FURTHER CUTS IN DEFENCE

With an already puny army getting even smaller with a new defence proposition from the government, Svenska Dagbladet reveals that the government are planning for more cuts in defence. With the deal going through parliament now, put together by the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Communists(!) already putting the numbers down for the active defence to 31 000 soldiers all in all, you're kind of wondering if there will be anything left at all after the next cut.

Of course, these first cuts have recieved some angry opposition. Many have complained - not because we'd have a hard time defending our country from a bunch of invading whales - but because unemployment will rise in a number of smaller towns! This is deeply unsettling. The fact that people loose their jobs isn't really the problem - the other fact, that the government cannot fulfil one of it's fundamental tasks - to defend it's people from outer threats - is.

To counter this, many make the argument that with the Soviet Union gone the risk for war is minimal. That is true - the risk for Sweden being engaged in a war in the foreseeable future is close to none. But things can change fast, and it takes a whole lot of time to build a new defence from scratch, should the situation demand it. This very argument - that there aren't really any threats - was the main reason to the fact that Sweden had virtually no army at the beginning of World War 2. When the war broke out Sweden realised they needed to strengthen their defense, but it took almost until the war ended before the build up was done.

Of course, given our history, perhaps we can still remains calm. After all, we've always managed to stay out of any conflict, by never taking sides and always throwing most of our condemmning comments towards the braver nations standing up for democracy. It's worked before and will probably work again. A truly noble strategy...

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