Niklas Granholm, Commentary, 28 September 2016, RUSI

In a move that surprised casual observers, the Swedish Armed Forces announced on 14 September a permanent and immediate deployment of forces to the Baltic island of Gotland. The move reflects a worsening security situation in the region over the longer term.

The wider Baltic region could have become a calm backwater in Europe, but it is now at the centre of the new confrontation between Russia and the West. This is due to Russia’s opportunistic and aggressive behaviour, especially since the invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent Kremlin-supported war in Ukraine.

The island of Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic Sea, has quickly come to the fore as an important piece in this worsening security puzzle.

At the end of the Cold War, Sweden first scaled back its defence stance, and then abandoned it in favour of a much smaller, more agile and less costly expeditionary force structure. Globalisation and the general progress of mankind would make inter-state war a thing of the past, it was argued.

Peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, Afghanistan, off the Horn of Africa and in the Mediterranean followed. When the three Baltic republics regained their independence and later membership of NATO and the EU, the entire region was transformed, so there was genuine cause for optimism in planning for Swedish security. Lately, however, this has been replaced by a renewed focus on national defence.

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