Elisabeth Braw
In December, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the United Arab Emirates. He left with a $19 billion order for French Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft. You wouldn’t see Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson performing energetic sales pitches for Sweden’s equally fine Gripen jets the way Macron does for French military equipment—or the way most leaders of other countries with defence industries do for their local companies.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Swedish government has mostly been putting defence exports in the hands of the globalized market. But with other countries’ leaders pitching their companies to governments now investing more in defence, it’s a flawed strategy. Oddly, Swedish governments of different stripes have put their faith in an invisible hand that simply does not exist when it comes to defense equipment.
Last September, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia unveiled their so-called AUKUS agreement, which will see Australia build nuclear-powered submarines aided by British and American technology. That, in turn, meant that Australia relinquished an agreement with the French company Naval Group for diesel-powered submarines. Apoplectic anger ensued from Paris, with allegations that friends had stabbed France in the back.
A few years earlier, Sweden’s Gripen suffered a similar setback. In 2012, Switzerland was getting ready to buy new fighter jets, and having investigated its options, the government—backed by the armed forces—opted for the Gripen over other top contenders, France’s Dassault Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The Gripen offered the best value, Bern concluded. But no sooner had the Swiss government announced its decision than a mysterious assessment of the Gripen began circulating in the local media. The report, allegedly approved by Swiss Air Force chief Lt. Gen. Markus Gygax—though the report gave him the title “Three star General M. Gygax”—concluded that the Dassault Rafale would in fact be the best choice for Switzerland. Gygax, though, had supported buying the Gripen. When the report began circulating, Swiss Defense Minister Ueli Maurer remained firm: “What’s good enough for Sweden is good enough for us,” he declared. Indeed, the two countries—and other moderately sized nations—share the need for a versatile fighter that doesn’t break the bank.
But the damage had already been done. The report caused an alliance of peace activists and Gripen opponents to get the momentum going for a referendum, in which 53.4 per cent of people voted against the Gripen. Last year, the Swiss government finally decided on a new course of action. It opted for the F-35 over the Dassault Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon, and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet—hardly the outcome the Gripen referendum’s supporters had in mind. In all this, Stockholm was barely to be seen. No public outbursts, no mentions of stabs in the back, and no Macron-style engagement with Swiss politicians.
In recent years, successive Swedish governments have taken a remarkable laissez-faire approach to defense exports.
Indeed, in recent years, successive Swedish governments have taken a remarkable laissez-faire approach to defense exports. “When Sweden privatized its defence companies a few years after the end of the Cold War, the defence minister who saw most of it through, Bjorn von Sydow, did so based on the idea that the government would support the companies through relationship-building with other governments,” noted Robert Limmergard, director-general of the Swedish Security and Defense Industry Association, known as SOFF. “But after a while, that idea petered out. People believed in globalization.”
Indeed, post-Cold War Swedish governments of different ideologies have shared a seemingly unshakable belief in the power of international markets to let the best bidder win. Because Swedish defense equipment is considered top-notch, the thinking went, Swedish companies would be able to battle for contracts with foreign governments pretty much on their own steam. Defence equipment “is clearly an area where Sweden fights above its weight,” Pal Jonson, chairman of the Swedish parliament’s defence committee and defence spokesperson for the Moderate Party, the largest opposition party, told FP. “But you can’t fight with one arm tied behind your back. There needs to be strong political support for defence exports to show that sales are not merely arms deals but a partnership between two countries that is based on trust and security of supply, including in case of a crisis or war.”
The reticence is partly a cultural thing. Although Swedish officials do provide some degree of practical support in arms deals, it’s hard to imagine Andersson or her predecessor, Stefan Lofven, peddling Swedish defence products to foreign governments the way French presidents and even British politicians do. But in a globalized defence market, such political involvement becomes necessary the moment other countries engage in it.
In 2015, the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Green Party, then governing in a coalition, disbanded the government’s defence export agency as demanded by the Greens. “We’re one of only [a] few countries in Europe that don’t have a defence industrial strategy,” Jonson noted. “That has to change.”
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