Exclusive: Putin's bullying forces Sweden to transform defense doctrine, invest more money in army - expert


Anders Lindberg, an observer for the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, tells belsat.eu why joining NATO is not on Sweden’s cards, how Russia’s recent acts have affected the country’s military sector and why Russia’s Vladimir Putin is associated with a school-yard bully.

Is Swedish army prepared for military aggression?

At the moment there is a reform period. The whole reform will not be finished until 2022, so you can say you’re in the middle of the process of changing into much smaller but more effective defense. So, we are in that process at the moment, which, of course, makes the defense capability smaller.

Does it mean that more money is spent on the army now?

A little more. The main issue is the transformation from the system with compulsory service, public service into the defense mainly made up of people employed, and also the modernisation of the organisation. The defense structure becomes smaller but more adaptable to do things in the short term. Before the defense was very huge, but it was more suitable for the long term readiness. Now the idea is they should have short readiness, but in a smaller size.

Is joining NATO being discussed in Sweden?

You could say that at the Swedish Parliament there are two parties that strongly favour NATO – the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, and they have 27-28%, up to 30 % together, both of them. But the Conservatives don’t really push this issue, so the only actual NATO’s lobby, so to say, is the Liberal Party, and they have some 7%. Some 20-30% of the population back the idea of joining NATO, but it’s a very small figure. It goes up and down a little bit but it’s a quite marginal coefficient. And the new government has clearly stated that it’s not their goal.

It is reported that Swedish waters and airspace have been violated for a few times. How does the Swedish society perceive this fact? Are people worried or afraid?

In my opinion, the Swedish society thinks it’s Russia. There is no one thinking [there is] any other possible threat. What the Russians have achieved by doing this is a stronger opinion within the Swedish population to put more money into defense and also a stronger resolve to create more defense debate about actual threats to Sweden. 5 years ago the general idea was to defend Sweden in Afghanistan, i.e. international missions. And today the general feeling is to defend the Swedish territory. So, it has transformed the Swedish defense doctrine from international operations to more national defense structure. And that’s quite a big change, I would say, because this is very one-sided, it’s Russia which has changed the policy, which has forced Sweden to change policy, Sweden didn’t want to do that.      

Why has the Kremlin decided to tick Sweden off and make all these moves?

I think that the Kremlin is a school-yard bully of the Baltics, for some reason it thinks it should scare other countries rather than cooperate with them. This strategy has historically never worked. The Baltic is a sea where everyone would win on mutual respect, trade and so on. But 5 years ago Russia did not have this policy. But after the protests against Putin in 2012, the demonstrations and you could say, uprise of the middle-class in Russia, Putin has been much more aggressive to his neighbours. I think that he compensates the internal problems of Russia with being or sounding more aggressive to the outside and more pushing what he sees as Russia’s national interests. And I think it will not work because the Russian economy is too weak to hold this kind of rhetoric and this kind of actions in the long run. If the oil price goes down it will have severe problems.

Interviewed by Nastassia Yaumen

www.belsat.eu/en

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