Unpacking the varying strategic logics of total defence

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Total defence
• strategic logic
• total war
• Sweden
• strategy

Introduction

During the Cold War, only a few, small, mainly non-aligned states professed to be pursuing a strategy of ‘total defence’. The practical challenge that this strategy was supposed to deal with was broader and all states, of course, have to protect critical infrastructure, civilian population, and flows of goods and services to sustain society long-term during heightened tension, crisis or ultimately war. The originality of total defence was thus not necessarily one of substance of what was supposed to be protected, but rather the idea that the state integrated and organised this into one coherent strategy combining civil and military defence efforts. After the Cold War ended, experts and practitioners were generally in agreement that total defence became irrelevant as strategy, and was therefore either dissolved, laid dormant or replaced by civil crisis agencies.¹ It was only after the Russian annexation of Crimea and its proxy wars in eastern Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, that the strategy of total defence was revived, for example in the Nordic-Baltic region. We have in recent years also seen a growing interest in the concept of total defence, not least from NATO and in relation to debates about resilience, and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.² At the heels of this renewed interest, it has become increasingly clear that total defence is often understood as one coherent strategy. For example, Kenneth Wither has recently argued that, as the Nordic and Baltic countries are reinstating their total defences, the difference between total defence strategies, historically as well as across cases, is one of scale, rather than of substance.³ In the total defence literature, there is certainly a recognition of variation of scale and range in total defences across countries, but there is at the same time often a more or less explicit assumption that total defence is still based on one and the same strategic logic.⁴ We argue that this understanding is misleading and underestimates the degree to which different logics operate behind a nominally similar strategy of total defence.

In this article, we therefore develop a typology, and illustrate empirically, that depending on the threat-representation dominating the conception of total war, the strategic logic underpinning total defence can take different shapes – and thereby play an important part in the constitution of different ends-means-ways of strategy. In particular, this reveals a dynamic relationship between representations of total war and the constitution of total defence. The idea that total defence is closely linked to conceptions of total war may seem obvious. However, while total war has received considerable scholarly attention, empirically and conceptually, its relationship to total defence has yet to be explored in more detail and exactly how these relations play out is still underdeveloped.

By approaching total defence as strategy, our main contribution in this article is to develop a typology that can serve as an analytical model to identify variation in strategic logics of total defence strategies. To illustrate our argument, we draw upon the history of Swedish total defence efforts – serving as a representative case in point – to empirically demonstrate the extent to which strategic logics of total defence(s) may vary, even internally in one and the same case. Recognising this variation, in turn, holds the promise of future cross-case comparisons and detecting potential general trends – beyond the case of Sweden – of total defence as strategy. This is important not least since total defence is now receiving not only renewed scholarly attention but is yet again increasingly applied as strategy in the Western world.

After this introduction, we shortly discuss the literature on total defence and present our argument for approaching total defence as strategy, and as such, how it is interrelated to conceptions of total war. In the next section, we introduce our typology based on four different ideal types. These ideal types are then applied in an empirical analysis of the case of Sweden. In the final section, we conclude by spelling out the policy implications of approaching total defence as several strategies.

Approaching total defence as strategy

The literature on total defence is small and rather disparate and has to a large extant focused on questions of governance, rather than strategy.⁵ A governance perspective surely makes sense given the ‘whole of society’ approach, where one of the most central dimensions is that the state organises and coordinates military and civil protection of the population and critical infrastructure for the long-term sustenance of the nation. As such, the government is expected to manage the interaction between the military forces and civilian authorities regarding logistics, energy supply, economy, transportation, communications, law, information, health care, city planning – to name a few – for purposes of national security. Research on total defence therefore typically address coordination, collaboration and cooperation across five central interfaces: civil vs military, central vs local (incl. hierarchies and geography), public vs private, international vs national, and IRL vs virtual. A second central dimension of total defence is that security is a shared task of the entire society – it must be based on a people’s defence. It is the direct, mandatory and legally binding involvement of civil society that distinguishes total defence from more traditional defence strategies. More traditional notions of national defence are typically centralised and top-driven, while total defence strategies are instead transactional, and at least in part decentralised and bottom-driven. Total defence strategies involve institutionalised and legally regulated collaboration between the armed forces and government ministries, public and private organisations, the private sector, and the public.⁶ It is therefore not surprising that questions of governance have been of central concern in this literature.⁷

Scholars less commonly approach total defence as strategy. Approaching total defence from a strategic point of view starts with recognising that war is interactive and that the utility of every strategy will be measured by how well it solves opponents’ challenges. Moreover, strategy presumes scarcity of resources. Actors will therefore prioritise among political ends to pursue as well as military (and non-military) means to do it.⁸ To the extent that total defence has been approached from this strategic point of view, it has more or less explicitly been described as one coherent type of strategy, particularly so as a deterrence-by-denial strategy.⁹ As such, rather than punishing a challenger, it aims to convincingly raise the costs of an attack.¹⁰ Total defence has therefore been especially appealing to small states since, to be able to deter aggression from larger and militarily stronger ones, it is assumed, the small state needs to be able to mobilise its entire society. In other words, credibility for such deterrence depends on setting out the wartime system already in peacetime. Total defence, therefore, operates both in the future and the present – it is simultaneously preparation for (total) war, but also a way to avoid (total) war.

It has thus been commonplace to recognise that total defence as strategy is a response to the threat of total war. While the concept of total war emerged in the latter phases of World War I and gained traction in the interwar years, the Second World War cemented it among scholars and decision-makers alike. Total war became the obvious point of reference for modern warfare in general. The concept of total war involved notions of an unprecedented ‘destructiveness and disruption, a fundamental challenge to the socio-political order, greater population participation due to the mobilisation of national resources, and a major impact on value systems’.¹¹ War was subsequently understood as indiscriminately affecting all of society and assumed to not only be waged against the armed forces of the enemy, but also directly against its people.¹² From this followed the incentive to establish a ‘total defence’ based on broad societal mobilisation.¹³ What is less clearly spelled out, is the specific relationship between total war and total defence.

To sum up this far, our contention is not to say that extant conceptualizations of total defence are wrong, but rather that established perspectives are incomplete in the sense that they fail to recognize the potential variation of strategic logics underpinning different total defences in more detail. In order to do so, we need to further unpack the relationship between conceptualizations of total war and total defence.

