Lifeless lifeline to the west

The secret co-operation with the west is a major part of our history and needs to be clarified further.” So says Robert Dalsjö, (picture) a security-policy analyst at FOI, who is writing a doctoral thesis on the topic.”

(From Framsyn Magazine 1-2004)

After the Second World War there was a clear perception in Sweden that we needed assistance in the event of an attack. This lifeline was the assistance from the west, which as time passed by became increasingly weakened. This is the view of Robert Dalsjö, who is studying the secret co-operation with the west. He notes that the same American bombers that were condemned were the ones that were to rescue us with nuclear weapons if war broke out. But in Sweden the war was presented as a battle between Swedish defence and the military region of Leningrad.

By Jan-Ivar Askelin

A clearer picture of Sweden during the Cold War is slowly emerging. A number of researchers are working on providing us with a better understanding. One of these is Robert Dalsjö, a security-policy analyst at FOI.

This autumn it is fifteen years since the Wall came down. I was thinking a few days ago that this is just as long a time as between the end of the Second World War and the Summer Olympics in Rome in 1960. When I was growing up, my parents generation still had vivid memories of the Second World War. Their experiences had a great impact on their way of looking at things. In the same way, we can ask ourselves how much our thinking is affected by our experience of the Cold War.

Co-operation with the west
Dalsjö has embarked on a hot topic for his doctoral thesis: secret co-operation with the west.

It is a major part of our history and it needs greater clarification. This area is a large one, and it has taken time to boil it down to something that can be managed and that hopefully will become clear in a couple of years.

I intend to track how the co-operation developed over the course of time. In the mid-fifties the senior ministers, opposition leaders and military command were informed about the planning. In the 1980s only a few knew about it. When Olof Palme was shot, he was perhaps the only person in the government who held the secret. He may possibly have shared it with some minister.

The commander of the Navy, Per Rudberg, was to look after the links with the western powers if Sweden went to war. When he retired, he did not have any successor in that role. Around 1983-1984 the files at the defence staff were destroyed, and along with them part of the planning. When Lennart Ljung handed over the position of Supreme Commander to Bengt Gustafsson in 1986, the latter was not informed.

It is clear that the co-operation with the west changed during the course of the Cold War. I intend to clarify how the co-operation changed and try to identify any turning points and look for the reasons for why these turning points occurred, says Dalsjö.

It may be imagined that the United States was tiring of the Swedish criticism of the Vietnam War, but Dalsjö has not found any evidence of this having affected the co-operation.

I have interviewed people who were decision-makers during the eras from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, and the picture I have obtained points more to the opposite. There was dissatisfaction with Swedish policy, but the realities of the map were referred to.

Many obstacles along the way
Robert Dalsjö has encountered many obstacles along the way. The scope of the task is not the only one.

Extremely little of this has been put down on paper, and much of what was written down has been destroyed. The documents that remain are often still classified as secret. It is possible to go the long way round and find a lot in foreign archives. I had to abandon my ambition to draw a detailed picture and look for the turning points instead.

Other obstacles Dalsjö has encountered are the natural ones. Many of the ones that existed are no longer there or are so old they cannot be remembered. But there are also what Dalsjö refers to as conscious obstacles.

There are those who think that this is not something to 'chat' about. And we have those who are still living in the official security-policy picture of the 1970s. The people who shaped that policy are not so keen for it to be examined. Some find it difficult to accept that the same B52 bombers that Olof Palme condemned were the ones that our security rested on.

Conceivable explanations
Dalsjö has come up with two conceivable explanations for why co-operation with the west faded.

• Reduced threat from the mid-1960s onwards.
• A more dogmatic public line on the policy of neutrality meant that the political price to be paid for revealing the co-operation increased.

I have now discounted the threat argument. Rolf Ekéus writes in his one-man investigation in 2002 that after the 1972 defence resolution the military command considered that the defence organisation would become so weak that it needed assistance from the west. But the military did not dare to act. It therefore now remains to be examined whether an increasingly dogmatic interpretation of the policy of neutrality lies behind the reversal.

The early 1980s were the most dangerous time since the Cuban Crisis of 1962. In 1983-1984 the Kremlin feared that the United States was going to attack. The Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, and the Navy was hunting submarines. During that time, Sweden had access to a security lifeline to the west that we knew little about. The comparison with a blocked and forgotten emergency exit is logical.

The Cold War lasted almost 45 years. Swedish policy changed course several times during that time. The term military alliance that was so despised later had a different sound to it in 1948, when Sweden tried to persuade Norway and Denmark into the Scandinavian defence union. For various reasons, nothing came of this. A major reason was that there would not be access to American military equipment as the union was outside what was later to become Nato. And when Nato was formed in 1949, Denmark and Norway joined. At the same time, Finland signed a friendship and assistance pact with the Soviet Union. The winds of the Cold War blew ever more bitingly across Europe, and Sweden stood alone.

