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View Full Version : Research reveals depth of Sweden-US Cold War relations (2009 article)



The Lawspeaker
11-15-2010, 12:37 AM
Research reveals depth of Sweden-US Cold War relations (http://www.thelocal.se/18262/20090317/)

New research has shown that Sweden's relations with the United States ran more deeply during the Cold War than was previously known and the countries enjoyed a close military cooperation.

While outwardly neutral in the Cold War stand off between east and west, the US and the Soviet Union, Sweden's defence and security forces were crucial to the country's influence in Washington, Svenska Dagbladet reports.

"The military cooperation between the US and Sweden was of much greater significance than previously known," says the author of a new doctoral thesis, Jerker Widén at the Swedish National Defence College (Försvarshögskolan), to Svenska Dagbladet.

Widén's thesis, entitled "Guardian, proxy, critic - Sweden's role in American security thinking 1961-1968", lays out Sweden's multiple role in the eyes of the US at the time, going further than previous studies which have mostly focused on diplomatic ties.

Widén writes that the US saw Sweden as the guardian of the western world in northern Europe. Sweden was seen as a crucial military-industrial base that must be kept out of Soviet hands.

"The role as guardian incorporated Sweden’s role as an important Baltic power and a natural opponent to Soviet political and military dominance in the region. The US supported this role by means of military cooperation in the form of high-tech weaponry, military technical information and intelligence," Widén writes in his thesis.

The US embassy in Stockholm was populated by CIA agents and military attachés when the Cold War and the Vietnam War were at their most intense in the 1960s. Diplomatic representation was in the minority, Widén reveals.

Despite the Stig Wennerström spy scandal (Wennerström was arrested in June 1963 for spying for the Russians) and strong criticism over the Vietnam War by the then prime minister Olof Palme, Sweden-US relations were deepened further.

"From an American perspective Wennerström was one of the two major events of the 1960s. But instead of becoming angry at Sweden over Wennerström, respect increased as a result of the spy's arrest," Jerker Widén says.

Both the US and Britain were allowed to interrogate Wennerström, Widén reveals.

"The US Government did not view it (Sweden's criticism) positively but rather as something that had to be endured. According to leaders in Washington, this role was primarily a function of Sweden’s choice to remain non-aligned in a region dominated by the Soviet Union," Widén concludes.

Despite being a staunch critic of the Vietnam War, Olof Palme was seen as a person the Americans could do business with.

Not least by the US military leadership at the Pentagon, Widén writes.

As a result of Palme's show of solidarity with North Vietnam in an infamous demonstration in Washington in 1968, the White House was in favour of punishing Sweden by withholding supplies of the Redeye anti-aircraft missile system.

But thanks to hard work by a delegation sent by Palme, the US military attaché in Stockholm, and primarily the Pentagon, the weapons were sent to Sweden as the country's role as a barrier to the Eastern Bloc was ultimately considered paramount.

The Lawspeaker
11-15-2010, 12:39 AM
This tiny little update on history puts this (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6815&highlight=sweden+cold) in a whole new light...

Lenny
03-06-2011, 06:53 AM
Sweden never joined NATO, and was "aggressively-Dovish" in the world forum during most of the Cold War.

Despite that, this expert claims Sweden "deeply" (but quietly) cooperated with the USA militarily. It may be a surprise on the surface, but is it really such a surprise that even the Swedish Left sided with the NATO bloc, "when push comes to shove"? For all sorts of historical, cultural, ethnoreligious reasons.

You don't have to reach back to Peter The Great's wars against Sweden, either. Two very recent factors:

1.) The memory of the Finnish Winter War, in which the USSR took away a large share of Finnish national territory in 1940. The USSR started an indefensible war of pure aggression, and was not a magnanimous winner.

2.) There were many tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands(?) of refugees from Latvia and Estonia who had fled to Sweden after the 1940 annexations by the USSR, or just before the late-1944 re-conquering of those regions by the Red Army. These refugees told stories of the USSR's atrocities that would inspire "less than confidence" in Soviet magnanimity in any potential war.

The Ripper
03-07-2011, 01:47 PM
Well, the left was and still is delusional when it comes to these marxist utopias. But they weren't the captains of industry, high-ranking officers or anyone else with real weight in deciding these issues. And let's not forget, Social democrats were fiercely anti-communist and vice versa.