Submarine Incursions in Swedish Waters, 1980-1992:
A Comment on the Report of the Latest Official Investigation and the Debate It Brought About

By Krister Wahlbäck
30 October 2002

For Cold War historians, the most remarkable feature of the Report is likely to be the Investigator's conclusion concerning the probable source of the incursions, as expressed in the last paragraph of his Summary. The Soviet Union "may have had reasons for intruding on Swedish territory" and can "scarcely be excluded as a possible violating state." "Nor can the possibility of intrusions by Western submarines be excluded." Thus, the Investigator puts the two sides on equal footing as potential violators.[1] This conclusion is at odds with all previous Swedish assessments, including the most recent one, a 1996 analysis in the Foreign Ministry which was declassified in the spring of 2000.[2]

The debate which followed upon the publication of the Report within the research and security policy communities has focused on these and other statements included in the Summary reprinted in extenso above. However, critical points have also been made with regard to a number of views presented in the main body of the Report - about 350 pages - which so far is only available in Swedish.[3] References to these pages will be given below.

 

A Perspective Suggested

As indicated, the Investigator's view is that "in essential respects, the motives for the incursions have been fairly evenly divided between East and West" (p. 335).

With regard to Western motives, the Summary states that the Soviet need of sea transports along the southern Baltic coast to the central front became an important factor at the start of the 1980's. NATO showed a growing interest in the possibility of disrupting the Warsaw Pact's logistic transports through the southern Baltic. The Soviets had to take into account the possibility that in the event of war West German submarines might try to use Sweden's territorial waters. The Report refers to the alleged use during Word War II of Sweden's archipelagoes as safe havens by submarines of belligerent states.

Thus the perspective suggested is one of West German submarines preparing in peacetime for the use of Swedish territorial waters as safe havens or staging areas for attacks in case of war on Soviet seaborne transports. These transports along the coast of what used to be the Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became more important, according to the Report, because of a shift in strategic doctrines occurring a few years before the incursions in Swedish waters took on a more aggressive nature in 1980. This shift involved an increased emphasis on the possibility that a major conflict on the continent would remain conventional and not really escalate to a nuclear war.

With regard to WP motives for incursions into Swedish waters, the incentives cited in the Summary are mainly a result of Western interests to disrupt Soviet troop transports. The Soviet Union might have considered it important "to monitor the development of Sweden's anti-submarine defence and to take steps to prevent NATO (West German) submarines using Sweden's archipelagoes for operations directed against the Warsaw Pact".

The Investigator states that an increased understanding of the motives for incursions can contribute to illuminating the question who actually performed them. He believes that the strategic perspective presented in his Report with regard to the Baltic Sea is very important, although this was not realized in Sweden in the early 1980's. The INF debate at the time obscured the fact that both power blocs were planning for a conventional war in which endurance and logistics might well be decisive (p. 321-323). Now, however, "a more sophisticated assessment" of the motives for submarine incursions has become possible (p. 331).

 

A Perspective Examined

In the course of seminars attended at universities and research institutes, and during many informal discussions with specialists[4], I have heard several comments paying tribute to the Investigator's perspective as new, original, and internally consistent. Others have argued that while this may be true, the relevance of this new perspective depends upon the strength of each link in the reasoning underpinning the Investigator's conclusion. In this section I will present those critical points which seem to me to deserve attention.

(Generally in this paper, I have tried to screen points made with regard to substance, relevance and intellectual quality. While not claiming any credit for observations reported here, I accept, of course, responsibility for the screening process. In some instances, when I believe that points recorded not only deserve attention, but are clearly correct, I have said so.)

(1) Doctrine vs. Planning. Starting with the first link in the Investigator's reasoning, some critics have questioned the importance attached to the shift in declaratory WP strategic doctrine in the mid-1970's towards an extended conventional conflict in Europe in which "at most only tactical nuclear weapons would be used and then only on a limited scale" (p. 41). First, they are unconvinced  by the Investigator's assumption that declared doctrine and operational planning in the Warsaw pact were in harmony. This assumption is best illustrated by his statement that "as the doctrine developed, operational planning in the Warsaw Pact had to consider both the protection of its North German flank and - even more important - extensive maintenance transports along the Southern coast of the Baltic Sea" (p. 41-42). They feel that as a general proposition, such a statement disregards the need to distinguish between published doctrine and secret operational planning. Second, in the case at hand, WP documents made available in former GDR archives in the early 1990's in fact indicate the serious possibility of another and quite different alternative in WP planning, i.e. for early and massive use of nuclear weapons. However, this possibility is not even mentioned in the Report.

