Sweden’s military is growing bigger – though not necessarily better
If you’re on the metro in Stockholm these days, you can’t escape the message splashed across almost every billboard: Sweden is spending huge sums on rearmament in a bid to reverse years of limp military investment. The ads proclaim that a newly refurbished, now top-class submarine recently went back into service; that 503 specialist officers are in training; and that the latest generation of the Jas Gripen fighter jet, the 39E, will soon be ready for take-off. A spiffy tagline explains all the fuss: “For the sake of freedom.”
In the past five years, Sweden has upped its military spending by 138 per cent, from €5.5bn in 2020 to €13bn this year. The plan was to add another 30 per cent to the defence budget by 2030 but the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, now wants to exceed this in accordance with the Rearm Europe Plan. “We will without a doubt belong to the countries that will be quickest in strengthening our own defence,” he said.
Sweden was one of the world’s best-armed states in relation to its population in the wake of the Second World War. But during the 1990s the nation changed course. “We initiated perhaps the most radical disarmament in the Western world,” says Oscar Jonsson, associate senior lecturer at the Swedish Defence University and the author of several books on the threat from Russia and Sweden’s rearmament. These books are now helping Swedes to understand the new reality of remilitarisation. However, Jonsson points out that “toing and froing still hurts the military today”.
The result is that the country is at risk of spending its defence budget on the wrong stuff. Compared to its allies, Sweden disproportionately invests in expensive systems and technologies that take a long time to develop without prioritising how they will be used in practice. Crucially, there’s a lack of focus on personnel, pilots and logistics systems.
Sweden has cottoned on to the need for more boots on the ground and conscription is back. But the numbers aren’t adding up quickly enough to get Sweden fighting fit. And lessons from the war in Ukraine are going unheeded: a need for heavy air defences, up-to-speed electronic warfare capabilities and the ability to conduct long-range combat. Sweden’s fighter pilots are, for example, not putting in any more training hours today than they were five years ago, hovering at about 11,250 hours a year.
Sweden is a country that prides itself on being measured, reserved and logical but its military growth spurt resembles the sudden developments of puberty. If it’s not the legs that suddenly look too long, it’s the arms. Put together, the limbs can appear recalcitrant, uncoordinated and even at times a little comical. Perhaps the new tagline for Sweden’s military spending spree should read: “For the sake of freedom from ineptitude.”
Lewitschnik is a Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
