Swedes are generally not known to panic or overreact. But many of us are feeling a little shaken after a booklet with a soldier in camouflage holding a machine gun, with a fighter jet tearing through the sky in the background, landed on our door mats recently.
The government booklet, titled “In case of crisis or war”, was sent to every Swedish household as the threat of attack from Russia escalates. It signals the beginning of a new era in our country, with a bleak message about threats from war, natural disasters and pandemics.
“If Sweden is attacked, everyone must do their part to defend Sweden’s independence – and our democracy. We build resilience every day, together with our loved ones, colleagues, friends, and neighbours,” it states.
For more than two centuries Sweden maintained a policy of military non-alignment, but earlier this year the country joined Nato and the booklet was produced in response.
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It was written by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, which is responsible for issues concerning emergency management, public safety and civil defence. And many of its 30 pages contain practical advice in the event of war or disaster, including a checklist of things to have at home, such as a week’s worth of drinking water (three litres a person a day) in storage containers, warm clothing and blankets, non-perishable food for people and pets, and a radio that isn’t reliant on mains electricity. It also lists places to seek shelter if there is an air raid, such as cellars, underground garages and metro stations, and the different sirens to listen out for that will indicate the level of emergency.
But primarily, it tells the citizens of Sweden to prepare for hard times, effectively saying: don’t ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
The booklet’s bleak message stunned some of our European neighbours, where Sweden might still be known mainly for centuries of neutrality and peace. The French news magazine Le Point had news of the pamphlet on the top of its website, highlighting the contrast between its stark language and the lingering image of Sweden as peaceful, while a British tabloid claimed that the government’s message – along with similar instructions on how to prepare for emergencies recently issued by Norway and Finland – caused “panic” across Europe, which is an absurd exaggeration.
The challenge for the Swedish government is not that citizens might panic, but that many citizens have lost a sense of civic duty, in an increasingly atomised country.
“If you take seriously what is written in this booklet, then you have made an act of solidarity for your country,” Carl-Oskar Bohlin, the minister for civil defence who is responsible for the booklet, said in a recent interview.
For many decades, Sweden has gradually moved away from precisely these ideas of solidarity and personal sacrifice for the common good. Instead, Swedish governments promoted a more self-centred, individualist society, with a narrative of personal success, rather than a strong nation.
“The ambition to get everyone prepared for war runs counter to the individualist ideals that dominated Swedish politics the last 40 years. We’ve come a long way from that idealistic spirit, where everyone sits in the same boat,” says Torbjörn Nilsson, co-author of High Above the Sea, a critically acclaimed book on Sweden’s Nato membership.
He points out that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Nyamko Sabuni, the then-leader of the centre-right Liberal party and a former minister in the rightwing government, suggested fleeing the country if Russia invaded. In a filmed conversation, Sabuni said: “If it gets any worse, we will drive over to Norway.”
She had to leave her job shortly after the comments surfaced, but it probably captured a broadly shared sentiment in Sweden, where the idea of personal sacrifice for a common purpose has fallen out of favour.
Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, many voices in Sweden’s national security establishment have raised concerns over the shortcomings of the country’s civic defence. As a result, in 2017 compulsory military service was reintroduced for men and women born in or after 1999.
But decades of austerity and deregulation still leaves Sweden with a lack of preparedness and civic infrastructure. For example, thousands of apartment buildings in Sweden that were once public are now privately owned, and their old bomb shelters have been converted into flats or basement gyms to maximise profits.
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This is not the first time the Swedish government has sent out a “prepare for war” booklet. A slimmer version appeared in 2018. Then it was widely criticised as an alarmist message that frightened children, but six years later it seems rather prescient. A global pandemic has killed millions, the frequency of severe natural disasters caused by climate change has escalated dramatically, and there’s no end in sight for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Earlier in November, the US elected a Putin-friendly president, awkwardly timed with Sweden’s entry into Nato.
Sweden has seen a series of ideological shifts over the past half-century. As a country, it tends to move quite uniformly between political doctrines. In the 1970s Sweden wanted to become the most social democratic country in the world, and more or less succeeded. French economist Thomas Piketty, in a recent book, described Sweden in 1980 as a model for an egalitarian democracy.
In the 1990s Sweden swung rapidly towards free-market reforms, deregulation and privatisation, and in the past decade the country has embraced authoritarian nationalism. This applies not just to the rightwing governing coalition, but also the Social Democrats, who increasingly try to mimic their Danish sister party by positioning themselves as tough on immigration and crime.
But the problem for the government, and its attempt to raise awareness of the risks we face and to build domestic civic defence, is that Sweden’s surge of nationalism doesn’t necessarily translate into patriotism or civic solidarity.
The new government booklet has an urgent message and often employs the rhetorical flourishes of Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy to convey it. “We live in uncertain times. Armed conflicts are currently being waged in our corner of the world. Terrorism, cyber attacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us,” it warns. “To resist these threats, we must stand united.”
The problem is that Swedish citizens may no longer be particularly interested in unity or solidarity.
Martin Gelin writes for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter
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