Sveriges säkerhetspolitiska strategi: Balancing, bandwagoning eller hedging?

Small states tend to use different security strategies to increase and gain influence over their own level of security. Sweden is a small Nordic state with a long history of proclaimed neutrality when it comes to security policy. But in the last couple of decades the country has increased its contributions to, and participations in, numerous EU and NATO security projects and exercises. In 2009, Sweden adopted a declaration of solidarity towards the member countries of the EU. In 2014, Sweden also signed a memorandum of understanding with NATO. This has ignited bothan internal and an external debate among political scientists and security experts about what the Swedish security strategy is. This paper seeks to describe and clarify the Swedish security strategy by analyzing documents on security policy from the Swedish government. The study also examines the level of continuity in the Swedish security strategy. Based on a theoretical framework of security strategies of small states, the study utilizes three ideal types of the small state security strategies balancing , bandwagoning and hedging to analyze and describe the Swedish security strategy. The study concludes that the Swedish security strategy as it is presented in two official documents on security policy ranging from 2009 to 2015 mostly indicates balancing . The willingness to strengthen the Swedish military capacity and theeagerness for cooperation with the EU, NATO and USA clearly indicates balancing towardsRussia, a state which is described as a security threat in both documents. However, there are also tendencies towards hedging due to the insistence of armed neutrality in both documents. The study also shows that while there is a high degree of continuity in Sweden’s security strategy there has been a small shift in strategy towards more balancing from 2009 to 2015