Epilogue: “Nordicness” – theory and practice

ABSTRACT

This epilogue offers a critical reflection on the key findings of the six articles in this special issue on “Nordicness” in foreign policy. It engages with the theoretical issues in studying regional security communities, both in terms of the utility of role theory and the implications of the literature on strategic culture for the concept of security culture which this study of Nordicness uses. The main argument developed here is the need to combine analysis of material and ideational factors in order to fully understand the dynamics of Nordicness in security policy. The article also identifies the key dilemmas and ambiguities of Nordic defence cooperation, and the pivotal role of Sweden in determining the future evolution of a shared Nordic foreign policy identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Nordic
• NATO
• NORDEFCO
• strategic culture
• role theory
• Russia
• European security

Nordicness and “Archipelagos of cooperation”

The reinvigorated sense of “Nordicness” explored in this special issue is evident both in terms of the external perception of the Nordic countries, and from policy initiatives within and between the Nordic five. External recognition of the emergence of the Nordic countries as a distinct grouping of otherwise disparate states was underlined by the US–Nordic summit hosted by President Barack Obama on 13 May 2016. At the state dinner which he hosted, President Obama underlined the shared democratic values and liberal principles of the US and the Nordic five, and their cooperation on a range of policy issues, from transatlantic security cooperation and climate change, to refugees, terrorism and the Arctic. The summit underlined the perception of the Nordic states as a distinct grouping of relatively wealthy countries with a generous social welfare model, a strong commitment to environmental protection, and a shared commitment to strengthening the institutions and practices of the liberal world order.

Within the Nordic region, the new Nordicness was exemplified by the establishment of NORDEFCO (the Nordic Defence Cooperation) in 2009, and a raft of subsequent initiatives, not least, the adoption of a joint declaration of Nordic solidarity in 2011. This signified a new commitment to strengthen their defence cooperation, and to projecting a more unified and cohesive grouping within the Baltic Sea region. With the Ukraine crisis and the subsequent deterioration of relations between Russia and the Western democracies, this has acquired an even greater sense of strategic importance. During the Cold War, the scope for a Nordic defence or security identity was limited. The region was defined in terms of a delicate “Nordic balance”, with three NATO members and two neutral countries, one of them (Finland) with a special relationship with the USSR, the other (Sweden) with a policy of “armed neutrality” (Brundtland, 1966; Dyndal, 2011; Gleditsch, 1986; Noreen, 1983). With the demise of cold war bipolarity, the focus was twofold: first, on the wider Baltic Sea region as a key arena for building cooperation between the former East and West (Möller, 2003); second, on the EU and the associated process of Europeanization (Bailes, Herolf, & Sundelius, 2006; Ingebritsen, 1998; Miles, 1996). With the deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West, however, and particularly after the illegal annexation of Crimea, the region has acquired a new geostrategic importance (Dahl, 2014; Simón, 2014). NATO’s north-east flank is now the focus of acute concern, and issues of defence planning and military crisis management are now back firmly back on the agenda (Frühling & Lasconjarias, 2016; Rogers & Romanovs, 2015). The establishment of NORDEFCO and deepening Nordic security and defence cooperation is a significant element of the broader reshaping of Europe’s security architecture, which is taking place in the shadow of the “new normal” of Russian military assertiveness (Hyde-Price, 2007; Wieslander, 2015).

The Nordic “turn” should be seen in the context of both the long history of a “Nordic” identity in the region, and as part of a broader trend in European security. “Nordicness” has been an element of regional identity since at least the nineteenth century, where it evolved alongside the development of modern national identities (Sørensen & Stråth, 1997). Primarily expressed in cultural terms, it also acquired a socio-economic and political dimension in the twentieth century, as Nordic countries embarked on a process of creating liberal societies and extensive welfare capitalist systems (Ryner, 2007). Nordic countries also saw themselves as sharing a common commitment to a rule-based international system, and to support for UN peacekeeping (Archer, 1996). However, this sense of Nordicness never manifested itself in any form of collective security identity (Götz, 2010). On the contrary, the Nordic region has been characterized by divergent national security policies, creating the delicate “Nordic balance” referred to above. The creation of NORDEFCO and the emergence of a sense of Nordic security solidarity is, therefore, an important new development, potentially heralding a significant break with past practice (Dahl, 2014b; Forsberg, 2013).