Nuances and variation in totality of war

The analytical utility of the concept of total war is sometimes questioned since it appears to be both a description of the major wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as a particular aspect of those wars.¹⁴ Indeed, as Jeremy Black has noted, the concept became popularised more as a reaction to the horrors of the Great War 1914–1918 as compared to the previous period of relative calm among the European great powers, than as a concept with analytical leverage. It should be noted though, that even if the wars of colonisation appeared limited from a European perspective, it probably did not appear limited for countless numbers of original inhabitants in Africa, Asia or the Americas that faced subjugation and ultimately an unprecedented change of their political, social, spiritual and economic order as a result.¹⁵ Some attempts to define total war also struggle with temporality (e.g., not including wars of greater geographical width than the alleged total wars of the twentieth century); with the relative nature of political aims (e.g., far-reaching political goals can appear ‘total’ to contemporaries, but appear moderate in hindsight); and with the relative nature of state control (i.e., arguably the Twentieth century witnessed an increase of absolute capacity of state control).

Still, Stig Förster fruitfully defines total war according to four dimensions: total aims, total methods, total mobilisation, and total centralised control.¹⁶ Hence, Förster’s differentiation corresponds to a basic ends-ways-means-understanding of strategy, with the addition of command and control. Förster does not suggest that all of these dimensions have to be amplified to Spinal-Tap 11-mode for a particular war to be classified as a total war, but rather that by differentiating the concept into these dimensions, it becomes possible to observe nuances of totality. When it comes to political aims, it is difficult to see past aims such as conquering the opponent and dissolving its state as clear marks of total political aims, but one must also recognise that democratisation of a previous dictatorship – completely dismantling and changing the domestic political order of the opponent – has an element of totality to it. Totality in means mobilised for war, in turn, has two dimensions: range and scale. This allows us to differentiate between for example mobilising the entire armed forces and mobilising all societal sectors. Totality in ways, crucially, depends on how to uphold discrimination in the use of force. If violence is used indiscriminately against civilian and military targets alike, it leans towards total war, whereas if the violence is discriminate it leans towards limited war. Taken to its logical extreme, as Beatrice Heuser recognises, total war will imply genocide.¹⁷ Totality in centralised control, finally, refers to the degree to which there is a distinction between public and private in war as well as a vertical hierarchy of centralisation to the government or decentralisation down to regional or local levels. On one end of the scale, one can think of the state controlling and coordinating all of society for the purposes of war and on the other end, one can think of the state merely facilitating the war effort, but effectively leaving it to generals or commercial actors to self-synchronise and wage it.

Approaching the concept of total war according to these dimensions allows us to identify variation of totality. It also means that we can contextualise how various threat-representations may play into understandings of totality of war. For the purposes of developing a typology of different strategic logics of total defences, we therefore set out to contextualize how the notion of total war can be variously understood depending on the dominating threat-representation.¹⁸

Total war in relation to the nuclear threat, for example, would be understood as total in scale due to the unprecedented devastation, but also due to the fact that neither blast nor radioactive fallout would distinguish between the military and civilians. In the 1950s, Western nuclear strategists debated the wisdoms of either counter-city vs counter-force strikes, but regardless, nuclear fallout would devastate crops and soil for generations, thus rendering any distinction made in the blast moment meaningless.¹⁹ At the same time, nuclear strikes would not necessitate the mobilisation either all of society or not even of all armed forces, although unlimited nuclear war being waged for limited political purposes is improbable, to say the least.

Meanwhile, the threat of a large-scale conventional attack would rather be seen as approaching totality in scale in terms of required mobilised resources, but not necessarily reach totality in other dimensions. Mobilising hundreds of thousands of soldiers and organising them in divisions, corps, armies and even army groups clearly represent an effort closing in on totality in means. Organising something in such a massive scale would probably also require mobilising other societal means. It would, at the very least, be understood as requiring a massive economic and societal undertaking. It would, moreover, certainly require a very high degree of centralised governmental control to solve a number of practical tasks, such as carrying out training, and equipping and organising hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Large-scale conventional war would typically also be associated with totality in political aims.

Even the threat of terrorism – occasionally referred to as ‘poor man’s war’ and certainly representing the other side of means mobilised in comparison to large-scale conventional war – can be understood as having elements of totality. Here, one would not assume totality in terms of centralised control, since there are terrorist groups that organise in relatively independent cells, rather than a hierarchical, centralised chain of command.²⁰ However, the political aims of many terrorist groups are certainly total in nature. For example, extremist right-wing terrorism and Islamist terrorist groups typically share the goal of replacing one societal and political system with an entirely new one. Moreover, the degree to which these political aims are embraced by individuals are clearly very high: suicide terrorism requires a high degree of dedication.²¹ As for ways, terrorism by definition is about using force indiscriminately to instil fear, and the range of means available to attack civilian targets – although limited in scale – is almost infinite.

The threat of so-called hybrid war – a relative newcomer to categories of war – can also be perceived as having dimensions of totality. After first being touted by Frank Hoffmann as a mixture of terrorism, crime and war by Hezbollah, hybrid war has more recently been associated with Russia and its doctrine of non-military warfare.²² Despite its name, it should be pointed out that it includes military means and conceptually it therefore resembles ‘full-spectrum warfare’. The threat of hybrid war thus involves military means, but also economic, informational, diplomatic and so-called political warfare, i.e., meddling with other states’ domestic politics such as trying to influence elections, supporting (even financially) political parties in other states, etc. The totality is thus not necessarily understood in terms of the scale of means, but rather the range of means involved. For example, Mark Galeotti aptly describes it as the ‘weaponisation of everything’.²³ As in relation to terrorism, hybrid warfare can be understood to be indiscriminate in the sense that all of society is a target, although not necessarily so in terms of violent attacks.

A typology of total defence strategies

As stated above, strategy as a concept involves interaction with an opponent and interrelated threat representations, as well as prioritisations due to scarce resources, and we can therefore deduce that this dynamic interaction will influence the choice of strategy. Akin to Carol Bacchi’s ‘problem representation’ approach to policy analysis, we similarly suggest that we need to look into the deep conceptual premises on which strategy is being built – more specifically so, we argue that depending on how ‘total war’ is understood, different strategic logics will subsequently be ingrained in total defence.²⁴ Hence, we can expect total defence to contain different strategic logics depending on how the total war is expected to manifest itself. In this section, we outline a typology of total defence strategies in two steps. Firstly, we structure the typology based on the two central dimensions of total defence discussed above, and secondly, we connect these dimensions to different understandings of total war.

