The Third World War: The Untold Story

of neutrality in war — went back a long way it was not all that well understood outside the Nordic countries. This was possibly in part because people of other countries have enough problems sorting out their own identity and history without worrying too much about others — especially when they are remote and neutral, the latter term tending to be regarded by some as synonymous with unimportant. If Sweden resented this, as it did, the country had largely itself to blame. Its impressive, passionate, and highly-armed neutrality was masked to the world by the political posturing of politicians from whatever platform they might be on at the time — ‘Third Worldism’, do- gooding, progressive liberalism, or whatever it happened to be. Sweden’s advice to those who, in its eyes, were enslaved to power relationships and alliances was plentiful, often delivered in a high moral tone which many found irritating. It was therefore easy to misread Sweden and fail to see the fierce determination that buttressed its traditional neutrality beneath all the political preaching. Only military professionals, defence analysts and industrial competitors really appreciated the remarkable quality of Sweden’s defence industry and armed forces, backed as they were by very high-grade planning and training and an infrastructure investment which absorbed one of the highest proportions of GNP of any country in the Western world. All of this was based on a comprehensive and well-accepted system of conscription and a sensible structure of reserves. There was much to be learnt from Sweden — not least that anyone taking it on would find it could curl up like a hedgehog and offer a very formidable resistance.

Sweden’s non-alignment was not a weak-kneed opting out of European and world events but a fierce determination to preserve itself, irrespective of the folly of others. It would deter attack by its own armed strength. In a paradoxical nutshell, if Sweden had to go to war to stay neutral then it most certainly would, and it was the turn of the Swedes to be irritated that their position was so little understood, especially in the West where they had so many political and economic associations. From the Soviet Union they did not expect very much, for they realized that in a generally ignorant world the men in Moscow were bottom of the class when it came to other people’s history. They were, after all, too busy cooking their own.

To the Soviet Union, Swedish neutrality was of considerable strategic importance. If Sweden threw in its hand with the West the balance in the Baltic could tilt sharply against the USSR. If war should come and the Swedes stood aside, as they always declared they would, they must understand that their country’s neutrality must not be such as to stand in the way of Soviet needs in the sea and airspace of the Baltic area. Provided that was tacitly accepted there was really no reason why the Swedish people should be unduly disturbed by a major thrust into Europe. The strategic and political analysis sections in the Kremlin thought that Second World War history stood on their side in securing this balance — after all, Sweden had played both ends against the middle and come out unscathed and there was no reason to think that this sort of flexibility could not be brought into use again. Moscow assessed that continuing to play for Swedish neutrality was the best option, although contingency plans for persuasion would need to be laid should the Swedes look like failing to see where their true interests lay. With a measure of good fortune on the Soviet side, and sound practical sense from the Swedes, these contingencies need not arise. But Soviet freedom of manoeuvre in the Baltic, and its plans for Norway, were so crucial to the war plans of the USSR in the Atlantic that the posturing of a few Swedish politicians could not be allowed to stand in their way. Nevertheless, the strategic analysts cautioned, steps that might draw Soviet forces into an unnecessary campaign in Sweden should certainly be avoided.

Swedish comment and pronouncements from politicians, writers and academics had tended, sometimes with rare and much-needed fairness and impartiality, to balance the exaggerations and propaganda of the two power blocs and to illuminate the scene, somewhat naively it was often thought in the West, by adducing innocent motives for some of the Soviet Union’s more questionable acts and particularly its high level of armament. The USSR found this refereeing role valuable, but after a decade of grim events in South-East and South-West Asia and in Africa the Swedes were running distinctly short of whitewash. In particular, the cosmopolitan academic society in Stockholm received a sharp shock from revelations within the vaunted Stockholm Peace Research Institute. This institute, drawing as it did on the intellects and viewpoints of clever men and women from all over the world, could not have been purer in Swedish eyes or further beyond any sort of criticism of its idealistic work. The discovery in the early 1980s that a Czechoslovak research professor in a senior post had, over a period of years, been exploiting the Institute’s worldwide standing by acquiring incidental strategic and technical intelligence and remitting it to Moscow rocked the Swedish establishment to its foundations. The professor departed and the whole affair was played down but the scar that it left was deep.

