A couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article about the differences between European and United States’ean foreign policy and view on security. It was very provoking and the author (originating from the US) claimed that the reason why Europe can be so civilized and demilitarized is becaue the US is so militarily strong and can protect Europe if needed. Well, to make a long train of thoughts slightly shorter, I convinced myself that one of the reasons for the difference in view of the military in Europe versus the US is because the continent of Europe has experienced war much more recently than the US. The US has sent soldiers to fight elsewhere, but in Europe there are civilians that have grown up with the constant threat of living in a war zone. There is simply a much more recent memory of war trauma in the general population of Europe than in the US.
There were more arguments to this, but what I really wanted to write about was that I realised that this logic doesn’t hold for Sweden. Sweden was never attacked during WW2. Which led me to thinking about when Sweden last was at war. I’m not really that experienced when it comes to history, but to my best knowledge, the last time a Swedish king sent soldiers to fight for the Swedish cause was when Sweden kind of half heartedly tried to defend Swedish Finland against the Russian tsar. That was 1808-1809, and then Finland became Russian for a hundred years. But even that wasn’t in Sweden. The war was fought on Finnish territory. Not a lot of Swedish civilian war experience there.
Before that, Sweden was down in Denmark and Poland and Estonia and Germany, fighting wars against the other great powers of Europe. But not even that was on current Swedish territory.
It would require going back hundreds and hundreds of years to reach the time when Swedish soil saw war last. So, why has Sweden been pushing its neutral and peaceful stand so forcefully for the last hundred years? My theory of recent war trauma does not hold.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance I’m just not as smart as I think I am. Everything considered, I’m probably not.
Katja Malmborg 