IHEDN Mondays are now available in audio format!
Click below to listen:
At a time when Europe is going through the most serious security crisis since the Second World War, characterised by a grey area where the line between peace and war is becoming blurred, Sweden is emerging as an essential doctrinal and operational laboratory.
The country's accession to NATO definitively buries the historic policy of neutrality adopted in 1812. As a state bordering the Baltic Sea, Sweden brings to the Alliance its valuable strategic geography in Northern Europe, transforming the region into a highly secure and interconnected space.
This geopolitical shift is accompanied by the greatest evolution in national defence and security doctrine for two centuries. Through the concept of «Total Defence» (Totalförsvar), this kingdom of engineers is modernising a global model in which security is no longer the sole preserve of the armed forces, but a «team sport» involving the State, industry and individual citizens.
A MODEL ROOTED IN CONSENSUS, INNOVATION AND HISTORY
To understand the Swedish trajectory, it is necessary to identify the pillars of a nation of 10 million inhabitants that combines strong decentralisation, a deeply rooted culture of consensus and a historically autonomous and powerful defence industry. If relations with France are embodied in the historic figure of Marshal of the Empire Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who became King of Sweden Charles XIV Jean in 1818, the two nations today share a major strategic partnership. Renewed in 2024, it structures their cooperation in civil nuclear power, space and emerging technologies (such as the links between Mistral AI and EcoDataCenter).
It is on this bedrock of technological excellence and social cohesion that Sweden is rebuilding its resilience. Historically non-aligned, the country developed a titanic civil protection system during the Cold War before dismantling it in the era of «eternal peace». Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2015, followed by the massive invasion of Ukraine, was the wake-up call for strategy. From now on, political will will be accompanied by massive financial resources, with NATO setting an ambitious investment course for the protection of critical infrastructures.
THE INSTITUTIONAL BACKBONE OF CIVIL RESILIENCE
At the heart of this overall architecture is an institution undergoing radical change: the new Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency. Recently attached to the Ministry of Defence - under the aegis of a newly-created Ministry of Civil Defence, a historic first - this structure of 1,500 staff visually and administratively materialises the merging of military and civil approaches.
Its mission is considerable: to coordinate a national ecosystem of around 1,000 key players (government agencies, prefectures, municipalities, businesses). The Swedish administrative model, characterised by small political ministries and large autonomous executive agencies, gives it remarkable agility.
The agency does not just operate on the home front; it deploys personnel around the world, particularly in Ukraine, a veritable forward observation post for modern warfare from which Sweden is learning important lessons.
The doctrine of this renewed civil defence is based on four fundamental pillars:
- Maintaining essential social functions (energy, transport, health) in the face of Russian strategies to systematically target civilian infrastructure.
- Direct support for military defence capabilities, NATO plans.
- Protecting the population, This was based on a network of shelters capable of accommodating seven million people and on mass evacuation plans.
- Defending cognitive space, The aim is to educate and protect the public against misinformation and to preserve the will to defend themselves.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND CITIZENS: SOLDIERS FOR ECONOMIC CONTINUITY
One of the most striking innovations of the Swedish model is its management of the security of supply (Security of Supply). Aware that the State can no longer finance or manage gigantic fixed public stocks, Sweden has chosen to rely on the creativity and flexibility of the private sector. Through an Industrial Advisory Council that brings together the heads of major strategic companies and the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, the country organises economic resilience upstream.
Companies with more than five employees are subject to rigorous planning: in the event of a major crisis or conflict, they are legally obliged to be able to operate independently for a fortnight. This requires dependencies to be mapped out, business continuity plans to be drawn up and human resources to be carefully managed, anticipating the fact that certain key managers could be mobilised at the front.
At the same time, the citizen is put back at the centre of the system via the duty of total defence (Total defence duty), which stipulates that all residents of Sweden aged between 16 and 70 must serve their country in the event of a crisis. The country is thus relaunching civilian conscription on a massive scale, initially targeting the emergency services before including a civilian component in the conscription examinations for 18-year-olds from next year.
This popular involvement is underpinned by a culture of transparency. The famous «yellow brochure», a in the event of crisis or war« preparedness booklet» distributed to every household, has been reissued with a tone of unprecedented seriousness:
«If Sweden is attacked, we will never surrender. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.»
As a sign of the times and of NATO integration, this document now explicitly includes awareness of cyber attacks and the threat of nuclear weapons.
