If Crisis or War Comes to Sweden…the Swedish Defense and Survival Initiative

If Crisis or War Comes to Sweden…the Swedish Defense and Survival Initiative

By E. Stanley Ukeni

The internet has quite literally been set abuzz with conspiracy theories about the possible onset of World War III, after it was reported by major global news outlets that the Swedish government is preparing to issue a public information manual to its citizenry on what to do in event of an outbreak of war or a sudden eruption of other crisis.

The head of the citizen awareness initiative, at the Swedish Civil Contingencies agency, Christina Andersson, was quoted as saying, “All of society needs to be prepared for conflict, not just the military. We haven’t been using words such as total defense, or high alert for 25-30 years or more. So the knowledge among citizens is very low.”

Sure the web is rift with all sorts of fantastic speculations and innuendos regarding the undeclared reason for this peculiar public information exercise. However, I’m not sure that there is any significantly alarming reason for this citizen awareness initiative other than a fiduciary public responsibility of the government.

After all, the United States’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced that it will, this January, begin briefing the U.S. general population on how individual citizens can prepare for nuclear war. The CDC did not issue this public announcement because it believes that nuclear war is eminent. They are doing it because an informed society is one that is prepared for all eventualities.  

Having said that, I can see how people would he alarmed at the timing of this initiative following all the visible signs of a de-escalation of the Korean crisis. I mean, Sweden is not by any means a second rate power. The country is a technologically advanced system—with vast intelligence capabilities at its disposal.

The question then is, ‘are their intelligence analysts predicting a coming event, so dare, that the government would find it alarmingly necessary to send out literature to over 4.7 million households—informing the public of how to contribute to the ‘total defense’ of their country in the event of war or other natural or man-made disaster, including how to secure water, food and heating in the event of crippling cyber-attack, terrorism and climate change induced catastrophe.

On the face of it, the stated, official narrative, for issuing the instructional booklet—which has a seemingly ominous working title; ‘If Crisis or War Comes’, that Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its military support for Ukrainian separatists—and equally Russia’s military activities nears the Baltics and Scandinavia, still leaves purse for thought.   

It should be notes that, in September 2017, Sweden held its biggest military exercise in 23 years. Over 19,000 Swedish military personals—along with armed forces officers from allied countries including the United States, France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and the Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, participated in the elaborate war games.

In the past few years, Sweden has invested heavily in revamping its military defense strategy. The country has significantly boosted its military spending. The government last year reintroduced military draft, which it had suspended some seven year ago. And for the first time in about a decade, the country’s military has recently stationed permanent troops on the strategically important province of Gotland, an island in the Baltic Sea.

So, the question now is, ‘what does this all mean?’ Is this seemingly benign decision by the Swedish government to prepare its citizens for the possibility of a major disruptive event, like war, to be shrugged off? Or should we view it as the ‘canary in the coal mine’, warning of a coming devastating event on the horizon. 

Perhaps, other governments should follow the lead of both the American and the Swedes to begin sensitizing their respective populations on how to survive a global holocaust—leaders owe this to the governed. Although we continuously sue for peace, we must also be prudent enough to prepare for war. The world, it seems like, is increasingly becoming a very dangerous place. 

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Authored by E. Stanley Ukeni, © 2018. All Rights Reserved. This material and other articles or stories posted on this blog site may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed, in whole or in part, without prior expressed written permission from the author, E. Stanley Ukeni.

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