At the same time, it should be noted that the Nordic “turn” is part of a broader trend in European security. Over recent years, new forms of bi- and multilateral defence cooperation have been taken shape across Europe, creating what can be termed an archipelago of European defence cooperation. Much of this cooperation is taking place outside of the formal institutional structures of either NATO or the EU. This includes the UK–French Lancaster House agreement; the Visegrad forum; the European Air Transport Command (EATC); Polish initiatives its Regional Security Assistance Programme; 17 German bilateral and minilateral cooperative initiatives with neighbours and allies; French, German and Italian cooperation in Euromale; and Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands defence cooperation through the Renegade Agreement (Rieker and Terlikowski 2015; Marrone, De France, & Fattibene, 2016). NORDEFCO and the Finnish–Swedish defence agreement are therefore only one element of a wider pattern of security and defence cooperation in Europe, which often has a regional or sub-regional dimension.

Understanding the “Nordic turn”

The “Nordic turn” is a development of considerable policy relevance, and one that raises complex scientific questions about how best to analyse, understand and explain it. Contributions to this special issue reflect this analytical conundrum, with a plurality of theoretical approaches due to the heterogeneity of the understanding of a Nordic identity within the region. Nonetheless, they share a common theoretical point of departure in the use of role theory and the concept of “security culture”.

Role theory has enjoyed something of a renaissance in Foreign Policy Analysis over the last two decades. Its growing attraction mirrors the deepening influence of social constructivism in International Relations theory, and a wider appreciation of the socially textured nature of international society. Role theory offers a set of clear analytical categories (role conceptions, role expectations and role performance), and provides a tool for understanding the link between agent and structure by emphasizing the manner in which foreign policy is both purposeful and shaped by institutional contexts.

At the same time, however, the quest for making it a powerful theory remains elusive. There does not exist a general role theory per se, which provides clear answers as to why, when and how certain role phenomena occur (Aggestam, 2004, 13). Role theory thus continues to be more a research orientation or framework rather than a powerful theoretical tool of explanation. Analytical frameworks based on role theory contain topics, concepts and assumptions, yet few make claims or statements that explain why or how phenomena occur (Searing, 1991, p. 1243). One problem has been to identify the origins of various role conceptions, which indicates when and how national roles evolve and change. Consequently, it has been suggested that “this quest for a general theory of roles has always been fundamentally misguided”. Rather than searching for single general role theory’, he argues, the aim should be to aspire to “a series of quests for particular theories about particular problems involved in particular types of roles” (Searing, 1991, p. 1244).

This is precisely what these contributions to role conceptions in the Nordic region do so admirably. Yet if we want to develop a richer and broader analysis of the significance of Nordic security cooperation, and provide an analytical framework that is of comparative utility for understanding cognate developments elsewhere in Europe, we need to expand our theoretical and empirical lines of enquiry. Role theory and the concept of security culture focus on the ideational and social aspects of international politics. To fully understand regional security cooperation, we also need to analyse the material context within which role conceptions and security culture emerge and evolve. In short, we need analytically and ontologically to stand on two legs, and explore the interaction of ideational and material factors (Hyde-Price, 2013, 2016, pp. 22–40).

Understanding Nordic security cooperation thus involves situating evolving role conceptions and national security cultures in the context of the systemic and material factors “shaping and shoving” (Waltz, 1979, p. 71) foreign and security policies. This means giving due weight to the geopolitical and strategic context within which NORDEFCO and expressions of Nordic solidarity have emerged (Hyde-Price, 2017). In this regard, four factors are of paramount importance: Russian recidivism; the weakening of the transatlantic security partnership; the legacy of defence cuts; and the growing cost of defence procurement. Russian recidivism is arguably the primary factor: without the return of an increasingly authoritarian Russia committed to rebuilding its military capabilities and reasserting its great power prerogatives, it is most unlikely that the Nordic countries would have felt the need to focus on regional security and defence cooperation (Granholm, 2014). If Russia had pursued a consistent strategy of internal liberalization and demonstrated a commitment to a rules-based international society, it is likely that the Nordic countries would have treated it as a “partner in modernization” and focused on deepening cooperation in the Baltic Sea region (Rynning, 2015). However, its growing foreign policy assertiveness and its confrontational military posture have generated growing concern in the Nordic region. Even before its illegal annexation of Crimea and its demonstration of its capacity for “hybrid warfare” (Charap, 2015), Russian behaviour has generated unease and security – from its use of energy as a tool of diplomatic coercion in 2006 and 2009 and its state-sponsored cyber-attacks, to its assassination of Russia critics abroad and its repeated violations of its neighbours airspace and territorial waters (DDIS, 2014; Heisbourg, 2015). Nordic security and defence cooperation have therefore been driven by the “new normal” of confrontation and coercion by a recidivist Russia.