In this context, critics express surprise that even though there are footnote references (p. 42, 324) to some of the published articles discussing the findings in GDR archives about planning for nuclear war (RꟂluth, Heuser), there is not even the slightest hint of the issue they actually deal with. In addition, there is no reference to the only study of this issue from a specifically Swedish perspective, published 1997 by a well-known expert.[5] Nor is there any mention of our PHP or the numerous WP documents published on its website shedding light on the nuclear issue. In the same vein, no account is given of the points made, stressing the nuclear dimension in WP planning, by one of the invited Swedish participants in a seminar for Cold War experts arranged by the Investigator, even though these points were repeated in a paper submitted to the Investigator a few days after the seminar.[6]

Critics argue that if early and massive use of nuclear weapons was in fact a crucial alternative in Soviet and WP planning even after the change in declaratory doctrine, this would undercut the notion that increased emphasis on conventional scenarios for major wars on the continent in Soviet planning enhanced the importance of sea transports along the Baltic coastline. Anyhow, critics feel, one is bound to be worried by the Investigator's hushing up of evidence supporting alternative interpretations of WP planning which have after all been much discussed in international discourse.

One critic expressed his reservations in somewhat different terms. In his view, during the last decades of the Cold War neither the West nor the Soviet Union disclosed their ultimate intentions about the character of a future major war. They both planned continuously and systematically for conventional as well as nuclear scenarios, well aware that the outcome would be the result of unpredictable interaction between them. Consequently, to his mind, any attempt to identify trends in the balance conventional/nuclear war intentions will remain more or less futile. This is even more so for attempts to use such perceived trends as a basis for further conclusions, in the way the Investigator does.

(2) Transports by Sea in Peace and War. Further, questions have been asked about the facts regarding Soviet planning for seaborne troop transports in the Baltic in time of war, and about West German perceptions of such planning. There are, of course, some indications of increased resources devoted to sea transports in the early 1980's (such as the building of railway ferry terminals in Klaipeda and Mukran). But critics argue that these may well have been built mainly for transports before a shooting war, as the Soviets were well aware of the extreme vulnerability both of their ports and their ships in a war-fighting situation.

Of course, critics concede, the Soviets faced formidable difficulties in moving their second echelon troops to the Central front. Hence the option of convoys along the Baltic coast must be assessed in this broader perspective, but with due regard to the drawbacks of exposed sea transports. There is no attempt at such analysis in the Report. Nor is there any discussion of West German assessments of Soviet planning in this respect. After all, the Investigator's perspective hinges upon West German submarines focusing on fighting Soviet convoys and preparing for the use of Swedish waters for that purpose. Hence one is entitled to expect, in the view of these critics, some reference to (if not analysis of) the many different tasks presumably assigned to West German submarines in the Baltic Sea, and the rank of priority which may have been given to fighting convoys along the Baltic coast.

(3) Location of Incursions. Other critics fault the Investigator for keeping silent on an issue which they regard as fundamental, namely where the foreign submarines actually entered Swedish territorial waters. Any appraisal of the motives for incursions on the part of potential violating powers must start, they argue, by analyzing the usefulness for the assumed purpose of the points in Swedish waters where the incursions occurred. To quote an extreme illustration: submarine incursions in the Gulf of Bothnia can hardly be seen as motivated by a need to explore staging areas for attacking convoys in the Baltic Sea. However, the Investigator does not provide any information on the location of those incursions which he considers to be either established beyond doubt or supported by such evidence that they "should be taken seriously", as he puts it.

According to the Secretariat of the Investigator, in response to my query, this is because the Investigator has simply accepted the conclusions in this respect presented by the previous 1995 Commission on the submarine issue.[7] This would in fact have been in accordance with the assignment given to him by the Government, in which he was told not to examine to what extent there had in fact occurred incursions, as this issue had already been clarified, but focus on Swedish decision-making.

However, critics reject this rebuttal on two accounts. First, the 1995 Commission also did not specify the location of incidents reported, presumably because there was no need for that in their case, in view of their decision not to engage in any attempt to analyze the security policy aspects of the incursions or to discuss possible motives for them. Hence, readers wishing information on this point will find no guidance in the 1995 report except for a few incursions they chose to analyze in depth.

Second, the Investigator makes it clear that while the 1995 report has been "a self-evident point of departure", he has been able to collect "a great amount of information throwing new light on incidents", enabling him to make "a systematic scrutiny on a broader basis than was available to the 1995 Commission" (pp. 333-4). Consequently, critics observe, when giving an account of the conclusions of the 1995 commission, the Investigator avoids any endorsement (pp. 219-20). And whereas he states that the 1995 Commission confirmed nine incursions established beyond doubt, for his own part he prefers to be vague. In his view, the number of such incidents is "less than ten", a formula which - in the view of the critics - may indicate anything between nine and five. The Investigator adds that "about thirty" incidents have such substance that the possibility of incursions "should be taken seriously". As critics note, the 1995 Commission did not use any category denominated in this way. They presented much higher numbers of "probable incidents" as reported by the Supreme Commander, but without giving any assessment of their own with regard to their validity.