The scar was shortly to be reopened very painfully by the intrusion in the autumn of 1981 of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine, which stranded itself on rocks deep inside Swedish waters near the naval base of Karlskrona. The story filled the newspapers and television screens for days and nights on end. Moscow rejected the Swedish protests in intemperate fashion but gave no explanation that would stand up to examination. Sweden stubbornly refused to release the boat until it had made all the enquiries it could, in the course of which it was found — and the information was released publicly — that the submarine was carrying nuclear weapons. Swedish public opinion was incensed both by the incident and by Soviet surliness. Though the vessel was then allowed to go on its way, a seal had been set on dealings between the two countries, one that was to have its effects on subsequent events. Moscow did nothing to try to mend matters. In the next two to three years, Soviet aircraft carried out a programme of minor infringements of Swedish airspace, easily deniable but designed to remind Sweden of its geography and Soviet power.

There was nothing soft-centred or starry-eyed about the regular elements of the Swedish armed forces. Their intelligence, with the advantage of geography and good technology, was first rate and they had no illusions about the Soviet Union in any of its guises. At the same time, they were very far from blind to faults in the Western world. These highly professional men had learned to live with the contradictory tasks of leading and training their forces to the highest pitch of readiness and efficiency to serve the purposes of a perennially dove-like establishment.

It was common ground among them that in the last war Sweden had been as helpful to Britain and the USA as neutrality would decently allow. At the same time they knew, and ruefully admitted, that their neutrality had undoubtedly contributed to the woes of their sister country, Norway, under German domination. Was history to repeat itself with a single change of cast? This was an uncomfortable thought within the Nordic family.

The Swedish defence effort was considerable, the spending per capita and as a percentage of GNP being directly comparable with that of the major NATO allies in Europe. A nationwide call-up was designed to mobilize some 800,000 men and women in seventy-two hours to man defences throughout the country. The air defence was of an especially high order, remarkable for a country of such a small population, based on almost entirely home- grown products like superb Viggen interceptor and attack aircraft, and advanced radars and electronics, in which Swedish industry excelled. Underground shelters and hangars had been tunnelled into the mountain sides.

The navy had taken advantage of a virtually tideless sea and granite cliffs to blast out vast caverns as tunnel-docks for warships. In 1985 Sweden had a dozen modern diesel-electric submarines; four modernized destroyers, twenty-eight missile-armed fast-attack craft; antisubmarine warfare (ASW) helicopters and various mine counter-measure (MCM) vessels. As a former Swedish naval attache in London had written: The Royal Swedish Navy must be prepared to operate in narrow waters on what may be called a hit-and-run basis, very often at night or in the darkness’.[11] The submarine force would, of course, patrol off the enemy’s bases, to report and attack his forces and to intercept his invasion fleet. In peacetime, as a matter of routine, submarine surveillance would provide intelligence otherwise unobtainable; and in time of emergency this task could be critical.

Thus it was that early on 3 August 1985 the Swedish submarine Sjohasten, on reconnaissance patrol just outside Soviet territorial waters, off the Gulf of Riga, sighted a large and heavily escorted convoy of Soviet amphibious vessels. Lieutenant Per Asling, the submarine’s captain, was not aware of any major Soviet or Warsaw Pact naval exercise. But neither had he been told that war was imminent. His duty, he decided, was to remain undetected, while observing carefully the composition and course of the Soviet force. He would then make a short ‘Most Immediate’ sighting report, followed by an amplifying report giving full details. The first of these signals was handed to the Chief of the Swedish Defence Staff at 0957 hours that morning by his naval deputy, and together they studied the chart upon which the position and course of the Soviet force had been plotted. By noon, when the Council of State assembled in emergency meeting, with His Majesty King Carl Gustaf present, the