The second factor is the element of uncertainty that increasingly casts a shadow over transatlantic security cooperation. Even before the election of Donald Trump, and his explicit questioning of NATO’s article V security guarantee, concerns about the reliability of the US security commitment to Europe have been growing (Hyde-Price, 2007). The burden-sharing debate has been a hardy perennial within NATO for decades, but American criticism of Europe’s “free riding” has been growing over recent years. American military forces stationed in Europe have been shrinking since the end of the cold war, and the announcement of a “pivot to Asia” has left many Europeans with the recognition that they must do more for their own regional security and defence (Deni, 2014). In the light of Trump’s election, German Chancellor Angela Merkl noted on 28 May 2013 that “the times in which we could completely rely on others are, to a certain extent, over”, and that “we Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands” (IISS, 2018, 65). Nordic security cooperation is in part a response to this realization that Europeans must do more for their own defence, even though – as the contributions to this special issue make abundantly clear – the motivations and goals of the Nordic five are diverse and varied.

The legacy of repeated cuts to defence budgets and shrinking military capabilities is a third key factor. The desire for a “peace dividend” has led to significant reduction in defence capabilities across Europe (Giegerich & Schwegmann, 2014), leading to the creation of what has been termed “bonsai armies” (Mølling, 2011) – i.e. miniature armies that are too small to provide effective deterrence and defence. In some cases, specific defence capabilities have been shed, with a focus on niche capabilities. Denmark has decommissioned its submarines; Norway now focuses on special forces; and Sweden – whose cold war policy of “armed neutrality” was based on a concept of “total defence” – has problems protecting its airspace and its territorial waters, and can now no longer defend itself for more than a few days in the event of war (Holmström, 2013). Although defence budgets have begun to rise again in the Nordic region since the Ukraine crisis (IISS, 2018, 5, 71), it will take a decade or more to undo the damage done and reconstitute an effective conventional deterrent capability.

This leads directly to the fourth and final factor: the growing costs of defence procurement. Advanced military equipment is expensive, and effective military capabilities come at considerable cost. Within Europe, only France, the UK and Germany can seriously aspire to full spectrum capabilities, and even then, hard choices must be made (Shurkin, 2013). For the Nordics, developing an effective defence and deterrence capability on a national basis is now out of the question. This is perhaps less of a problem for Denmark and Norway who are NATO members, or Iceland, which has no army and its geographically peripheral, but for Sweden and Finland it is a serious and pressing concern. For all but Iceland (for whom Nordicness provides an additional “safe haven”), regional security and defence cooperation offers a way of enhancing military capabilities through economies of scale in defence procurement and training, interoperability and integrated defence planning, as well as fostering a sense of political solidarity with implicit security implications.

Thus to fully understand the dynamics of Nordic security cooperation, research on role conceptions needs to be supplemented by a more systematic analysis of the geostrategic, economic and material factors within which these role conceptions emerge and evolve. This would also serve to place role analysis on firmer ontological and epistemological foundations, and contribute to the theoretical goal of developing role theory as a tool of Foreign Policy Analysis. A holistic analysis of Nordicness should include both recognition of discursive-ideational factors and a materialist analysis of the social world. As Colin Hay notes,

ideas are clearly central to “any adequate understanding of the relationship between agent and structure”, and those who “are able to provide the cognitive filters, such as policy paradigms, through which actors interpret the strategic environment”, consequently have significant power.

However,

whilst it is important not simply to reduce the ideational to a reflection, say, of underlying material interests, it is equally important not to subscribe to a voluntarist idealism in which the political outcomes might be read off, more or less directly, from the desires, motivations, and cognitions of the immediate actors themselves. (Hay quoted in Jessop, 2008, pp. 48–49)

Security culture and strategic rationality

The second key concept that underpins this study of Nordicness is “security culture”. The concept of “security culture” has been chosen rather than the more established term “strategic culture” because it is broader than the latter, which primarily focuses on cultural attitudes towards the use of military force (Snyder, 1977, p. 8; Longhurst, 2004, pp. 17–18; Heiko, Giegerich, & Jonas, 2013, p. 12). However, many of the ontological and methodological issues that have been extensively debated in the literature on strategic culture are relevant to the broader concept of security culture. The study of strategic culture – which began around the same time as role theory was developed – has now gone through at least four generations (Hyde-Price, 2004). The key debates have revolved around what type of a variable is culture (is it an intervening variable that may influence behaviour, or an independent variable that may explain particular strategic decisions?); how to operationalize the concept for empirical analysis; how cohesive strategic culture is and how it changes and evolves (Glenn, Howlett, & Poore, 2004, pp. 11–12).