PLANNING FOR INFORMATION WARFARE AND CRISIS SCENARIOS
Cognitive resilience is Sweden's other major project, led by the Psychological Defence Agency. Faced with a Kremlin that uses history as an ideological battlefield to legitimise its imperial ambitions and deny its neighbours' right to exist, Sweden responds with factual counter-analysis and critical training. This information war, which targets the vulnerabilities of our democracies through social networks, the gaming or the recuperation of historical facts (such as Moscow's recurrent commemoration of the Battle of Poltava 1709), is closely monitored in direct bilateral cooperation with the French agency VIGINUM.
To provide a common compass for this general mobilisation, the Swedish army and civil defence co-wrote a remarkable reference document: the «Planning Assumptions for Total Defence». Exceptionally, this document sets out a framework for the resistance of three months in the event of armed conflict is entirely public and unclassified.
It sets out seven cardinal reference scenarios that determine the scale of the national effort:
- Everyday hybrid threats ;
- Support for the host nation (Host Nation Support), positioning Sweden as NATO's nerve centre for logistics and transit to Finland and the Baltic States; ;
- A military attack in the far north ;
- The defence of the highly strategic island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea; ;
- Waves of long-range missile strikes across the country; ;
- Two scenarios for collective intervention by NATO to secure the northern and Baltic flanks.
A CUTTING-EDGE DEFENCE INDUSTRY DRIVEN BY INNOVATION
The second pillar of the Swedish miracle is its industrial base, which is historically strong and technologically independent. Sweden devotes more than 3 % of its GDP to research and development (R&D), an effort that has been boosted to almost 70 % by private sector initiatives. This economic vitality is reflected in an exceptional concentration of high-tech start-ups: Stockholm now exceeds London and Los Angeles in the number of «unicorns» (companies valued at over a billion dollars) per inhabitant.
This excellence has a direct impact on the defence sector, where military investment has doubled in the space of just four years. Today, 43 % of the total defence budget is devoted strictly to equipment procurement. This positive overheating has led the military-industrial sector to hire 6,000 people in 2024, while the arms industry's turnover will jump by 55 % between 2023 and 2024.
The Swedish arsenal is based on world-renowned technological flagships:
- Generation 4+ fighter aircraft Saab Gripen ;
- High-performance armoured fighting vehicles ;
- The artillery system Archer, a highly automated 155 mm gun mounted on an off-road truck chassis, co-produced by Bofors and Volvo ;
- Advanced rocket launcher systems and cutting-edge electronic solutions.
To maintain this conceptual lead, the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) launched the Glimt. This strategic foresight tool uses probability calculations to anticipate technological and tactical breakthroughs on future battlefields.
UKRAINE AND GOTLAND: THE FRONT LINES OF STRATEGIC SOLIDARITY
The war in Ukraine is both the catalyst for the Swedish doctrine and its main field of application. Since the beginning of the conflict, Sweden has made a colossal financial and military effort of 8 billion euros of aid to Kiev. Recently, on 19 February, Stockholm announced a massive new tranche of military aid worth €1.2 billion, focusing mainly on air defence, the shipment of munitions and logistical support for combat platforms already delivered.
In addition to these transfers, Sweden is actively involved in a number of training missions for Ukrainian soldiers. Above all, its support strategy has evolved: for several months now, Sweden has been supporting Kiev without drawing excessively on its own military stocks. Swedish industries are now directly producing new equipment for the Ukrainian forces.
This long-term alliance reached a historic milestone in October 2025: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson signed a letter of intent to allow Saab to supply between 100 and 150 Gripen fighters to Ukraine, radically transforming the capabilities of the Ukrainian air force.
At the same time, Sweden is securing its own strategic locks. The island of Gotland, a veritable «unsinkable aircraft carrier» in the middle of the Baltic Sea, is of crucial importance. It is an integral part of the 17 key sites covered by the Defence Cooperation Agreement (Defense Cooperation Agreement - DCA) signed between the United States and the countries of Northern Europe. This agreement makes Gotland a new strategic hub, optimising both the logistics of aid to Ukraine and defence industrial cooperation between Washington and the Nordic capitals.
LESSONS FOR EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNTY
The Swedish case forcefully demonstrates that technological and military sovereignty cannot flourish without deeply shared civil resilience. By breaking down the silos between military planning and economic realities, by contractualising the role of companies and by making every citizen responsible, Sweden is not content to simply protect its territory: it is offering Europe an agile, transparent and modern «Total Defence» model.
Faced with the multidimensional threats of the 21ste century, resilience is no longer a passive option. sine qua non democratic survival.