An alternative way out was now needed, and that was assistance from the west. That would be easier to obtain if it was prepared, and that is what the disagreements were about. The government did not want to do anything that would damage the line of neutrality, and at the same time it was known that neutrality did not guarantee that we would not become embroiled in a war. During the Korean War, Tage Erlander was pessimistic. He felt that there was no way of knowing how peace might turn out. Behind the North Korean troops was Josef Stalin, and what was to say that Stalin would not start moving in Europe as well?

Nordic weather co-operation
Although the Nordic defence alliance had foundered, it was nevertheless that line that was followed at first.

It was nevertheless possible to prepare jointly for the possibility of war. Under the cover of aviation safety, co-operation was initiated between the air forces of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. It was said that it might be useful to practise landing on the other side of the border in the event of adverse weather. But there was obviously another thought too: being able to land on the airbases of others in wartime. We had weather co-operation with Norway. It may seem ridiculous, but weather systems come from the west and weather forecasts are vital for aircraft. And so we built up links with Denmark and Norway, which in turn were connected to the Nato network.

Discreet co-operation was initiated with the United States, which was stand-offish at first before it was realised that Sweden was of value to the United States. Swedish runways were lengthened and were given greater load-bearing capacity, presumably so that they could accommodate bombers that encountered difficulty on the way home. The British and Americans expected that it would be like in the latter part of the Second World War: that they would be allowed to fly through undisturbed and that aircraft would be able to allowed to land in Sweden in an emergency.

During this period there was talk of massive retaliation. From the second half of the 1950s, when the B52s arrived, it was possible to fly directly from the United States to targets in the Soviet Union. It was an advantage also to be able to attack the broad way across Sweden instead of just entering the corridor above the Kola Peninsula.

Huge air operation
But it was not just American bombers that were to arrive. We were to have half the Norwegian air force above us too.

The bombing attack was not just to consist of bombers. It was a huge air operation, and the Norwegian air force played an important role in this. The Norwegians were not just to attack targets in the Soviet Union but were also to send up as many planes as they had to saturate Russian air defences with radar blips. And the question is what were we to do then?

Much of this emerged during the 1990s, leading to the Neutrality Commission being set up. It reported in 1994.

It did a good job, but the Commission was only allowed to study the period up to 1969. It was claimed that détente started then, which I find a rather forced explanation. Its more to do with the fact that Olof Palme took over at that time, and there are powerful forces in the Social Democratic Party who want to protect his memory. The pressure on the government to go further led to the one-man investigation by Rolf Ekéus. This is good in many parts, but open to doubt in others. And the last word has not yet been said.

Hjalmarsson dropped
The then leader of the Right Party, Jarl Hjalmarsson, felt that if we needed assistance it ought to be prepared. This led to one of the Cold War affairs in 1959. Hjalmarsson was regarded by the government as unreliable and was dropped from the delegation that was due to travel to the UN in New York.

The problem was just that Hjalmarsson was criticised for saying what the government was doing on the quiet, says Dalsjö, in answer to the question of what western assistance would consist in.

In the 1950s and 1960s and presumably also later, British and American bomber attacks on Soviet bases, an invading force and Soviet bridgeheads in Sweden were imagined. And now we are not talking about conventional weapons but about nuclear weapons.

Dalsjö points to the map and enumerates Tallinn, Riga, Ventspils, Liepaja, Turku, the Finnish ports in the Gulf of Bothnia.

What the Swedish government was hoping for was that the United States would carry out missions with nuclear weapons against our neighbours on the other side of the Baltic Sea which were occupied by the Soviet Union. These were thoughts that existed in the military command, but there is reason to believe that they were firmly rooted in the political leadership.

In support of this claim, Dalsjö refers to an almost forgotten statement by Karl Frithiofsson, who at that time was state secretary in the Ministry of Defence. In the mid-1960s, when Sweden was due to scrap plans for its own nuclear weapons, according to Dalsjö there was a need in the government to explain why the country no longer needed its own nuclear weapons.

Frithiofsson does not just mention this in general terms, he gives a detailed account of how the American nuclear weapons were to be used if Sweden was attacked.

The co-operation with the west naturally also applied to intelligence, but at first much of it was concerned with essential supplies and military equipment. Dalsjö describes this period as follows:

Things were in short supply. There were shortages. It was the perspective of a time of crisis that dominated, and with regard to defence equipment there were long lists of what we needed from the west if war were to break out. It was even the case that when the defence organisation was built it meant vital systems having to come from the west, so that we could quickly make up for shortages.

Dalsjö enumerates the heavy howitzer from France, the Hawker Hunter jet and Centurion tank from the United Kingdom and the Hawk surface-to-air missile from the United States.

It was not until the mid-1960s that a change of course came. Now we had to be different. We had to have a Swedish profile, and that was not the same as the profile of a superpower. I do not have a good explanation for this reversal. Industrial policy is probably involved in it. It was perhaps also a consequence of neutrality being fossilised, and industry was not slow in responding. But we were still heavily dependent on the west for critical systems. The Viggen only had American and British air-to-air missiles, and in a war these would soon all be used up.

