- 著者
-
五月女 律子
- 出版者
- JAPAN ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- 雑誌
- 国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2012, no.168, pp.168_88-101, 2012-02-29 (Released:2014-03-31)
- 参考文献数
- 39
This article examines Sweden's “non-alignment” as a core of its security policy. This analysis especially focuses on changes of the Swedish security doctrine and Sweden's relations to the United Nations, NATO and European regional organizations after the Cold War.In 1992, Sweden changed its security doctrine from broadly defined “neutrality” to narrow “military non-alignment” in order to adjust itself to changes in Europe after the end of the Cold War. Then, in the middle of the 1990s, Sweden joined the European Union (EU) and established close relations with NATO and Western European Union (WEU).Though Sweden has not been a member of any military alliance, it has actively participated in peacekeeping operations under the UN mandates since the 1940s. Sweden has played a very large role in peacekeeping missions with close cooperation with other Nordic countries. This can be seen as Sweden's strategy not only to contribute creation of “a better world” but also to enhance its own national security using an advantage of “non-aligned” status in international relations.Even after the Cold War, participation in peacekeeping operations and crisis management has been a self-evident Swedish contribution to international peace and security. As long as there was some form of UN resolution or consent, Sweden has allocated its troops to the NATO-led peacekeeping operations and crisis management. Sweden's close cooperation with NATO and European states has also aimed to enhance Swedish national security avoiding isolation in the post-Cold War world.As the promotion of EU crisis management fitted well into the Swedish security doctrine, Sweden, together with military non-aligned Finland, proposed to introduce the Petersberg tasks into the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in 1996. Sweden and other Nordic countries have insisted that effective crisis management has to be comprehensive and include both civilian and military means, and this approach is now the hallmark of EU crisis management.Since the middle of the 1990s, Sweden has been moving away from a military-oriented concept of “total defense” to a more civilian-oriented approach for international crisis management. At the same time, Sweden has started more open and intense military cooperation with other countries, but it still explicitly excludes mutual defense arrangements and participation in any defense alliance.Though Sweden's policy of “non-alignment” has been narrowed down to military dimension, it remains as a fundamental element in Swedish security policy. Being a military non-aligned state, Sweden still wants to preserve ability to make decisions based on its own analyses and seeks to maintain national freedom of action in external relations. In this sense, “non-alignment” continues to be a core of Swedish security policy.