Strategic vulnerability

For the last four decades, Sweden's national security policy has been a taboo subject in Swedish political debate. In this work a Swedish historian specialized in modern political history breaks the academic silence permeating the issue in Sweden and reexamines the fundamentals of the policies pursued by a number of subsequent Swedish governments during the Cold War. Using the sources available, the author takes the reader from the about face made by Sweden's Social Democrats in 1948, when their attempts to stop Norway and Denmark from joining NATO failed, to Sweden's embarkation upon a profound military intelligence and cooperation program with the United States: A program in which the United States assured it would defend Sweden in case of a Soviet attack. All this while Sweden proclaimed its nonaligned neutrality to the world. How precarious this Swedish dual policy was became clear during the crucial years of the early '80s when the outcome of the Cold War was decided. At that time the Swedish government, as a result of the weaknesses in its policies, had been forced over on the wrong side in the Cold War and actively worked toward the breaking up of the NATO alliance and the destabilization of Europe's northern front: A process in which Sweden risked being the first, perhaps only, target for the next Soviet military aggression against western Europe.