Thus, critics conclude, the Investigator has made his own judgment concerning both established incidents and those "to be taken seriously", but without telling the public where they occurred, still less discussing the usefulness of these locations for the purpose associated with West German submarines in his perspective (or for other purposes on the part of other powers).

A related point has been made by Mr. Carl Bildt, Prime Minister in 1991-94 and a member of the first 1983 submarine commission. He emphasizes that West German submarines preparing to hide in Swedish territorial waters would hardly have sought out naval base areas close to the coast. Rather they would have preferred isolated parts of Sweden's extensive archipelagoes, far away from the attention and surveillance of the Swedish navy. But as the incursions were clearly directed towards waters of importance for Swedish defence, Mr. Bildt argues, the West German hypothesis is very difficult indeed to reconcile with known facts.[8]

(I would have preferred not to identify by name any of those who have contributed comments on the Report. In small countries where everyone knows everyone else, comments attributed to individuals tend to prejudge the reader's mind in one direction or the other, in particular when the issue at hand is emotionally charged (an important consideration for me, as the present paper is intended for Swedish readers as well as the international PHP audience). However, Mr. Bildt and a few other critics are identified by name in this paper, since they have published their comments. Normally, though, I have opted for anonymity.[9] In many cases, a decisive additional reason is that those contributing comments have asked not to be referred to by name, or I have myself undertaken to withhold names in order to promote an uninhibited discussion.)

(4) Neutrality. Further, Mr. Bildt has noted that the Investigator at one point refers to the ideal possibilities for "protected basing" offered by Swedish archipelagoes (p. 44). Thus, he presumes, the Investigator may have in mind a situation in which not only West German submarines would hide in Swedish waters, but bases be established in the form of West German store ships taking refuge in Swedish waters to service the subs. This, however, would raise much wider issues concerning the credibility of Swedish neutrality. The basing of such big ships, easy to discover, in Swedish archipelagoes could only occur with Swedish permission, which could only be given if Sweden had joined the war on NATO's side. In Mr. Bildt's view, it is unlikely that the West Germans would have banked on Sweden's willingness to enter the war, or that the Soviets would have feared such a situation. Sweden's policy of neutrality was probably credible, Mr. Bildt believes, in the sense that it was taken for granted that Sweden would not enter the war of its own volition.[10]

(5) Interaction. In this context, there is another scenario emphasized by other critics. The West Germans may have assumed that Sweden would be drawn into the war very early as a result of Soviet actions. In that case they would have had every reason to reckon that their naval forces would be welcome in Swedish archipelagoes to join the Swedish navy in fighting the common enemy. Then again both their submarines and their store ships could expect to draw on full assistance from the Swedes. But this would seem to obliterate any need for politically hazardous peacetime incursions into Swedish waters.

To the Soviets, these critics point out, such a scenario must have seemed unsettling. On the one hand, the Soviets fully appreciated the precarious situation of the West German naval forces in the Baltic, not least the submarines, with regard to basing options once the WP offensive thrust had captured their Kiel bases close to the GDR border. On the other hand, the Soviets must have feared that this advantage would be lost or reduced if Swedish archipelagoes could be used by West German store ships and submarines, and if Swedish naval bases were to become available for West German naval forces generally. Knowing their own war planning with regard to Sweden, and always suspecting Swedish covert cooperation with the West, they might have considered it necessary to prepare for preventive strikes at Swedish naval bases in order to incapacitate the Swedish navy before it joined forces with the West Germans, and take control of as much of Swedish archipelagoes as possible.

According to these critics, one of the most serious deficiencies of the Report is its failure to discuss the possibility of such an interaction by West German hopes and Soviet fears and planning with regard to Swedish territory.[11]

(6) Deliberate Destruction. The Investigator makes a short reference to the conclusions of the 1995 Commission with regard to established damages on submerged military materiel "showing advanced and planned destruction" in connection with foreign underwater activity (p. 220). He adds, however, that the Commission did not specify in how many cases or at which locations such destruction occurred. Critics point out that in fact five examples are described in detail in the 1995 Commission's report[12], none of which is mentioned in the Report. They see this as indicative of the Investigator's scant interest in deliberate destruction, and they question the reasons why he has not discussed the likely source of this destruction (directed, i.a., against submarine nets at great depth).[13]

(7) Focus on Germany. Other critics assume that some incursions may well have been performed by submarines from NATO countries in order to find out more about, i.a., new Soviet systems and techniques presumably used in Swedish waters, but perhaps intended for wartime operations in crucial NATO base areas. Further, they consider "NATO" in this context as synonymous with the United States. They note, however, that while there are four references to "West German" submarines in the Investigator's Summary, there is not a single one indicating any awareness that the US would be a much more likely source of such reconnaissance operations. They regard this as a disturbing sign of the Investigator's fixation with his chosen perspective.

