Don’t say peace: militarisation and the shrinking space for critical voices in the Swedish NATO debate

ABSTRACT

Sweden, long known as a voice for peace on the international arena, has undergone a rapid and far-reaching domestic (re-)militarisation the last decade. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this process intensified with a surge in military spending and a radical shift from a longstanding position of non-alignment towards NATO membership. As ‘war’ moves to the center of Swedish public debate, military and security experts occupy most of the space, leaving little room for alternative and critical perspectives. Drawing from feminist scholars, we offer some reflections on Sweden’s (re-)militarisation and ask who gets to speak, who is silenced, and why? Focusing on the domestic public debate post February 2022, we argue that when war moves to the center of the debate, peace is considered an ‘issue for later’. As war is understood in narrow military terms, war expertise is limited to matters of warfare instead of being seen as a broader societal issue. Critical voices and peace advocates are considered naive, unrealistic, and even dangerous. Our reflections invite a discussion on how militarisation and the politics of war expertise affect democratic debate with potentially far-reaching consequences for domestic and international politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Sweden
• Nato
• Militarization
• Feminist Security Studies
• War Expertise

Introduction: where did the critical voices go?

As late as November 2021, Peter Hultqvist, then Swedish Minister for Defence, reassured his fellow Social Democrat party members that for as long as he held office, he would never support the entry of Sweden into NATO. He emphasised that ‘military non-alignment has served us well’, a mantra repeated by both the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister even after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Bjereld et al. 2023). Yet in May 2022, the same Social-Democratic government announced that Sweden, alongside Finland, would pursue NATO membership. Despite Sweden’s long history as an active voice for peace internationally, with a large professional peace sector, few critical and alternative voices were heard in the debate leading up to the decision of joining the military alliance. In the words of Agnes Hellström, former head of the NGO Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, it felt like suddenly being a ‘sole sparrow among NATO hawks’ (2023: 170). While media editorial offices claimed that it was difficult to find researchers with a different take who were also willing to ‘comment on the security situation’ (Hellström 2023, 29), critics voiced frustration that Swedish media, even public service, became ‘a chorus of praise for NATO’ (See Studio Studio Ett 2023). As Swedish feminist researchers, we share this frustration, but are not surprised. Feminist scholarship on militarisation has demonstrated that this is how militarisation works: it shrinks the space for critical voices or alternative analyses of security. In this intervention, we offer our reflections on the public debate that followed the historic decision to transition from two centuries of military non-alignment towards NATO membership. We share some of the anxieties, fears, and confusions we experienced in relation to the recent shifts in Swedish defence policy. This spans across the personal and professional, affecting us as individuals living in a society increasingly preparing for war ‘at home’, and as researchers studying how militarisation is (politically) legitimised and naturalised. We ask: how and why was the debate so narrow? Who was afforded to speak on the matter and who was excluded/silenced? And perhaps most importantly: what if we are getting it all wrong?

Not now, later: the urgency of hard security measures

Later, is a patriarchal time zone. (Enloe 2004, 215)

As feminists, we know that when matters of war and national ‘hard’ security dominate the political agenda, there is a sense of urgency that limits the space for alternative (non-militarised) responses and democratic debate. Despite calls requesting a public referendum regarding NATO membership, the Swedish political leadership and other influential voices in the wider security sphere argued that ‘too much was at stake’ to move forward with such a vote, arguing that Russia would try to interfere with it (Silverberg 2022). While polls indicated an increase of Swedish NATO-support after Russia’s invasion, peace activists, journalists and critical researchers alike warned that fear mongering was used as a tactic to persuade the Swedish public of the inevitability of a NATO membership without allowing for an open political discussion (Aftonbladet 2022). As Sweden’s general elections were coming up in September 2022, it would have been possible for the government to put the NATO decision on hold and allow for the public to exert their democratic influence then. Some suggest that the Social Democratic Party consciously wanted to prevent the latter from happening, given the party’s U-turn on NATO-membership, fearing they would lose voters (Silverberg 2022). Instead, the shifting public opinion on NATO was used by the Social-Democratic government as a main argument as to why it was not necessary to anchor the decision through an election. There was no acknowledgement of how the media reporting itself, the stated urgency, and the lack of alternative perspectives on security likely had a significant effect on public opinion (Bjereld et al. 2023).