The typology is of the ‘classificatory’ kind, meaning it is meant to help characterize to what ‘type’ a specific case can be seen as belonging to.²⁵ To make the typology analytically useful, we remove it from its contextual origins and focus on key conceptual building blocks. The Weberian ideal type – i.e., sacrificing complexity, while highlighting the impact of certain factors – is a useful tool to accomplish this and create common ground for empirical comparisons. Since ideal types are refined and cultivated representations that accentuate the main characteristics of a specific and limited piece of a social phenomenon, they serve as a theoretical gauge for similarities and differences in relation empirical manifestations.²⁶

As mentioned above, we suggest that varieties of total defence can be found according to two dimensions. These are derived from the two central building blocks of total defence, namely (1) security is a shared task of the entire society, and therefore total defence includes and integrates civil and military defence into one comprehensive strategy; and (2) the government manages and organizes command and control of the entire total defence. Along these two dimensions then, the civil-military division of labour can be based either on distinctly separate or blurred roles; and command and control can be either decentralised or centralised (see the two-by-two below).

Along the first dimension, we can expect variation regarding the extent to which there is a sharp distinction between the roles and mandates of the civil and military defences. It would, for example, be reasonable to maintain such a distinction if the primary threat of the imagined total war requires coordination of massive resources in both civilian and military terms, whereas it would make sense to dissolve such a distinction if the primary threat in itself challenges a sharp distinction. Secondly, depending on what kind of total war one is expecting, it will make sense either to centralise command and control (for example when the primary threat requires a high degree of coordination among governmental agencies) or decentralise command and control (for example when the expected total war implies that centralised command will not be possible).

Figure 1 (above) outlines the typology of total defence strategies. By combining these two dimensions, and as we proceed by theoretically connecting them to different total war threat-representations, four different ideal-types are created.

Figure 1. Typology of total defence Strategies.

Cell

The first ideal type is based on a decentralised command structure and is one where the roles of the civil and military defences are seen as distinctly separate. A cell strategy is designed to maintain a credible deterrent against threats to which one fears that the government will not be able to coordinate the defence, while at the same time, the threat does not call for integrating the roles and the division of labour between the civil and military defence. The quintessential example is the threat of nuclear attacks. In case of a nuclear attack, one cannot ensure that there will be a centralised government left intact after the initial attack. And, even if there would still be a command structure, communications will most likely be down weeks after a massive nuclear strike. Even if a nuclear attack and its fallout does not separate between civilians and the military, it still makes sense to uphold such a distinction. It improves morale among the population, which is good in the long run, and it also lays out a basic structure of belonging, which is absolutely necessary for continued resistance in the absence of centralised state leadership. Indeed, the credibility of the deterrent rests upon the peacetime commitment to act in a cellular, dispersed, decentralised structure. The cellular structure with civil-military coordination occurring at lower levels implies that resistance can go on independently of a collapsed government, thus assuring that the costs for an attacker will be high – even if nuclear weapons are used.

Stovepipe

The next ideal-type maintains a strong division of labour between civil and military, but in contrast to the cell strategy, stovepipe strategy presumes a centralised command and control structure that can optimise coordination between public and private actors, civil and military actors, and between national agencies and international support. In this strategy, the main total war manifestation comes in the shape of a large-scale conventional war. Since the expected war is conventional, a centralised government can be assumed to still exist and to communicate with governmental agencies. Moreover, it can be assumed that the massive scale of an invasion and countering such a threat will require a massive concentration of effort and an equally high degree of coordination. In practical terms, the strategy requires coordination of hundreds of thousands of refugees in one direction, while at the same time sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the opposite direction. Since large-scale conventional attacks require large numbers of soldiers, we can also expect that a credible deterrent demands large numbers of military and civilian resources that need continuous large-scale exercises and centralised coordination to optimise the warfighting capability.

Cluster

The third ideal type is a response to total war that comes in the form of global terrorism. It dissolves the civil and military distinctions since the military needs to perform traditional police work and the police needs to solve traditional military tasks. While public and private actors must work in concert and develop cooperative relationships to deal with the threat of terrorism locally, we can still expect the need for a centralised state command in the fight against global terrorism. A cluster organisation, in short, is customary pieced together for the task at hand (its utility may be global and/or local), and it is done so by command of the central state. Since the threat of terrorism requires highly coordinated and cooperative arrangements involving a broad range of societal resources for intelligence (e.g., from police, social workers, schools, and even families) and quicker reaction times (on local, national and international levels) if an act of terrorism occurs – and since it is difficult to predict the scale of the terror act in advance, having a pre-set rigid organisation is not desirable. No one can predict the variation of ways and means – from coordinated airplane hijacks to single-actor knife attacks or intentionally driving cars into innocent crowds – which terrorists may use. Given the variation of threats and the difficulties to predict them, task-oriented clusters of cooperative arrangements (at local, regional, national and international levels, and/or between civil and military agencies) can more aptly respond to quickly emerging threats, and thereby raise the costs for an attacker as well as functioning as a deterrent. Meanwhile, the central state is required to lead and provide centralised command of the clustered total defence arrangements against global terrorism.

Fort

Finally, the fourth ideal-type is a response to hybrid war, and it dissolves the civil-military binary completely, since ‘all is weaponised’. Hybrid war includes various aspects of antagonistic and highly ambiguous political, economic, informational, or military actions, and the intention is to create confusion and avoid any clear attribution, and make it difficult to separate acts of for example organised crime, terrorism or war. Due to the threat of for example cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns, we cannot expect central command to suffice, since the all-encompassing nature of such threats implies that all public and private actors, and even every individual citizen, must take part in a vigilant everyday total defence. Hence, self-containing forts is the best metaphor. Total defence must be switched on always and everywhere since hybrid war is omnipresent. The pressure of simultaneous informational, cyber, economical, military and political threats mean that ‘fort’ – in which everyone has to defend themselves much like the Western frontier in the mid-nineteenth century US – is an apt name. It implies that everyone – man, woman, and child – has to be prepared to deal with different forms of attacks, on an everyday basis. A decentralised system in which the distinction between civil and military is collapsed provides resilience throughout, and thus represents a credible deterrent.

