Sweden's Nato Workaround: Swedish security and defense policy against the backdrop of Russian revisionism
Russia’s revisionist foreign policy and military build-up has considerable security implications for the Baltic Sea region, including for Sweden.
This is also the official perception in Stockholm. Abandoning military non-alignment is yet not on the agenda. Rather, the current Swedish government is addressing the issue through what has come to be labeled the “Hultqvist doctrine” after Swedish minister of defense Peter Hultqvist: on the one hand, boosting national defense capabilities while seeking broader and deeper international defense cooperation short of collective defense on the other. In light of current developments in the Baltic Sea region and beyond, the debate on Sweden’s strategic posture and its position within the European security architecture is also relevant beyond the country’s border. After decades of important financial cuts and reforms aimed at exclusively orienting the Swedish Armed Forces toward expeditionary operations, the task yet proves difficult. Likewise, the NATO issue remains extremely sensitive in the political debate – in particular for the social democrats in power.
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Sweden's Nato Workaround: Swedish security and defense policy against the backdrop of Russian revisionism
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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