APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
National Policy: Strict Neutrality, More Welfare
The policy of neutrality has been a determinant in the development of modern, prosperous Sweden. It is the only nation in Europe able to avoid war for 160 years, but its good fortune was not without traumatic effect. Notably during World War II, the Swedes for awhile had to supply the Nazi German conquerors of their sister Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark, with iron ore and to permit the passage of German troops across their territory. It could be argued that Sweden's purchase of peace through such tribute may have been a net gain for the many Norwegian and Danish refugees who found asylum in benevolently neutral Sweden, but the Swedes themselves still regard their World War II policy with some ambivalence. And then there was the 1864 war between little Denmark and its powerful Prussian neighbor allied with Austria. Denmark went to war to protect its historic suzerainty over Schleswig and Holstein only after having received assurances of British and Swedish support. When both potential allies then stopped short of intervention on Denmark's behalf, the Danes had to lose quickly in so unequal a struggle, and to cede Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia with the loss of 200,000 ethnic Danes.
Although there is a very considerably body of opinion in Sweden that is discomfited by the "moral abdication" implicit in its strictly neutral status—a segment lately reinforced for different reasons by the hardheaded business community—the historic success of the policy gives it continues momentum. And a cogent factor inhibiting the forthright Swedish pro-Westerners is the plight of tethered Finland, within the Scandinavian community but markedly susceptible to Soviet coercion. Should Sweden compromise its neutrality by any closer association with the West, there is a real danger that the U.S.S.R. would attempt to pull reluctant Finland into the Eastern sphere. In 1970, after Sweden had been a member of the European Free Trade Association for 10 years, the five Scandinavian countries agreed at a meeting in Iceland to an integrated Nordic customs and economic unit called NORDEK. But just two days after the Finnish Prime Minister returned home, Finland withdrew and the new organization collapsed. Amply suspicious of the existing ties to the West of the other Scandinavian countries, and apprehensive of the magnetism of the Common Market, the Soviets would brook no further involvement of Finland. The Swedes, for their part, did not wish to jeopardize Finland's membership in the Nordic Council so let the matter drop. Their historic sentimental attachment to the Finns is reinforced by the pragmatic need to have this friendly buffer between themselves and the Russians.
The government headed by Olof Palme has, on the whole, projected a more self-assured, not to say sanctimonious, evaluation of Sweden's neutrality. Tending to ignore the role played by fortune, notably in World War II when Sweden alone in the Nordic area escaped occupation, his group associates the peaceful external policy with the obvious internal
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