Swedish total defence strategies, 1948–2022

In this section, we continue by utilising Sweden as a representative case in point, to illustrate empirically the variation of strategic logics that hide behind the nominal similar strategy of total defence. The case of Sweden has been strategically selected because of its suitability for illuminating the phenomenon of interest (i.e., variation in total defences) and since it offers favorable opportunities to explore the phenomenon (e.g., accessible and plentiful empirical material).²⁷ In Sweden, the comprehensive build-up of both the civil and military parts of total defence took place during the first decades of the post-war period. The strive for a well prepared and war-organised society led to the establishment of various new government agencies and comprehensive war planning within all existing public agencies.²⁸ In the analysis below, we apply the typology as a theoretical device. The analysis is based on in-depth readings of Swedish Defence and Total Defence Bills 1948–2020.²⁹

Cellular total defence, 1948–1972

When the Soviet Union detonated its first atom bomb in 1949, it became clear that a major nuclear war or even a separate nuclear attack on Sweden was considered the major threat by Swedish decision-makers. A potentially escalating conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was the main focus, and Sweden even launched its own atom bomb project to increase its deterrent. Several other defence equipment projects initiated during the period were conditioned so that they would be able to carry nuclear bombs (air force fighters A32 Lansen and A37 Viggen, submarine class Sjöormen, and for the army, the long-range self-propelled artillery vehicle Bandkanon).³⁰ The bomb project was gradually down-prioritised in the late 1950s due to increasing costs in combination with perceived US assurances of Sweden being under the US nuclear umbrella.³¹ Still, it was obvious that nuclear war was the major headache of Swedish strategists.

In terms of control and command, Sweden decided as early as 1951 – only two years after the Soviet bomb – to decentralise its total defence coordination. Already in the 1948 Defence Bill, it had been decided that the mobilisation organisation was decentralised.³² By creating the Office for Regional Civil Defence Commander and establishing Civil Defence Regions that matched the five Military Regions, the structure was set for the regional military commanders of the fielded armed forces to coordinate with their civil defence counterparts.³³ Under the regions, the armed forces also re-structured its areas for the territorial defence so that they matched the already existing 25 provinces of Sweden and thus created another opportunity for decentralised coordination between the armed forces and civil defence actors. Already in peacetime, the Regional Civil Commander was tasked to develop plans and conduct exercises in coordination with the Regional Military Commander in preparation for the expected war. This way, civil and military defence together at decentralised level could raise the costs of war – even if a nuclear attack had taken out the government. During the 1950s, it became a legal requirement for real estate developers of multi-family buildings to include bomb shelters. As a result, the early 1950s-plans for mass evacuation of the major cities that would have been a major strain on the road network and could have hindered the movement of the fielded army could be abandoned during the mid-1960s.

One of the most illustrative examples of the highly decentralized deterrence logic of this time can be found in the since 1961 repeated claim that in case of war ‘every message that resistance should stop is false’.³⁴ This clearly signals a strong commitment to the idea of maintaining the defence of the country, even after a nuclear attack. At the same time, it illustrates that the government partly surrenders its capacity and legitimacy to rule (i.e., it cannot decide to cease hostilities) and taken to its logical end, it alludes to the assumption that after a nuclear attack, the state of Sweden cease to exist. Only perpetual war remains – and such war is decentralized down to the individual level. The statement is thus an explicit expression of a very particular inherent logic of a total defence – one that lies very close to the cell ideal type and stresses unlimited war, unrestricted by political will that usually prevents war from reaching its absolute form – i.e., what Clausewitz only theorised about.³⁵

In the civil defence bill of 1963, it was clearly spelled out that the aim of the total defence was to be so prepared in peacetime, so it had a deterrent effect.³⁶ In terms of the distinctiveness of the civil-military roles, a rough division of labour was also spelled out: the military should ‘meet and defeat’ an invading force, the civil defence should protect the civilian population, the economic defence should protect supply lines and food, and the psychological defence should maintain a strong commitment among the population to continue to wage the war. Healthcare, justice and order, social services, transport and education should adapt and prioritise to maximise the war effort. On the civil defence side, the Swedish Civil Defence Act had established already in 1944 that all citizens share the responsibility for civil defence. The main tasks were to protect civilians by preparing for evacuation and provide warning, shelters, emergency services, health care and humanitarian aid. Another important task was to maintain critical societal functions and infrastructure and to protect industries. During peacetime, training and participation in the Swedish civil defence was voluntary, but in case of war or ‘heightened preparedness’, the duty for civil defence applied to all citizens between the ages of 15–65. Up until 1966, civil defence was primarily built to manage a nuclear attack.

In sum, this first period shows a great deal of similarities to the cellular ideal type, in all dimensions. However, the gradual improvement of relations between the superpowers after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the perceived emerging stability of the mutual assured destruction, made Swedish authorities gradually less worried about nuclear war. Instead, the Swedish threat assessments started to shift towards a large-scale conventional invasion in the late 1960s and early 1970s.³⁷

Stove-piped total defence, 1972–1993

Even if the first joint and highly coordinated total defence bill was issued in 1977, the Bill in 1972 started the process of centralised coordination in earnest. It did so in several respects. First, it continued to downplay the threat of nuclear war, changing the old doctrine of ‘meet and defeat’ for the armed forces to ‘defence in depth’. In practice, this meant a gradual reduction of the navy and air force and a simultaneous strengthening of the army. Second, since the war was expected to be waged on Swedish soil and without nuclear weapons, the government tasked the regional Military and Civil Commanders to further deepen their coordination.³⁸ Crucially, however, the 1970s and 1980s also witnessed an increase in centralisation of total defence planning. Several new governmental-level agencies were formed that gradually took over the planning of the total defence from the regional level. Through the creation of the Agency for Psychological Defence (1985), the Board for Civil Alertness (1986), and The Agency for Safety (1986) the government implemented a new division of labour between national and regional levels.³⁹ As part of these sweeping changes, in 1986 the government also created agencies for the various ‘functions’ of the total defence. It did not disband the old geographical structure, but overlaying the hierarchical division, the government introduced ‘functional responsibilities’ that were centralised. The split between geographical division and functional division further demanded an increased level of coordination between civil and military agencies.⁴⁰