Drawing on some of the theoretical insights from these four generations of thinking about strategic culture to analyse the empirical conclusions reached in the articles on the Nordic five, we can draw two conclusions. First, that national security cultures serve as intervening variables that shape the responses of the Nordic countries to systemic and structural pressures emanating from the external environment. If one looks at the geostrategic situation facing the Nordic regional security system, one can identify a group of small and relatively vulnerable states with inadequate military capabilities in a region of growing geostrategic sensitivity for the wider European security system. Once a strategically peripheral region in which the Nordic countries could attempt to “hide” from great power conflicts, the Nordic area is now part of the new frontline in Russia’s confrontation with NATO. The Nordic five live in the shadow of an increasingly assertive and belligerent great power, with a history of aggression in the region, and a new range of offensive capabilities ranging from cyber-attacks, through hybrid warfare, to reconstituted conventional and nuclear forces. In this strategic context, the logical response would be both deepen their own defence cooperation, and integrate their security with that of other liberal-democracies in the Euro-Atlantic area.

What inhibits this is the divergent national security cultures and role conceptions in the region, which pull in different directions. For Norway and Denmark, the experience of invasion and occupation has led them to see the NATO alliance as critical to their security (Graeger, 2005): Nordic defence cooperation is, at best, a way of drawing Sweden and Finland closer to NATO in order to overcome the fragmentation of strategic space in the region which complicates effective defence planning. Sweden, on the other hand, has a security culture shaped by nearly two centuries of successful neutrality and non-alignment: even though it can no longer defend itself, has now committed itself to the defence and security of its Nordic and EU partners (Hugemark, 2012), and bases its security policy on an ability to give and receive military aid, it is still unwilling to draw the logical conclusion and shed its pretensions to military non-alignment (Dalsjö, 2012; Hedling & Brommesson, 2017). Finland’s security culture reflects its vulnerable geopolitical location and its difficult history with Russia, which severely constrain its foreign and security policy options (Forsberg & Vaahtoranta, 2001; Möller & Bjereld, 2010).

Second, the contributions here tend to confirm the view that culture provides “an ambiguous repertoire of competing ideas that can be selected, instrumentalized, and manipulated, instead of a clear script for action” (Porter, 2009, p. 15). National security cultures in the Nordic five, in other words, are not logically consistent, unified and coherent, but rather contain contradictions, multiplicities and conflicting narratives, which elites can selectively interpret and apply. This is manifested in the way in which competing national role conceptions often coexist, and the instrumental manner in which elites use them to legitimatize preferred policy choices.

The unresolved tension at the heart of “Nordicness”

The empirical evidence presented in the preceding articles (by Brommesson, Graeger, Ojanen/Raunio, Thorhaldsson abd Wivel) leads to an inescapable conclusion. Nordic security and defence cooperation is inherently ambiguous, and faces an unresolved tension at its very heart: Is Nordicness, and its primary institutional expression in security policy, NORDEFCO, a third way between NATO and neutrality? Or is it a way to draw Sweden and Finland closer to NATO, fostering ever closer defence cooperation and integrated defence planning, thereby bypassing domestic political constraints to alliance membership stemming from a nostalgic attraction to neutrality and non-alignment? As the articles in this special issue make clear, national role conceptions and security cultures remain diverse and contradictory, and suggest that this tension will be difficult to resolve. However, as we have seen, elites can selectively interpret and adopt elements from an ambiguous repertoire of competing ideas, and the temptation to do so may grow if security competing in the region continues to worsen. Moreover, cultures can change and evolve, particularly if they are increasingly out of sync with material and systemic pressures. “Reality can be socially constructed”, Jeffrey Legro has argued, “but only with the available materials and within existing structures … however, when the contradiction between external conditions and cultural tendencies becomes too great, culture will likely adapt” (Legro, 1995, p. 231).

One further conclusion suggests itself: the future of Nordic security and cooperation depends crucially on Sweden. Sweden is the largest of Nordic terms in terms of population, and is located at the centre of the Nordic region. It is also the country that has undergone the most far-reaching change in its security policy, from “armed neutrality” to an enhanced partnership with NATO and explicit declarations of solidarity with its Nordic and EU neighbours (Aggestam & Hyde-Price, 2016; Cottey, 2013). The tension at the heart of “Nordicness” reflects the unresolved ambiguities and inconsistencies of Swedish security policy, which is now based on the principle of “giving and receiving military aid”, but baulks at giving explicit security commitments to its neighbours and friends, and reserves the right to act exclusively on the basis of its own national interests. Only if this ambiguity is resolved is NORDEFCO and Nordic defence cooperation likely to evolve beyond something that is “nice to have, but not essential”, and towards a region with a high degree of cultural density that exerts a significant impact on the construction of the foreign policies of the Nordic states.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.