The Need for Well-Trained Leadership

Summary of Olof Santesson's article in RSAWSPJ no 6 2001.

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish Armed Forces have been in a phase of constant transition.

The country's top soldier, from the early days of the Second World War, has been and still is the Supreme Commander, a four-star general or admiral. He holds a position historically reserved for Swedish kings, some of them military leaders of the first rank. With the coming into being of a parliamentary democracy these kings had to give up their prerogatives.

Until recently we had, in addition, our three-star Service Chiefs of the three main military services: the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. Geographically there were a number of Military Command Regions, each under a Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C). These were operational commands, comprising army divisions, naval flotillas and air force squadrons as well as territorial forces. A C-in-C worked hand in glove with his civilian counterpart, one of the region’s governors, in an overall system called Total Defence.

In today's small defence establish-ment, the Supreme Commander still enjoys a unique and powerful position directly under the government, whose decisions are taken collectively. There is no direct command link down through the Ministry of Defence. This has to do with the fact that in the Swedish system ministries are quite small, policy-making en-tities, leaving most preparatory work and operational decisions to such government agencies or bodies as the military. At government level there exists no crisis management unit with operational training. Under the Supreme Commander a three-star general heads an Operational Command with an overall responsibility for the whole country. The Commanders-in-Chief and the Military Command Regions have been abolished. Left are four Military Districts tailored mainly to the needs of our territorial forces. The old civilian-military system for cooperation has thus been broken up.

Against this background, on 25th October, a symposium dealing directly with policy questions was held in the old Parliament building in Stockholm in the presence of His Majesty the King. Spurred on by the events of 11th September in New York and Washington, D.C., and by subsequent anthrax scares, Academy fellows and invited guests, among them some politicians, discussed questions aiming at improving cooperation between government agencies and, especially, at creating a stronger crisis management capacity within the government proper. Much emphasis was put on the training of officials. One particular problem is how the Total Defence concept can be restored.

To judge from the day’s proceedings, there seems to be a general consensus moving in the direction of a need for changes, adequate measures for which have so far not been properly thought through by the authorities.

The article is a report from the symposium "Who leads Sweden’s Total Defence and how?", held by the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences on 25th October 2001.