In preparation of a large-scale invasion (which by the mid-1970s was understood to be part of a global confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact that would also prevent the free flow of goods), the state also reinforced its already initiated build-up of storing of grain, petrol, oil, coffee, and other goods it expected would be difficult to acquire during war. Solving the practical issues of storage did not fall down on the regional level, as it had during the first phase of the Cold War. Instead, and in line with the command and control logic of stovepipe total defence, it was the Board for Civil Alertness that centrally coordinated the process. During the 1980s, the government also introduced so-called k-företag, i.e., private companies that had a special responsibility to continue their production in case of war, thus furthering the economic defence. Besides the defence industry, other businesses within transportation, agriculture, energy, supply, communications, and banks (over 25,000 in total) were registered as k-företag at the height of this attempt to order public–private relations for total defence. Working at a k-företag meant that some individuals were exempt from participation in the armed forces or in other branches of the civil defence.⁴¹ The increase in storages as well as increased control over the private sector imply that the government also attempted to reinforce deterrence through demonstrating in peacetime that Swedish society would withstand an attempted invasion and could uphold its defence for a long period of time, thus propagating high costs for an invader.

In terms of the division of labour, the distinct separation between military and civil roles was maintained during this period. At this point in time, the armed forces could mobilise some 800,000 soldiers, and the civil defence system assigned around 230,000 citizens to civil defence services in various local and regional organisations, and an additional 65,000 citizens to factory defence organisations.⁴² Voluntary civil defence organisations also involved nearly a million citizens. All in all, almost a quarter of the population were organised in the total defence. During the final years of the Cold War, the Swedish civil defence program was one of the world’s most extensive⁴³ In sum, the Swedish total defence during this period lies very close to the stovepipe ideal type, both in terms of threat perceptions, and in the two dimensions of control and command, and the civil-military division of labour.

Clustered total defence, 1994–2014

As the Cold War ended, the concept of total defence in its previous shape, lost its relevance. A few years into the 1990s, the Swedish security community was more or less in agreement that there was no longer any imminent territorial threat to Sweden, and that a new and permanent state of peace had been reached in Europe.⁴⁴ In 2005, the then Supreme Commander, General Håkan Syrén, declared that there were no longer any military threats remaining in the Baltic Sea region.⁴⁵ Consequently, the wartime strength of the Swedish army was reduced by 95%, the navy and air force by 70%, and the majority of all military bases were closed. All total defence planning was scrapped entirely.⁴⁶ What was left of the Swedish Armed Forces was reoriented towards international crises management and ‘expeditionary’ use of force. Conscription was replaced with an all-volunteer force, enlisting less than 4,000 annual recruits.⁴⁷ The civil defence was also dismantled, and instead a new civilian crisis management system was built up. All public civil defence agencies were closed down; the building and maintaining of bomb shelters ended and evacuation plans were scrapped.

The dismantling of the old Swedish total defence can in a sense be seen as rendering an analysis of this particular period meaningless, or at least imply that it will deviate completely from the ideal types. However, the legal foundations of total defence remained intact, and whatever remains of the civil side were left, were integrated in a new civilian crisis management system. Moreover, Sweden started to exert a broader notion of security, encompassing non-military threats and risks such as climate change, organised crime, terrorism and pandemics. Security has become associated not only with the territorial integrity of the nation-state, but also with the risks and vulnerabilities of modern life. The government declared in the 1996 defence bill that a broader view on security had become necessary and, more importantly, that total defence resources must be made available also for non-military crises management.⁴⁸ In other words, the division of labour between the military and civil side of defence was starting to become blurred.

The September 11 attacks had a major impact also on the Swedish security agenda and global terrorism soon became the new central concern. The government decided to take part in the US-led ‘global war on terrorism’ and – as an effect – came to focus its remaining total defence resources on the one hand, on expeditionary counterterrorism operations far outside Sweden, and on the other, on domestic and localised cooperative security arrangements, thus showing similarities to the cluster ideal type.

The Swedish government had initiated its own 9/11 investigation and of central concern was how coordination and cooperation between various agencies could be strengthened, especially so between the Security Police and the Swedish Armed Forces, further blurring the civil-military division of labour.⁴⁹ In 2006, new legal possibilities for the police to request military assistance in non-military crisis management was established. Military force, in short, could now be used domestically. The forms for this support were conditioned on the Police leading the operation and the military could only be involved if the police ‘lacked resources’. Still, this meant that the undertakings of the military and the police increasingly converged in a way that was unthinkable only a couple of decades before, and this is a clear signal that civilian and military agencies received tasks and roles that further blurred the civil-military division of labour.

In terms of command and control, the threat of global terrorism was not to be met through isolated measures, but through coordinated and cooperative arrangements between various governmental and public agencies.⁵⁰ On the home front, the government initiated an anti-radicalisation program and appointed a national ‘coordinator of anti-radicalisation’ in 2008, with the responsibility of providing national coordination of, and support to, municipalities in the development of anti-radicalisation programmes through localised cooperative arrangements between police, social authorities and school personnel.⁵¹ On the global front, the government declared in 2010 that the Swedish troop contribution to ISAF in Afghanistan ‘is motivated by the Afghan people’s vulnerability to violence, oppression and poverty, Sweden’s self-interest in furthering security and stability in the region and globally, as well as our interest to contribute to a collective security regime and efficient international crisis management’.⁵² A year earlier the then minister of defence claimed that the defence of Sweden starts in Afghanistan.⁵³

While the total defence of Sweden at this point in time is perhaps best described as fragmented, or even shattered measured by the old standards, it does show similarities to the cluster ideal type, with its blurred division of labour and its centralised command of the local as well as global counterterrorism measures.

