The connections between crisis and war preparedness in Sweden

Oscar L Larsson

doi:10.1177/0967010620936849

Abstract

Contemporary liberal and democratic states have ‘securitized’ a growing number of issues by advancing the notion of societal security. This is coupled with a proactive stance and the conception of building societal resilience in order to withstand future crises and disturbances. The preemptive logic of contemporary security and crisis management calls for a new type of resilient neoliberal subject who is willing to accept uncertainty and shoulder greater individual responsibility for her own security. This article offers a genealogical analysis of this development in Sweden since the end of the Cold War, highlighting the role now assigned to citizens within social and national security planning. I argue that seeking a return to a more traditional notion of ‘total defence’ blurs the previously important war/peace and crisis/security distinctions. While war preparedness in previous eras was an exceptional aspect of human life and citizenship, the conceptions of security now evolving bind together societal and national security such that civil and war preparedness are merged into an ever-present dimension of everyday existence. The analysis also reveals that the responsibilization of individuals introduces a moral dimension into security and generates new forms of citizen–citizen relations. These extricate the sovereign powers of the state and the liberalist social contract between the state and its citizens.

Highlights

Security has historically been regarded as the core competence of the state, whereby sovereign power, hierarchical structures and command and control have had the survival of the state itself as their primary objective (Wilson and Bakker, 2016; Rådestad and Larsson, 2018)
The analysis presented in this article has revealed a specific genealogy that has unfolded in Sweden that substantially links together societal and national security strategies during a period in which a return to total defence is high on the political agenda
After the end of the Cold War, Sweden quickly replaced its focus on national security and the threat of war with a focus on societal security and disruptions to modern society

Summary

Introduction

Security has historically been regarded as the core competence of the state, whereby sovereign power, hierarchical structures and command and control have had the survival of the state itself as their primary objective (Wilson and Bakker, 2016; Rådestad and Larsson, 2018). A broader understanding of security became more widely accepted after the end of the Cold War, among Western countries This new conception of security includes the entire spectrum of threats and disturbances that modern societies face, including terrorist attacks, financial crises, natural disasters and the increased vulnerability and fragility of technology-dependent modern societies. This coupling of crisis management and traditional security threats produces important changes in the power triangle discussed by Michel Foucault, which consists of sovereignty, discipline and governmental powers, with the latter having ‘population as its main target and apparatuses of security as its essential mechanism’ (Foucault, 2007: 107–108). The armed forces were reduced and transformed to being mission oriented rather than defence oriented (Larsson, 2019: 6; Larsson, Security Dialogue 52(4)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion