Försvarsmaktens implementering av COIN i nutida normativa dokument

Since 1949, irregular conflicts have been the primary type of conflict. Although the Swedish government has found that a restructuring of focus from international operations to national defence is fundamental for Swedish security policy, the Swedish Armed Forces are still engaged in several irregular conflict arenas around the globe.By applying a theoretical framework based on counterinsurgency theory, this study ventures to explore whether this theory has been implemented in the main Swedish armed forces policy documents. The purpose of this is to facilitate an understanding for the potential strengths and weaknesses that these documents have when implementing counter insurgency in irregular conflicts.This study finds that there exists an implementation of counter insurgency theory in these policy documents as a prerequisite for Swedish operations in irregular conflicts. Furthermore, this proves a correlation between theory and policy something that may be a positive prerequisite for this kind of operations.Furthermore, this study finds that future studies in to the relevance of COIN theory in potential conflicts to come