Fortified total defence, 2014–2022

The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 abruptly re-awoke the more traditional geopolitical idea of total defence as a useful deterrence strategy. Territorial national defence once again became the main stated task for the Swedish Armed Forces, total defence planning was re-established, and compulsory conscription was reinstated in 2017. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, military spending increased and went from 1.12% of GDP in 2018 with a plan to reach to 2.0% by 2025. The re-establishment of total defence was largely driven by what was perceived as a significantly increased threat from Russia, and a key priority of the 2015 Defence Bill was subsequently to enhance the warfighting capability of the Swedish Armed Forces.⁵⁴ Similarly, the 2020 Defence Bill primarily emphasised antagonistic and military threats posed by Russia, and it is even stated that a major war in the Baltic Sea Region might start with an attack on Sweden.⁵⁵

Even though it may seem as the pendulum had swung back towards a stovepipe type of total defence, we can discern important differences in the threat perception. The Swedish shift back towards territorial and geopolitical concerns did not mean that the broadened notion of security was abandoned in favour of the more traditional and narrow conception of security. On the contrary, the new total defence strategy was infused with both. In 2017, the government began the work on developing a new national security strategy and the broadened security concept was explicitly stated as the starting point for this work.⁵⁶ The new security strategy describes eight primary threats: military threats; information and cyber security; terrorism and violent extremism; organised crime; threats to energy supply; threats to transport and infrastructure; threats to public health; and climate change and its effects. In other words, even as the need for a traditional territorial and invasion defence was brought back, the broadened notion of security was still very much embraced, and the civil-military division of labour remained blurred.

More importantly, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine, the concept of hybrid warfare took centre stage. For example, the 2020 Defence Bill includes an entire section devoted to hybrid threats.⁵⁷ In the new doctrine for joint operations from 2020, it is declared that the threats Sweden faces today are more complex than in previous times, since non-linear warfare and hybrid threats create a grey zone problematique resulting in blurred lines between a state of war and peace.⁵⁸ Moreover, in 2018, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs established a Special Envoy for Countering Hybrid Threats. Swedish defence planners along with NATO and the EU assume that Russian aggression towards the West might not be directly confrontational, but rather involve subversive and concealed measures aiming to destabilise western societies.⁵⁹

In terms of command and control, a highly decentralised strategy was emphasised, in order to counter for example hostile disinformation operations and provide psychological defence and societal resilience.⁶⁰ The prevailing assumption is that Sweden is already ‘at war’ in the grey zone. The Defence Bill from 2020 states that hybrid threats are presently being directed against Sweden.⁶¹ The Supreme Commander General Michael Bydén stated in January 2022 that ‘Sweden and Swedish interests are attacked daily’.⁶² Hostile Russian measures including for example disinformation campaigns aiming to divide and polarise Swedish society, and undermine governance and societal cohesion, requires vigilant, resilient and self-sufficient public agencies, businesses and private citizens. Consequently, and in line with the Fort ideal type, a highly decentralised total defence is needed. It was explicitly pointed out by the Defence Commission in 2017 that: ‘It is up to many different societal actors and in the end to the individual him/herself to identify and be prepared to act […] to meet an aggressor who uses methods in the borderland between peace and war’.⁶³ Similarly, the 2020 Defence Bill emphasises the necessity of decentralisation to make total defence able to meet hybrid threats. The Bill clearly points out that increased ability and planning is needed in all of society, and especially civilian society, for total defence to be able to deal with hybrid threats from foreign powers.⁶⁴

In sum, the omnipresence of hybrid war in the everyday lives of Swedish citizens requires a decentralised Fort type of total defence where every public agency, private business and even every single individual is ready to resist and defend against hybrid attacks. It requires a vigilant and constantly war-prepared society at large, that can fight off antagonist non-military threats, on an everyday basis.

Summary

The analysis above bears out that the strategic logics underpinning Swedish total defence has varied from an initial idea showing a lot of similarities to the cell ideal type, as total war was understood as nuclear war; and later on to the stove-pipe, as the imagined total war changed into large-scale conventional invasion and occupation; while the next period shows similarities to the cluster type, when total war was understood in terms of a global war against terrorism; and finally, to a fort when total war came to be understood in terms of a hybrid war (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Swedish total defence strategies, 1948–2022.

Concluding remarks

What is the strategic logic of so-called ‘total defence’? In this article, we have developed a typology of total defence strategies, and demonstrated through an analysis of the Swedish case, that the strategic logics underpinning the total defences have varied along with the variation of total war threat-representations. We have shown that treating total defence as one coherent strategy is misleading and underestimates the variation in how total defences may be constituted. While we do recognize that our empirical analysis is carried out primarily at the level of perceptions, ideas and representations in and of the Swedish total defence as strategy, rather than on the level of total defence doings, we certainly see clear signs and indications of variation also in the practices of total defence ends-means-ways. Still, the more precise practical effects is in need of, and represents a promising avenue, for further research. Such further research is indeed warranted, since we can assume that the types of hidden variation of total defences that we have illustrated here, will have practical implications for those states that in response to Russian aggression over the last decades are re-building their national systems for military and civil defences.

Some limitations of our approach should however be pointed out. It is clear that the conditions under which Sweden has pursued its total defence strategy have changed dramatically over the last 70 years. However, these changes are not only derivable from threat assessments, and the contents and shape of total defence strategies are not only an effect of total war threat-perceptions. For example, the Swedish membership in the EU as well as increased de-regulation and privatisation during the late 1980s and 1990s probably made a return to the stovepipe total defence impossible even if there had been a political will. Critical societal functions like telecommunication, energy, healthcare and transport are examples of sectors that during the Cold War were owned and operated by the state, but are now partly or wholly privatised. This means that control has become dispersed and fragmented, residing among a myriad of private and public actors domestically, as well as internationally.

The Swedish case, therefore, may also illustrate a certain degree of path dependency and incremental decision-making to the development of total defence strategies. It is, for example, easier and cheaper in terms of investments to create a centrally coordinated, stove-piped total defence from an already functioning structure of state-organised military and civil defences that exists in a cellular total defence. If there had been already a strong private, deregulated market in the early 1970s, it would have been more difficult to introduce a centrally coordinated system. In other words, this calls for further comparative studies in order to explore how well the ideal-types travel to other contexts.

