Scandinavia

ATLANTIC

April 1949

on the World today

EVER since the cold war began, the Scandinavian countries have been acutely aware of their danger. The Scandinavian peninsula not only covers Western Lurope’s left flank. It also guards the gates to the Baltic and dominates the only yearround water route to and from Russia over the top of the world, most ol (Germany s northern coast, the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, the shortest route by sea to Russia’s naval bases above Leningrad, and the shortest direct route from those bases to the British Isles.

All these factors count heavily in the strategic thinking of the great powers. I hey are of even more immediate significance to the foreign offices of Scandinavia. Nor is this all. As Nazi Germany demonstrated during the recent war, the Norwegian coast offers in its innumerable deep fjords the most da ngerolls senes ol na t u ra I bases for sn lima rme wa rfare anvwhcre on the shoreline of Western Lurope. Finally, in an age of atomic warfare and supersonic guided missiles the Scandinavian land barrier presents obvious highly strategic possibilities for rocket emplacements and airfields.

The cold war thus put Scandinavia on the spot, strategically, from the moment of its inception. How have Sweden, Norway, and Denmark undertaken to meet this danger? The key to that question is Sweden’s policy. Her answer, which emerged with emphasis immediately after the Communist coup in Czechoslovakin in February, 1948, was from the first unequivocal.

Sweden makes ready

Sweden’s policy derives in part from a traditionally successful insistence upon neutrality in Europe’s recurrent wars. That policy lias kept her out of such conflicts for nearly 130 years. Yet Stockholm entertains no illusions that it would assure safety under’conditions of modern warfare. Accordingly, something new has been added to Sweden’s traditional program.

More than two years ago the Swedish government reaffirmed Sweden’s basic policy with an announcement that she would join neither a Western bloc nor an Eastern bloc. This statement was accompanied, however, by a swift speed-up in defense preparations. A program of air, naval, and military expansion, backed by several extraordinary appropriations, was inaugurated at Stockholm.

Meanwhile her “Catastrophe Plan” began to take shape. This plan is based upon frank recognition of the possibilities of invasion from the east. Today it has been worked out in substantial detail, covering all foreseeable contingencies.

In 1947 Sweden spent nearly 300 million dollars on defense — a staggering figure for a nation numbering only some 7 million inhabitants. In 1948 the Swedish defense expenditures soared still higher. As the new year opened, the great Bofors armament works was pouring out some of the most modern weapons devised by science since the advent of the atomic age. Today Swedish scientists have probably achieved greater success in developing defense weapons against jet planes and guided missiles than the scientists of any other nation in Europe.

With a compulsory military training law which covers every able-bodied man in the country, Sweden’s army can draw on a trained force of approximately 500,000 men. Intensive naval construction since 1947 provides her with the most powerful fleet in the Baltic. Sweden is the third strongest air power in Europe.

This swift growth of defense forces indicates not only Sweden’s early awareness of possible implications in the cold war: it signifies that one tenet of Swedish policy is to make any assault on her from the east so costly as to give pause to an attacker.

With the coup in Czechoslovakia, Sweden s policy moved toward a new phase. The danger, as all three Scandinavian capitals saw at once, was becoming clearer. What had been done in Prague could also be tried in Helsinki. That would confront them all with a threat as direct as it might be calamitous. The situation as it a fleets Finland is, moreover, much less difficult for Moscow to manipulate than was the case in Czechoslovakia. By the terms of the Busso-Einnish peace treaty, Russia has the right to move her armies into Finland whenever, in the opinion of Moscow , such a step may seem desirable.

Submergence of Finland in a 1 ide of Russian military occupation would bring Russian forces to the Swedish borders in the northeast. It would closely flank the great Swedish iron centers at Kiruna and Gällivare. It could place Russian rocket bases on the Aaland Isles off Stockholm itself, it would threaten Narvik and the entire northern section of Norway. So long as Russian occupation forces remain in Eastern Germany, it would set up a continuous flanking line extending all the way across the bottom of Sweden in the Baltic, northeastward to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and on into the Aretic.

Labor and the home front

In Scandinavia there have been no explosions of political strife such as have recurred frequently, these past two years, in the lower reaches of the European continent. The Labor Government which forged to the lop of the poll in Norway’s first postwar elections is still in power. In Denmark there has been no political discord. And Sweden’s Social Democrats, who renewed their mandate to rule only a few months ago, have been in charge of their government for nearly thirty years.

There have also been practically no ugly street demonstrations, embittered strikes, and other phenomena betokening class warfare in Scandinavia during the past two years. Working in close cooperation with the Norwegian government, Norway’s 450,000 Federation of Labor members this year renewed their pledge to maintain unimpaired production.

The Norwegian labor compact is geared to a system of price regulations and controlled living costs. During 1948 it chalked up an enviable record. Beyond question it has been one of the chief factors in expanding employment. As a result, Norway moves into the first quarter of the new year with a budget surplus, for the first time since the war. Her production rate under EBP stands at 150 per cent of the pre-war rate.