Even though NATO membership was not up for debate, the Swedish general elections still turned ‘khaki’ (See Enloe 2000). For example, representatives from different political parties were competing for who would increase the defence budget the most should they be elected. This increasing normalisation of military solutions as the ‘only’ solution made it difficult to talk about peace or critically discuss possible socio-political and economic implications of Sweden’s shifting defence policy. Peace-talk would simply have to wait; war was on Sweden’s doorstep. In this way, the Swedish NATO-debate echoed what Enloe calls a ‘patriarchal time zone’: that the urgency of hard security measures leaves ‘no time’ to discuss alternative actions or take questions of peace seriously. But if we cannot talk about peace now, when we are not at war, then when is the time?

We too, have felt anxious and scared because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Given the veil of secrecy that obscures security decisions from ordinary citizens, should the Social Democrats’ rapid change towards NATO membership be understood as a cause for concern? If even a political party with a past of fierce NATO-criticism would arrive at this conclusion, maybe we were wrong in our analysis all along? Defence minister Hultqvist argued that ‘the government is not’naïve’ and that it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which fundamentally changed their posture on NATO membership (See Staudenmaier 2022). On the other hand, we were and still are upset by how quickly it became (or at least felt like it was) impossible to talk about peace and non-alignment in the Swedish context. In the following, we suggest that beyond the urgency of hard security measures and the Social Democratic party legitimising the decision, the shrinking space for critical voices was also made possible by the gendered logics that underpin our understanding of what constitutes war expertise.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’

Seemingly overnight, a particular type of ‘war expert’ emerged in Swedish media, commenting on the shifting European security landscape, asserting that Sweden was at an impasse in which the only ‘logical’ and ‘safe’ way forward was towards a NATO membership. A select few of these war experts quickly became celebritised by the media, which in turn helped to enable a preferred military and political agenda. These ‘influencers’ were firstly men, secondly military officials, and thirdly pro-NATO. War expertise was a niche understood in narrow military terms and delimited to matters of warfare (strategy, operations, and tactics). We position ourselves among feminists who have long questioned the illusion of ‘meritocracy’ when it comes to being granted the status of war or security expert (See Enloe 2000). Often, white middle-aged (and older) men are considered the only source of ‘serious expertise’ (Särmä 2016, 471), perhaps not least in the wider security sphere. As Carol Cohn also argues, war experts – be they in universities, think tanks, in the military or advisers to the government – shape how we in society broadly talk and think about war – where the ‘professional language of defence analysis’ largely silences alternative and (critical) ways of speaking and thinking about war and suffering (1993, 228, 232). In the ‘debates’, we sensed a tendency to render a pro-NATO stance as objective ‘truth’ that anybody ‘actually knowledgeable’ on war and security would take no issue with. Conversely, those voicing critique (even if they were researchers or had extensive knowledge on security politics) were either seen as merely sharing their ‘political opinions’ without fully knowing what they were talking about or seen as having a specific ‘political agenda’. This is indicative of the ‘objective truth versus opinions’ dichotomy (See Hagström 2021, 139–140) that researchers of security may well recognise, wherein the perception of legitimate war expertise can only be claimed by those that align themselves with dominant narratives of deterrence and hard security (Cohn 1993). Relatedly, war experts focused on collective defence as a prime reason for why Swedish NATO membership was necessary – the main argument was that Sweden in NATO would deter specifically Russia from pursuing an armed attack against the country. We lacked a discussion (and still do!) on what this membership will entail beyond Article 5 and associated ideas of hard security and deterrence.