There are also other potentially problematic aspects of total defence strategies, which lies beyond the scope of this study. For example, one could question the deterrent effect of total defence since deterrence relies upon adversaries grasping and finding credible the combination of means and ways that a state espouses as a strategy. If whatever Sweden do and whatever threat it is facing, the answer seems to be ‘total defence’ – then how credible is that in the long run? Moreover, the Defence bills do not recognise the inherent dangers of total defence deterrence strategies. From the point of view of the aggressor, a total defence implies that more or less every citizen is a potential enemy, thus inviting the adversary to use force un-proportionally and indiscriminately. A strategy of total defence may, in other words, invite a total war.

Still, the versatility of the strategy of total defence ought to be recognised. It is far from the monolith that it appears at first glance. As revealed in our analysis, even the small, non-aligned state pursuing total defence strategies during the Cold War and after, can actually be more strategic and flexible, than it first seems. In a dynamic relationship, assessments of the nature of the threat meant that various versions of total defence were devised and reformed over time, thereby variously addressing the strategic problem at hand.

Acknowledgments

For constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article, the authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers, the participants at the IS-ISSS annual conference in Gainesville, Florida in December 2022, as well as participants at the War Studies Seminar, Swedish Defence University, March 2023.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan Angstrom

Jan Angstrom is professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. He holds a PhD from King’s College, London and has published mainly on the use of force in modern war for the past two decades.

Kristin Ljungkvist

Kristin Ljungkvist is Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. She received her PhD in political science at the Department of Government, Uppsala University, Sweden, and her research focuses on total defence; and urban security and warfare

Notes

¹ James Kenneth Wither, ‘Back to the Future: Nordic Total Defence Concepts’, Defence Studies, 20/1 (2020), 61–81; Katarina Engberg, ‘När totalförsvaret föll samman’, Kungl Krigsvetenskapsakademien Bihäfte, KKrVA Handlingar och Tidskrift, 2 (2020).

² See, e.g., Kevin Pollock & Riana Steen, ‘Total Defence Resilience: Viable or Not During COVID-19? A Comparative Study of Norway and the UK’, Risks, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy, 12 (2021), 73–109; Antonio Missiroli & Michael Rühle, ‘The Pandemic and the Military: EU and NATO Between Resilience and Total Defence’, European Foreign Affairs Review, 26/2 (2021), 203–18; Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam, Enhancing the Resilience of Allied Societies through Civil Preparedness, Draft General Report 011 CDS 21 E rev. 1, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, 30 July 2021.

³ Wither, ‘Back to the Future’, 75.

⁴ See for example George J. Stein, ‘Total defense: A comparative overview of the security policies of Switzerland and Austria’, Defense Analysis, 6/1 (1990), 17–33; Håkon Lunde Saxi, Bengt Sundelius & Brett Swaney, ‘Baltics Left of Bang: Nordic Total Defense and Implications for the Baltic Sea Region, Strategic forum, Issue 304 (January 2020), 1–19; Leva Bērziņa, ‘Total Defence as a Comprehensive Approach to National Security’, in Nora Vanaga & Toms Rostoks (eds.), Deterring Russia in Europe (London: Routledge, 2018), 71–72.

⁵ See, e.g., Seng Tan & Alvin Chew, ‘Governing Singapore’s Security Sector: Problems, Prospects and Paradox’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, 30/2 (2008), 241–63; Malin E. Wimelius & Jan Engberg, ‘Crisis Management through Network Coordination’, Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management 23 (2015), 129–37; Edward Deverell, Aida Alvinius & Susanne Hede, ‘Horizontal collaboration in crisis management: an experimental study of the duty officer function in three public agencies’, Risks, Hazards and Crisis in Public Policy, 10/4 (2019), 484–508; Arnold H. Kammel, & Benjamin Zyla, ‘The comprehensive approach to EU crisis management: context, lessons identified, and policy implications’, Journal of Regional Security, 13/2 (2018), 39–63; Maria Wahlberg, Civil-militär samverkan på central nivå: samverkan mellan Försvarsmakten och centrala myndigheter inom ramen för totalförsvar och fredstida krishantering (Stockholm: Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut FOI, 2003).

⁶ Wither, ‘Back to the Future’, 62.

⁷ Another approach to total defence worth mentioning has focused on the historical and cultural role of total defence, typically with a specific focus on civil defence, in nation-building or in relation to the development of the welfare state. See for example: Marie Cronqvist, ‘Utrymning i folkhemmet Kalla kriget, välfärdsidyllen och den svenska civilförsvarskulturen 1961’, Historisk Tidsskrift 128/3 (2008); Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl & Casper Sylvest (eds.), Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe, Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås & Johan Gribbe, Science for Welfare and Warfare: Technology and State Initiative in Cold War Sweden (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2010).

⁸ See, e.g., Jan Angstrom & J.J. Widén, Contemporary Military Theory: The Dynamics of War (London: Routledge, 2015), 46–54.

⁹ Bērziņa, ‘Total Defence as a Comprehensive Approach’, 71. See also Stein, ‘Total defense’; Lunde Saxi et al., ‘Baltics Left of Bang’.

¹⁰ Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (London: Polity, 2004), 36–40; James J. Wirtz, ‘Deterrence as Strategy,’ in Alex S. Wilner and Andreas Wegner (eds.), Deterrence by Denial: Theory and Practice (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2021), 123–44. For an application of deterrence strategies to the Swedish case, see Jörgen Axelsson, Karl Sörenson & Jan Ångström, ‘Strategisk teoris bidrag till förståelse av svensk säkerhets- och försvarspolitik’, Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 118/4 (2016), 445–70.

¹¹ Jeremy Black, The Age of Total War, 1860–1945 (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 2.

¹² Kalevi J. Holsti, War, the State, and the State of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹³ Jan Willem Honig, ‘The Idea of Total War from Clausewitz to Ludendorff’, Proceedings of the 2011 International Forum on the History of War (Tokyo: National Institute for Defence Studies, 2012).

¹⁴ Imlay Talbot, ‘Total War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30/3 (2007), 549.

¹⁵ Black, The Age of Total War, 1860–1945, 13–27.

¹⁶ Stig Förster, ‘Total War and Genocide: Reflections on the Second World War’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 53/1 (2007), 68–83. Förster lead a series of impressive collective research efforts on total war for over a decade.

¹⁷ Beatrice Heuser, War: A Genealogy of Western Ideas and Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 45.

¹⁸ We are in other words not discussing the ontology of total war, or setting out to define its various empirical forms here. Instead, we discuss how total war can be variously understood and characterized, depending on what type of threat-perceptions are dominating. This is a similar approach to John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

¹⁹ See, e.g., Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd edn. (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003) and Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).

