Intelligence in an Age of Transition - The Case of Sweden

Although a formally non-aligned country with strong economic and security links to the Western powers, Sweden nevertheless developed an expansive national intelligence system during the Cold War. After the tumultuous shift of European security policy between 1989-91, Sweden realized immediate benefits in the area of national security; it went from the exposed position of a front-line state in the Baltic to an embedded position behind a new Cordon Sanitaire to the east. As other small European countries, Sweden in the 1990s was thus faced with the task of aligning its national intelligence system with new international premises and a broadened, but largely unknown, future security agenda. The attempts to reform its system offer insights into the process involved in changing intelligence agendas and institutions, and into the problems facing national intelligence policy caused by globalization and European integration