningar utgör sammanhanget för Sveriges bidrag till det kollektiva försvaret och de försvarssamarbeten som följer därav. Slutligen tas utblickar mot framtiden upp, och hur tillståndet för den transatlantiska länken ställer Sverige inför ett antal försvarspolitiska paradoxer.

The book examines NATO’s northern enlargement from the perspective of both the Alliance as well as the new members, Finland and Sweden. The key aim is to provide a comprehensive and balanced account of the historical background, the actual decision-making as well as the already present and possible future consequences of NATO’s enlargement to the north. It contributes to the scholarly literature applying theoretical perspectives on NATO enlargement policy by arguing that the enlargement to the north was compatible with both realist and partly constructivist explanations. The book offers in-depth case-specific accounts of the policy processes which took Finland and Sweden to members of NATO, including the difficult accession negotiations with Turkey. Finally, the book analyses NATO’s new northern flank and provides an updated policy-relevant map of a new strategic landscape.

In this chapter, we present an analysis of the decision to apply for membership in NATO based on the Swedish government’s changing threat perceptions and assessments of the strategic landscape and corresponding strategic priorities related to asymmetrical power relationships. In the argument we link the scholarship of Sweden’s position and strategic priorities in the post-Cold War with the emerging research on the process and drivers for Sweden to join NATO. There are mainly two contributions from this move: (i) it provides a summary of Sweden’s position and changing military strategic priorities in the post-Cold War era, and (ii) it builds on these findings to hypothesize and contextualize why the Social Democratic government realized that its security policy doctrine had run its course in spring 2022.

As shown by the developments after the full-scale Russian attackon Ukraine in 2022, the EU is a weak strategic entity. The chapter discusses this circumstance and elaborates on what could bedone in defense cooperation among European states, primarily from a Swedish perspective as part of a Nordic-Baltic setting. As a consequence of shifting strategic patterns among its major powers, the international system is increasingly marked by power political entanglements. As shown in the chapter, the Nordic-Baltic region is increasingly an arena where these entanglements (mainly between Russia, China and Iran) are played out. Thisis currently a militarized period of history and there are several signs of a potential evolving hegemonic war. In the Nordic-Baltic region, as caused by this deteriorating security situation, several subregional initiatives for security and defense cooperation have developed over the last decade. All states in the regionidentify Russia as a central threat and, in Sweden, CHOD has made a public call for war preparation, and the defense budget has increased dramatically. Further, as the region is interlinked in a case of war, Article 5 is the main regional priority. Hence, to Sweden, the EU is secondary to NATO in the defense dimension Sweden and Finland, as allies in NATO, have created a new northern flank. This means that there is a Nordic dimension to defense planning (something between national plans and Article 5), and all countries in the region have defense cooperation agreements (DCA) with the U.S. Indeed, the new northern flank is integrated in defense via Washington rather than Brussels.

Geopolitical analysis and geostrategy are vital parts of the Scandinavian realisttradition. It is not a clearly defined academic school, and its connections tovarious forms of realism is often undefined or implicit, but it tends to be unitedby its policy relevance and empirical emphasis. More specifically, in the ColdWar period geopolitical studies in Scandinavia was characterized by a small-stateperspective, focus on state strategies, and the power of history. State strategieswere explored as various forms of small-state adaptation in classic concepts likethe Nordic balance, the Swedish double policy, and Finlandization. Even if criticshave pointed out explanatory shortcomings, the return of Russia as regional threathas also reinforced the use of geopolitical analysis. Future issues in Scandinaviangeopolitics are both conceptual (what is it?), theoretical (what can it explain?),and empirical (the impact of shifting power structures in international relations)

The article discusses historical enlargements of NATO in order to explore possible explanatory frameworks useful for ongoing research on the enlargement to Sweden and Finland. With the exception for Greece and Turkey 1952, the Cold War “southern and western enlargements” were characterized by a mix of idealist and liberal impulses as well as realist and military considerations. NATO was a military pact with a liberal soul, or a guardian of liberal society with a military toolbox. In the post-Cold War enlargements there were assumptions about no risks for inter-state war, relative European stability and the ability to keep Russian protests under control. In research, NATO’s “eastern enlargements” were controversial because of its contested consequences for European security, but after 24 February 2022 it is clear that the issue of the European security order must also be part of the analysis, not least to understand the drive for membership in Sweden and Finland. The fact that Sweden was a non-member of NATO has been explained both as a consequence of a “Nordic balance”, as well as internationalist norms. The striking impression after the Russian escalation in Ukraine 2022 is that most explanations of NATO’s eastern enlargements are irrelevant to the Swedish and Finnish “northern enlargement”. Further, NATOs northern enlargement has three distinct Swedish and Finnish features: the integrated relationships with NATO prior to membership, the EU memberships and the interconnectedness of the membership applications. Three explanatory frameworks are sketched in the article: a realist perspective of a “reversed Finland factor”, a liberal perspective of an interconnected and iterative application process with pluralist input from elite and general public, and a constructivist perspective of changing Western- or small state identity.