While we think that researchers with alternative perspectives were not invited to speak in the media to the same extent as the narrowly defined war expert, we also believe that many of us practiced self-censorship. We have ourselves grappled with when, whether, and how we should speak up – not least when writing this intervention. As junior feminist researchers in a discipline in which we already are ‘odd birds’, sharing our alternative analysis on the security situation felt professionally risky and engendered personal vulnerability. We witnessed how others critical of the rapid rearmament in Sweden or those expressing concern with the NATO process were called ‘useful idiots’ and accused of running Putin’s errands (Balázs Göransson 2022; Hellström 2023). Even before February of 2022, our colleague Linus Hagström spoke openly about the accusations of ‘naivety and treachery’ he faced when voicing critiques of NATO or challenging dominant security narratives (2021). Other colleagues have also shared with us how they received death threats for sharing alternative analyses on war and militarism in the media. The silencing of alternative and critical voices, then, not only threatens free speech in the media and academic freedom, but may result in oversights with detrimental practical and gendered consequences.

Finally, neutrality as such is ambiguous and gendered in its construction as ‘neutral’ states are often framed in feminised ways as ‘naïve’ or ‘immature’, benefiting from war and other countries’ militarisation without contributing to security themselves (Agius 2023, 5). While it was a Social Democratic government advocating a ‘feminist’ foreign policy that applied for NATO membership, the shift in government after the 2022 election strengthened the discourse that positioned continued non-alignment as not ‘realistic’ and as naïve (see Hellström 2023). The new government coalition of the Liberals (long-time NATO advocates), Conservatives and Christian Democrats (backed up by the far-right Sweden Democrats) immediately announced that Sweden’s foreign policy should no longer be ‘feminist’, and exacerbated the focus on military protection. The Russian aggression was made out as ‘proof’ that previous policy commitments to peace and feminist values, specifically the feminist foreign policy, were mistakes that we should not make again. In this context, voices expressing concern with militarisation or called for continued military non-alignment similarly came to be understood as representing a dangerous naiveté. What was implicitly conveyed was, ‘we told you so’ – no more ‘unserious’ security politics.

Conclusion

As we write this conclusion in January 2024, Sweden has yet to see the ratification of its NATO accession application by all member states. Most ‘war experts’ in Swedish media were convinced that the accession would be quick and pain free. This was clearly not the case. Recent surveys show that the public support for a Swedish membership in NATO has decreased (Svanberg 2023). The lengthy and turbulent process that has characterised the Swedish NATO membership application, and the decline in public support, has opened some space for critical debate on Swedish security politics and the NATO decision. We remain concerned with the pace at which fundamental changes in Sweden’s defence policy happened without any critical and open discussion of potential short- and long-term effects for broader society. In this process, we risk losing complex and nuanced analyses. What type of missions will Swedish military recruits take part in as we move to join the alliance? How will the lack of debate around NATO membership affect Swedes’ trust in the government and in democratic principles? Who is granted the role of ‘war expert’ and which voices are (self-)censored in the process and why? These are but a few questions we felt missing in the public debate on NATO and security more broadly post February 2022. As junior feminist researchers, we felt the intimidation of asking such difficult if not impossible questions in an increasingly and rapidly militarised society.

In this intervention, we have explored gendered logics at play in the Swedish NATO debate. Applying feminist lenses can help to understand the silence and absence of critical voices and alternative understandings of security. When peace becomes considered an ‘issue for later’ in the patriarchal time zone, war expertise becomes limited to matters of military strategy instead of being seen as a broader societal issue. This process is political as particular ‘expertise’ is privileged and claimed by specific actors, while critical voices and peace advocates face ridicule and/or threats as they are considered naïve, unrealistic, and dangerous, which risks resulting in (self-)censorship. Yet, we are convinced that to make feminist sense of war, we must ask uncomfortable questions and offer alternatives to the currently favoured war expertise.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elin Berg

Elin Berg is a doctoral researcher in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, where she is part of the Gender, Peace and Security research team.

Emma Fredriksson

Emma Fredriksson is a doctoral researcher in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, where she is part of the Gender, Peace and Security research team.