With eye on Russia, Sweden to bring back conscription
GOTLAND, Sweden — Late last year, Christer Stoltz, chief of contingency planning for Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, got an unusual letter from the central government in Stockholm, telling him to get ready for war.
Municipalities around the country should “increase their ability to resist an armed attack against Sweden from a qualified opponent,” the letter from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency said.
The planning also was intended to respond to natural disasters, oil spills or cyberattacks that could disrupt power and water supplies. But, Stoltz said, there is no doubt Sweden is nervous, given Russia’s more assertive posture and the mounting uncertainties about the future of Europe’s alliance with the United States.
On Thursday, the government announced that mandatory military service — abolished in 2010 — would be introduced starting next year. Four thousand men and women will be drafted into the defense forces.
If not quite returning to a war footing, Sweden is at least reviving a level of preparedness that many thought had gone the way of the Cold War. “For two decades our contingency planning was low,” Stoltz said in a recent interview. “Now we need to look at our plans.”
In May, Gotland will join all other municipalities in a “Contingency Week,” when Swedes will be taught how to hunker down for 72 hours in case of an emergency. Soon the authorities will begin to dust off public shelters that have not been inspected for two decades.
For Sweden, the new uncertainties about security are even more pressing than they are for most other European countries. Sweden is neutral and not a member of NATO, so to a much larger extent it must rely on its own defense capabilities. Mixed signals from the Trump administration toward Europe have made even NATO allies wary.
“The threat of the U.S. no longer wanting to honor its security guarantees is the most important development in the history of the alliance,” said Henrik Breitenbauch, director of the Center for Military Studies in Copenhagen. “It has created high levels of concern all over Europe.”
Peter Hultqvist, Sweden’s defense minister, says that Sweden and other European countries were too quick after the Cold War to dismiss potential threats in the region. “Politicians at the time maybe thought that the future would be more sunny than the reality is today,” he said in an interview.
Hultqvist said: “From my point of view many, mistakes have been made over the years. The security situation and what could come in the future was underestimated.”
Just inside the walls of Visby, Gotland’s main town, Birgitta Stenstrom runs a quiet book cafe. She is not convinced that the tanks south of town are the right answer to the threats against Sweden.
“Attacks from cyberspace is the real danger,” she said. “I’m worried about all the infiltration like the supposed Russian manipulation of the U.S. elections. Even if I don’t know if that’s true.”