pic: thelocal.se
June 16th was the third, and last, date the government and opposition parties were to get it together and agree on the defense budget. Today, Minister for Defense Peter Hultqvist made an offer of no new money at all to Sweden’s national defense. The negotiations were shortly thereafter declared stone cold dead.
With no new funds, only about 40% of the need for reinforcements and additions to troops, ammo, carriers, training – the works – will be met, if that, according to SvD. This on top of the security crisis spoken of and worried about at top levels throughout Sweden and the rest of the world. We’ve just seen first hand how well Sweden’s crisis management works (Minister for the Interior, Michael Damberg is responsible for Sweden’s civil defense after all). Now the army will have its capacity cut from under them as well.
Christian Democrats, Moderates, Sweden Democrats, the Liberal party and even the Center party have all worked to increase monies to defense. The Social Democrats have only their usual associates the Green and Left parties at its side. The Left, for its part, is not opposed to a strong military, and can see a need to increase its capabilities if only to keep Sweden from being the easy target it looks like not being in NATO. Even the Green party says it wants a strong civil defense (though it otherwise writes that democracy and diplomacy are its foremost weapons). Since leading Social Democrat Björn von Sydow was the main writer of the original contract that significantly increased the military budget way back when the topic was first brought up and before Hultqvist reneged on it, even the Social Democrats could be split over backtracking on defense promises. However, most Social Democrats don’t really want to see an increased military budget, so saying “split” could be an exaggeration.
After the Swedish summer vacation, the government will have to put forth its own military budget plan. The opposition will do the same. Right now, the opposition has the numbers on its side, but the military will have to sit and twiddle its thumbs until autumn – and hope that Sweden’s security doesn’t face any challenges in the meantime. We still probably only have a week.