Smol: Why Sweden is becoming a stronger NATO member than Canada
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Pending final approval from all member states, Sweden – and neighboring Finland – is about to end decades of non-alignment and join NATO. Letting Sweden in will compensate for the alliance’s weak and vulnerable military links. By this I mean countries like Iceland which, although part of NATO, have no army, navy or air force. And Canada, which by all accounts has consistently failed an Icelandic-style demilitarized state.
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How is Sweden doing, a social democratic, female-led onewould-be NATO member position militarily compared to Canada?
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Sweden imposes military conscription on all fit males and females. Among other things, this provides a cadre of trained reservists who can be called in in an emergency. But military conscription is only the sharp part of a universal national commitment to a total defense posture. Chapter 15 i Swedish constitution deals with “war or threat of war” and includes the obligation for every public body in enemy-occupied territory to “act in a way that best serves the defense effort and resistance activities as well as the protection of the civilian population and Swedish interests in general.” Sweden’s latest civil defense brochure is even more specific: it describes Sweden’s policy of “civilian conscription” or “general national service” which applies to everyone between the ages of 16 and 70. As for Sweden’s The total defense strategy“everyone is obliged to contribute and everyone is needed.”
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Can you imagine a Canadian government today so politically mature and independent-minded as to enact such civic obligations in peacetime, or even under imminent threat of war or foreign invasion? I can not.
The same national will and military capability applies to military weapons systems and equipment. Today, Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen interceptor is used within NATO (Czech Republic and Hungary) and other nations. Sweden itself has 96 of these newer fighters with current delivery from 60 newer versions. Compare that to Canada’s embarrassingly outdated fighter fleet of 71 F-18s from the 1980s and another 25 second-hand versions purchased from Australia.
Out at sea, the perennially delayed and overbudgeted Canadian Surface Combatant program will give Canada with 15 ships in 2040. These ships will replace the 12 Halifax frigates from the late 1980s which by 2022 are already older than many of their crews. Of course we should include the mothballed submarines we bought from the Royal Navy in the mid-1990s – submarines so prone to breakdown that in 2019 not a single day at sea was logged for any of our submarine fleet.
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It is the core of the maritime warfare capability of the fleet that guards the world’s longest coastline. A short-lived and increasingly symbolic capability that was recently put on hold when we withdrew our contribution to NATO’s standing naval forces.
Why do I not include, among our warship capabilities, the six Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) that are finally being launched now? These roly-poly ships, as the Navy has made clear, are not designed to go to war. With only one, small mounted gun, their role is defined as “constabulary”. In other words, AOPS of Canada is to naval warfare what security guards and parking enforcement officers are to police work.
Sweden has a fleet of newer, high-tech ships and submarines designed to detect, attack, fight and survive. Leading its surface fleet is its stealth Visby Class of missile corvettes, completed in 2012 and currently being upgraded. Unlike Canada’s new pacifist constabulary vessels, Sweden’s high-tech attack craft are stacked with a host of weapons including Bofors 57mm MK3 Naval Automatic Cannons, as well as RBS 15 anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine TP 45 Torpedo launchers plus an array of sensors, radars and decoy systems. Recently, the Swedish navy launched, and is in the process of equipping, a new signal intelligence gathering vessel (HSwMS Artemis). The Royal Canadian Navy, for its part, has no such designated intelligence-gathering vessel.
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Nor could Canada’s rickety, used submarines match the reputation of Sweden’s A-19 Gotland Class Submarines (soon to be replaced by the even newer A-26 Blekinge) known for their ability to go undetected underwater for long periods. In 2005, Gotland earned the respect of the US Navy when it sank (virtually) the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan during the 2005 War Games.
Canada still has a possible military advantage over Sweden, in that our professional military, at least for the time being, is numerically larger. But as the Ukrainian forces have shown the world, size does not always prevail against astute use of military technology and a people’s collective will to fight as a nation.