Focus on the EU/NATO agenda – in view of the Academy project SV-A-R project – updated early 2023

• For overview: The recent Atlantic Council issue brief ”How allied Sweden & Finland can secure Northern Europe” coauthored by Academy Member Anna Wieslander. A useful guide to structure an understanding of what otherwise could be perceived as an alphabet soup of tiresome acronyms. Listen to our podcast here.
• Previous: Listen to a short comment on the Sälen Conference and Kiruna from a Swedish EU Presidency perspective. What is the potential contribution of Sweden to security as EU Presidency? Podcast link here.
• Podcast on escalatory risks related to the Ukraine War
•  Interview with Dov Zakheim on support to Ukraine and the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO. This podcast provides an essential US perspective on the way ahead.

A first Zoom meeting on the Sälen Conference with more than 30 participants has taken place and a link to the recording has been sent to all Academy Members.

A second event related to possible project ideas for further Academy work after the just concluded SES project.

A third event focussed on deterrence as a central aspect of lessons learned from the Ukraine war.

Other tags will link to flow security, values, and interests, defense capacity – military and civil, structural and organizational issues, nuclear etc.

Different mindmaps and other illustrations will make it possible to see links between various contributions and clusters, including efforts underway in different Academy sections. Avoiding stovepipes in future Academy work will be an essential objective. The idea is to feed into discussions on future strategies on all levels, from the NATO Strategic concept to Swedish national and sectoral strategies.

The EU Presidency track: Here an overview:

In this podcast Dov Zakheim covers a broad range of topics focusing on the need for strong support to Ukraine at least until the end of the current fiscal year in the United States in September 2023. Issues discussed include
– cohesion of NATO
– the importance of Swedish and Finnish accession to NATO soon,
– the likelihood that Putin will seek to reconstitute Russian capabilities during a war of attrition perhaps lasting several years,
– hoping for a better situation perhaps after a Trump return to the White House,
– that the use of nuclear weapons or direct military attacks against NATO territory remains less likely.

Dov Zakheim is a Corresponding Member of the Swedish Royal Academy of War Sciences since 2011 and a writer, businessman and former politician.

The Academy Proceedings and Journal contains in issue 3/2022 a series of valuable contributions to the debate about Swedish integration together with Finland into NATO. Awaiting more thorough reviews here are a series of short video clips highlighting some of the important considerations to be made not least on the part of NATO in this process.

It links up with both generic issues concerning deterrence and defence in the North and more concrete discussions of common structures including the roles of Norfolk and Brunssum as joint force headquarters.

The bottom line seems to be that the whole debate requires fundamental assumptions about the posture of the United States as regards the defence of Europe and in this case in particular northern Europe and the Arctic region.

Earlier Academy contributions of relevance