Sweden Confronts Strategic Reality With Return of Conscription

Sweden's governing class has taken a slow, ponderous route toward its present geopolitical reality. Prodded along on each step of its journey by a revanchist Russia, Sweden is finally beginning to move past its outdated two-decade-old strategic outlook and address serious deficiencies in its national defense.

Perhaps even more striking is that for the first time ever, women will be required to register for the military draft.

The practice of conscription was suspended in Sweden on July 1, 2010. Abolition of the nation's compulsory military service requirement after 109 years came roughly 15 months after the introduction of the then-ruling Alliance Bloc's five-year Functional Defense Bill, which covered the period between 2010 and 2014. At the time, the Swedish armed forces totaled 30,000 troops; the Defense Bill aimed to bolster the total to 50,000.

However, as it currently stands, the Swedish military remains below a headcount of 30,000 personnel, and among those many serve in staffing, logistical and intelligence support roles. Therefore, the Swedish armed forces find themselves short of 1,000 active troops and about 7,000 reservists.  

The recognition that military capacity has plummeted to a dangerous low and needs to be reversed comes four years after then-acting Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, General Sverker Goransson, warned that Sweden's state of defense capability had eroded to the point that it would only be able to defend the country against an outside attack at one targeted location and for just a single week.

That statement shed a glaring light on just how unserious the political efforts to address defense readiness had been in the wake of Russia's military incursion into Georgia in August 2008. Rather than appear chastened, the government's defense minister at the time, Karin Enstrom, dismissed questions about Goransson's comment with a metaphorical shrug, replying that the defense capability referenced by the general was a reasonable ambition for Sweden.

The seeming indifference of much of the Swedish political class toward rebuilding the military came to a head in 2014, first when Russia completed its abrupt takeover of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and then later that fall when a mysterious submarine – believed by the Swedish military to be Russian – penetrated the Swedish archipelago.

Suddenly Sweden's political class realized the military they had long considered to be "good enough" was not quite so, and a younger generation – lulled into a sleepy sense of security by the nation's post-Soviet environment – began slowly waking up to the country's strategic reality.

But the need to address national defense and strategic security shortcomings is not new for Sweden, and fortunately for the nation, it has a model to fall back upon. 

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Sweden's government was confronted with a state of unreadiness following nearly two decades of deep military cuts.  Rather than risk invasion and occupation as occurred in neighboring Norway in 1940, Sweden declared its neutrality and with a wink and a nod proceeded to allow the Wehrmacht to use its railway system to transport troops and weaponry over its soil while continuing to sell to Nazi Germany crucial supplies of iron ore and ball bearings that kept Adolf Hitler's war machine humming.

These actions bought Sweden time to start a broad mobilization effort that, midway into the war, allowed it to form a capable military arm.

Alarmed at the near loss of its sovereignty and determined to maintain its traditional neutrality during the Cold War period, Sweden then maintained its mobilization capability over several generations. This was done through regular refresher training and the stockpiling of arms and ammunition in classified depots across the country. 

Then the Cold War ended and Sweden's government – suddenly finding no direct military threat on the horizon –found it needed to scrub the state budget as a severe credit and financial crisis in the early 1990s engulfed the economy in recession, prompting a rescue of the banking sector. A high-cost large-standing military naturally offered a ripe area for extracting savings.

Over the following two decades, the budget ax was swung sharply and repeatedly at defense, bringing Sweden back to its level of military readiness in the late 1930s/early 1940s. 

The numbers paralleling Sweden's downshift from a once-strong military capability to its present-day shortcomings are astonishing.

Thirty years ago, during the waning years of the Cold War, the active-duty force of the Swedish Army numbered 100,000 – notwithstanding another 350,000 able to be called up to defend the homeland in the event of an attack. Coastal Artillery battalions numbered 28 and were a visible presence across the Swedish archipelago and strategic shoreline points. High-end air and sea capabilities such as jet fighters, warships, and submarines were each at 300, 440 and 240 percent greater capacity, respectively.

While it is unreasonable to expect the Cold War-era Swedish military to return on a unit-to-unit basis given the economic costs of doing so and the evolution in military technologies, returning to military conscription and rebuilding the Home Guard reserve force into a potent element are ways to improve readiness and response capabilities.

In one sign that the Russian threat is being taken seriously, Sweden's Civil Contingency Agency notified local authorities across the country last December that operations centers in underground bunkers should be maintained and a system of emergency sirens put into place. The mass directive hinted at a return to the old Total Defense Strategy of the Cold War, instructing local governments that in the event of war, municipal defense efforts should be as natural as performing civil services in peacetime.

As usual, any and all attempts by Sweden to resurrect civil defense and rebuild military readiness will butt up against fiscal realities. Recently, Micael Byden, acting Supreme Commander of the Swedish armed forces, appealed for a 14.4 percent funding increase over the next few years to improve capabilities. He is unlikely to get much – if any – of the additional monies requested.

As it stands, funding levels outlined in the defense policy plan for 2016-2020 fall about 35 percent short of the level recommended by the cross-party Defense Committee, the Försvarsberedningen.

The Swedish armed forces' more likely bet may be to fight for higher baseline funding levels under the next five-year Defense Bill (covering 2021-2025).

For now, working with Nordic partners such as Finland to maximize areas of commonality while drawing closer to NATO in areas of training, equipment standardization, and troop-basing in the event of conflict help to offset Sweden's military capacity and capability decline. But bringing back the practice of conscription also helps by eliciting civic awareness of Sweden's strategic reality – and shaking the public of its post-Cold War geopolitical torpor.

Daniel Darling is an international military markets analyst at Forecast International Inc., an aerospace and defense market research company located in Newtown, Connecticut. A graduate of Kansas State University, Dan covers the Europe and Asia-Pacific Rim military markets for Forecast, and formerly was responsible for the Middle East as well. He has been quoted or his work cited in: Arabian Business, Defense News, The Financial Times, Flight International, The National, The New York Times, Bloomberg, National Defense Magazine and Small Wars Journal, among others.