²⁰ John Mackinlay, The Insurgent Archipelago (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).

²¹ Robert A. Pape, ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism’, American Political Science Review, 97/3 (2003), 343–61.

²² Oscar Jonsson, The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019). For the development of the concept of hybrid war, see Ilmari Käihkö, ‘The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession’, Parameters, 51/3 (2021), 115–27.

²³ Mark Galeotti, The Weaponization of Everything: A Field Guide to War in the 21st Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022).

²⁴ Carol Bacchi, Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be? (Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson, 2009).

²⁵ Colin Elman, ‘Explanatory Typologies in Qualitative Studies of International Politics’, International Organization, 59/2 (2005), 298.

²⁶ Max Weber, Vetenskap och Politik (Göteborg: Korpen, 1977).

²⁷ Alexander L. George & Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

²⁸ Wilhelm Agrell, Alliansfrihet och atombomber: Kontinuitet och förändring i den svenska försvarsdoktrinen, 1954–1982 (Stockholm: Liber, 1985), 60–61.

²⁹ In theory, Sweden issues Defence Bills in five-year cycles, but in practice, there are also a series of additional Bills to manage unforeseen events (e.g. increased tensions internationally, or sharp price increases as during the oil crisis in the 1970s). It should also be pointed out that civil defence was regulated in Civil Defence Bills until 1977 when the first joint civil and military Total Defence Bill was issued.

³⁰ Wilhelm Agrell, Svenska förintelsevapen (Stockholm: Historiska media, 2002); Bill 1958:10, 14.

³¹ Jerker Widén, Väktare, ombud, kritiker: Sverige i amerikanskt säkerhetstänkande, 1961–1968 (Stockholm: Santérus, 2009), 80–86.

³² Bill 1948:206, 74.

³³ Per Larsson, Civilbefälhavare: En övergripande historisk belysning, FOI-R-4795 (Stockholm: FOI, 2019), 9–10.

³⁴ Försvarsmakten (1961) Om kriget kommer (Stockholm).

³⁵ Carl von Clausewitz, On War (London: Everyman’s Library, 1993), 83–86.

³⁶ Bill 1963:108, 9.

³⁷ See, e.g., Karl Molin, Ulf Bjereld & Alf W. Johansson, Sveriges säkerhet och världens fred: Svensk utrikespolitik under kalla kriget (Stockholm: Santérus, 2008); Olof Kronvall & Magnus Petersson, Svensk säkerhetspolitik i supermakternas skugga (Stockholm: Santérus, 2005); Bill 1968:110, 6–8.

³⁸ Bill 1976/77:74 as well as Bill 1972:75, 71.

³⁹ Bill 1986/87: 95.

⁴⁰ Bill 1984/85: 160.

⁴¹ Bill 1981/82: 102.

⁴² William J. Stover, ‘National Defense and Citizen Participation in Sweden: The Citizen Army in an Open Society’, Peace Research 7/4 (1975), 127–32.

⁴³ Lawrence J. Vale, The Limits of Civil Defence (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 1987), 9.

⁴⁴ Jacob Westberg, Svenska säkerhetsstrategier, 1810–2014 (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2015), 204.

⁴⁵ Håkan Syrén, ‘Från nationellt till flernationellt försvar? Ett svenskt perspektiv’, in Krister Andren (ed.), I backspegeln med Håkan Syren som ÖB, 2004–2009 (Stockholm, Försvarsmakten, 2009), 58.

⁴⁶ Wither, ‘Back to the Future’, 70; Robert Dalsjö ‘Sweden and its deterrence deficit: Quick to react, yet slow to act’, in Nora Vanaga & Toms Rostoks (eds.), Deterring Russia in Europe: Defence Strategies for Neighbouring States (London: Routledge, 2019), 95.

⁴⁷ Wilhelm Agrell, Fredens illusioner: Det svenska nationella försvarets nedgång och fall, 1988–2009 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2011). The cutbacks occurred in three stages, as laid out in the Bills 1995/96:12; 1998/99:74 and Bill 1999/00:30 as well as 2004/05:5, while the shift to international operations instead of national defence started in earnest in the Bill 1998/99:74 and was at its most outspoken in the Bill 2004/05:5. See also Håkan Edström & Dennis Gyllensporre, Svensk försvarsdoktrin efter kalla kriget: Förlorade decennier eller vunna insikter? (Stockholm: Santérus, 2014), 93–131.

⁴⁸ Bill 1995/1996:12, 54–55. It was also repeated later during the 1990s in Bill 1998/99:74 as well as Bill 2008/09:140, 28 (despite the then recently concluded Russian attack on Georgia).

⁴⁹ SOU 2003:32, ‘Vår beredskap efter den 11 September’.

⁵⁰ Jo Finch, Jessica H. Jönsson, Masoud Kamali & David McKendrick, ‘Social work and countering violent extremism in Sweden and the UK’, European Journal of Social Work, 25/1 (2022), 119–30.

⁵¹ Finch, et al., ‘Social work’, 121.

⁵² Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Strategi för Sveriges stöd till det internationella engagemanget i Afghanistan (Stockholm: 2010).

⁵³ Tolgfors, ’Därför strider svenska soldater i Afghanistan’, Dagens Nyheter, 29 July 2009.

⁵⁴ Bill 2014/15:109, 1–2.

⁵⁵ Bill. 2020/21:30, 59.

⁵⁶ Bill. 2020/21:30, 69.

⁵⁷ Bill. 2020/21:30, 61–63.

⁵⁸ Swedish Armed Forces, Doctrine for Joint Operations 2020 (Stockholm: Swedish Armed Forces 2020), 6.

⁵⁹ Lunde Saxi et al., ‘Baltics Left of Bang’; Bill. 2020/21:30, 62–63.

⁶⁰ Lunde Saxi, et al., ‘Baltics Left of Bang’, 4.

⁶¹ Bill. 2020/21:30, 137.

⁶² Michael Bydén, Public speech at Folk och Försvar Rikskonferens, 11 January 2022.

⁶³ Defence Committee, Ds 2017:66 Motståndskraft, p. 67.

⁶⁴ Bill 2020/21:30, 137.