Sweden’s achievements in reducing strikes and social feuding to a minimum are equally impressive. Of 86 major industrial disputes referred to the Swedish commission during 1948, 75 were adjusted by unanimous agreement. Today, the Swedish trade-unions work under an extension of their 1948 agreement covering the present year. This means continuation of wage pegging and price controls. Swedish labor is cooperating wholeheartedly for success of the government’s new Four-Year Plan for economic development.

As their economies gather strength, and moderation regulates the field of industrial relations, the Communist minorities in Norway and Sweden lose ground. Only 7 per cent of the 150 seats in the Norwegian Parliament are occupied today by the noisy though powerless devotees of the Moscow line. Jn Sweden the recent elections slashed the strength of the Communists’ following to about 4 percent.

Strength in unity

After the Czech coup, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all felt the need for action. The Norwegians supplemented their regular defense budget with two extraordinary new appropriations, and undertook a Three-Year Defense Plan. Simultaneously, Oslo began a speed-up of plans for a great new steelworks in the north. Study of the possibilities of a regional grouping of the Scandinavian states under the provisions of the United Nations Charter came out into the open.

Sweden’s present “revolution in policy” is the direct consequence of these trends. The Scandinavian regional group of powers, which she still sponsors, is in effect an extension of her basic concept of neutrality. But it is much more than that. Her proposal does not ignore the possibility of attack from the east; neither does it involve any assumption that Scandinavia will absent itself from any general defense of the democratic principles underlying Western society.

On the principle of concentration of forces, Sweden seeks to unite the Scandinavian states in a mutual alliance integrating the strength of all three. At best, it is Sweden’s view that such a grouping might act as a negative influence on any power having aggressive intentions east of the Baltic. At worst, it would render such an attack much more difficult, and provide time for the arrival of aid from the West.

The key proposal on which this ambitious project has stranded is Sweden’s insistence that no member of the Scandinavian bloc should join the North Atlantic Alliance at this time. Washington’s sudden interest in inducing Norway to weigh the advantages of alignment with the North Atlantic Alliance has stymied Swedish plans for Scandinavia.

It would be inaccurate, however, to assume that negotiations among the Scandinavian slates on this project have been ended. That fact is underlined by the statement made in midFebruary by Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen before the Danish Parliament: —

“There is still agreement among the three countries that a regional defense paet within the framework of the Failed Nations — presents the happiest sol ut ion of Nordic security problems, and in principle, on the essential provisions of the pact. From the Danish side, we do not wish to abandon this policy so long as there is a possibility that it may be followed through. . . . The main task is a common one: namely, to explain to the outside world that the plan for a Scandinavian defense union entered into in accord with the l luted Nations Pact is politically rational.”

Norway leans westward

Sweden’s views, as the intervening weeks have made plain, are unaltered. She is in accord with Denmark. Norway’s problem is more complex and has been made difficult by the illtimed and unmistakable maneuvering of Washington. The Norwegian Foreign Minister. Dr. Halvard M. Lange, has repeatedly made it clear that Norway considers herself one with the nations of the West in the present world situation. In that attitude he is in agreement w ith his Scandinavian partners, who have striven likewise to emphasize their basic alignment.

The overwhelming support given by Parliament to Norway’s policy does not mean, however, that the Norwegians view with indifference the advantages of the proposed Scandinavian alliance. Rather it means that the threat from Washington to ban military supplies from any nation which does not agree early to join the North Atlantic Alliance has placed Norway in a position of extraordinary difficulty.

Too much interference?

A divided Scandinavia is poor insurance for the security of Europe. Any move which delays or suspends the endeavors of the three nations to integrate their defense plans should have the benefit of sober second tbought from realisls.

Would it not have been wiser for the original proponents and supporters of the Atlantic Pact first of all to perfect and carry to ratification their program, and at the same lime encourage a in efforts among t lie nat ions of the Western world to form regional groups under the United Nations Charter, thereby strengthening their own facilities for defense?

Was it that thought which induced Trygve Lie, who is a Norwegian and an astute statesman as well as Secretary General of the United Nations, to warn the member states of the dangers they may run if, in their effdrls to weld security blocs, they bypass the United Nations and leave it in ruins;

Germany watches

In occupied Germany, East and West, a reviving nationalism is showing itself. Speeches from the leaders of all ihree major parties in Berlin have revealed that it is their hope to play off Last against West, and strike a bargain with whichever side proffers them most.

This idea has even more vociferous supporters in two new German splinter parties, dedicated to even more blatant programs for a revival of German power in Europe. It was in this way that the Nazis began.

All Germany is watching developments in Scandinavia today for a clue to future prospects. It may he doubted that the present division there, temporary though it may prove to be, will further impress Germans with the strength of the democratic world.