Limited preparations
Anyone who has been on a refresher exercise knows what planning lies behind it. What would it be like to be plugged into Nato overnight?

That was what Hjalmarsson meant in 1959. Without preparations it would be like when the French and British were going to help Norway in 1940, utter chaos. There would have been problems in any case, but we would have had to pay an extra price for not having prepared the assistance, says Dalsjö.

Now the people who defend the old policy say that as long as we did not tie ourselves we could anything. But that was not what they said then. I can see two problems in being able to receive this assistance: the preparations and awareness.

Dalsjö thinks he can see a pattern of preparations, albeit limited ones, nevertheless being made during the first twenty years of the Cold War. He believes there was also a more general awareness then about having to receive assistance from the west.

During the 1980s, on the other hand, we had officers in key positions who were cast in the mould of neutrality. We had some at that time who had become awkward when things became tight. I can image one or two division commanders wanting to go up to encounter the American and Norwegian air forces. Anything else would be treachery, it was still thought. The lines of command needed to be held for western assistance to be received. It would be part of the price for the secrecy that the assistance would have been difficult to implement.

Self-deception
Dalsjö, who has made a close study of Swedish defence and the Cold War over a long period, makes some reflections on the self-deception, the gaps, the invisible western powers and the credibility of policy.

In the first few years after the war there was still strong interest among the officers in the reality of war. They knew that it could become serious. In addition, a large proportion of the servicemen were familiar with life in the field from the years of being on the alert. Many officers had been there during the winter war in Finland, and that come to have a great impact on the image of war and the Russians. The enemy we would encounter would be the Russians from the winter war, it was thought. But very few Swedes had been on the Karelian Isthmus in 1944 and faced the Soviet steel avalanche. That image of the war never reached Sweden. And the more we were isolated from countries with experience of war, the more we lagged behind and the defence organisation acquired an increasingly distorted picture of what war and modern combat are. It became even worse after the 1960s when the great mistake was made of retaining a large organisation and sacrificing quality. Sweden did not realise how much it had been weakened in relation to the Soviet Union. The Bergslagen manoeuvres went well, it was said, and it was not appreciated that many exercises were simply meaningless. The Navy and Air Force kept quality up for longer, but the Air Force too sacrificed a great deal in order to retain its many aircraft. Always the same error: too many planes, too few weapons and too little in the way of countermeasures.

The large organisation required a threat scenario that fitted, according to Dalsjö. There would be an attack, but with a long period of warning, so that we had time to mobilise, and in the extreme case put out a million men in the forests.

But it was known that our weakness was a surprise attack, As we did not have a an army prior to mobilisation, a coup was the most dangerous threat. But nothing was done about that, because then the whole idea of the mass army would then fail.

Unsolvable equation
The defence organisation was not well balanced. It was evident that others would deal with the nuclear deterrent and if necessary defend Sweden. But there were other gaps, which were so obvious that there was a temptation to believe that there too we counted on others to do our work for us.

We put enormous effort into defending ourselves against a coastal invasion. But we were almost totally lacking in capability to strike against ground targets in depth, for example forming-up routes in occupied Finland.

When talking about western assistance become more or less forbidden territory, a decisive factor in the equation disappeared, according to the Dalsjö. It simply did not fit together.

It was like cutting out a piece of cardboard with Leningrad military region and Sweden, these two were left to wage war on each other. Without taking account of the fact that it was perhaps world war, that Swedish neutrality had foundered and we were combatants on the western side.

Up to 1965 it was said that we had to hold out until assistance arrived. But then it went quiet. When the sophisticated wargames were held, this was not included. When the Army commander Nils Sköld spoke of a slow war of delay, this was quite incomprehensible if it was not understood that we presupposed that assistance would arrive from the west.

It was said, for example, that we could not be attacked both in the north and south at the same time. But what would have happened if the Soviet Union had crossed the Kalix border? The US Air Force would presumably have taken over the air bases in southern Sweden. And what would the Russians have gained from that? A large area of land infested with midges in return for having the US Air Force on their doorstep. But if we took out the western factor, that argument might hold. We removed the western factor and optimised the defence organisation for what remained. And everything went wrong. And that is where we are today.

Success for the policy of neutrality was conditional on it being believed, in this case by the Soviet Union.

The question of credibility began as a small manageable part of the doctrine and then it snowballed. It grew and gobbled up more and more. The Russians had to believe in our policy and we had to be restrained in our contacts with the west. It turned into a game for the Swedish people, because both the Russians and Americans knew what was going on. Stig Wennerström had revealed part of it, and he was probably not alone.

When the requirements for credibility were lifted, it became an obstacle for planning what was to be done if the policy of neutrality failed and we were attacked. An attempt was made to increase the chances of the policy succeeding by tying ourselves to the mast, but at the same time we lost the possibility of jumping into the lifeboat if the ship sank.

Jan-Ivar Askelin is the editor of Framsyn.