Other critics of the Report disagree sharply on this point, though. They stress that these kinds of submarine activities in the Baltic Sea, with its unique characteristics, require extensive exercise and training as well as resources for maintenance, i.e. a long-term presence of which there is no evidence as far as the US is concerned. This does not mean, however, that these critics are any more convinced by the Investigator's West German hypothesis.

* * *

In my view, several of the critical points recorded above are highly relevant, if not patently correct. The Investigator's "strategic perspective", launched with rather much fanfare, is based on observations made long ago about potential West German interest in Sweden's territorial waters.[14] These observations seem to have served as the point of departure for constructing a perspective that would make the likelihood of Western submarine incursions equal to that of Soviet incursions. However, the analysis is embarrassingly selective and superficial. While perhaps adequate as a piece published to provoke debate, it is far beneath the standards required in an official report.

We shall now turn to a number of critical points which are less focused on the strategic perspective of the Investigator but rather concern what some critics (including myself) regard as a general inclination on his part to exculpate the Soviet Union.

 

The Weight of History

Some critics have noted the Investigator's emphasis on the "permanency" of interests with regard to Swedish waters on the part of the great powers (p. 325, 327). With this in mind, they find it strange that he makes no reference to the Russian/Soviet tradition of planning preventive strikes against Sweden's naval forces. In August 1914, the Commander in Chief of the Baltic Fleet was ordered back at the last moment when setting out to present an ultimatum to the Swedish fleeet to move from Gotland to Karlskrona and keep in port there for the duration of the war. In 1916, Czar Nicholas approved plans for a preventive occupation of north-eastern parts of the Stockholm archipelago in case Sweden appeared to be on the verge of joining Germany in the war. With respect to the Soviet Union, the most ambitious planning of this nature known so far occurred in August 1940, when the Baltic Fleet designed a war game in which a number of Swedish ports would be closed by submarine and air minelaying as soon as the aggressive intention of the Swedes had been established. An analysis of this tradition, based on documents in the Russian naval archives in St. Petersburg which are now open to researchers up to 1941, was published in 1999 but has not been used.[15]

Other critics have focused on what they see as a related bias in the account of naval warfare in the Baltic Sea during World War II. As mentioned above, the Investigator maintains that submarines of "belligerent states" sometimes used Swedish archipelagoes as "safe havens" during these years. However, he does not present any documentation to support his assertion, and no example of such German or Soviet activity has been recorded in the fairly extensive literature on the matter.

A former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Leif Leifland, who is also an acknowledged expert on Sweden's World War II history, made this point in an article which he and I published in January 2002.[16] We added that the Investigator's version of events can only serve to prepare the reader for the idea that (West) German submarines simply picked up a World War II  tradition when preparing in the 1980's to use Swedish waters as safe havens.

We saw a similar bias in the Investigator's passing over in silence of the Swedish-Soviet political controversies in 1942, as Soviet submarines entered Swedish waters and torpedoed five Swedish merchant fleet ships on their way to or from Germany. This is the only previous example in Sweden's modern history of a foreign power violating Swedish territorial waters but categorically rejecting the evidence of its responsibility presented by the Swedish government. In 1942, the Prime Minister first brought up the matter with Mme Kollontay, the Soviet envoy to Stockholm, and when there was no result, notes of protest were delivered. However, Swedish proofs  - for instance parts of Soviet-made torpedoes - were denounced by Moscow as faked by the Germans in order to provoke Swedish-Soviet tensions. It was only some thirty years later, in the early 1970's, when Soviet naval officers began publishing memoirs of their war-time exploits in Swedish waters, that the truth was finally admitted by the Soviets.[17]

There may be room for different views as to the relevance of Soviet behaviour in World War II when judging Soviet behaviour in the 1980's. However, to suppress entirely all information on the Soviet regime's previous handling of foreign policy problems arising out of submarine incursions into Swedish waters does indicate, in our view, a worrying selectivity with regard to evidence.

Thus, while stressing the permanency of great power interest in Swedish waters, the Investigator does not display much interest of his own to report indications of such great power attention in the fairly recent past. Even when approaching the first decades after 1945, this reticence is maintained. There is no account of indications of incursions in the 50's, 60's and 70's (admittedly less intrusive than later). Nor are we told anything of the discussion in the literature about the way in which Soviet planners in the Baltic fleet may have applied, in the early postwar period,  the experiences acquired during the fleet's impressive submarine operations in Finnish archipelagoes in World War II, now that they could prepare for the future on the basis of the Soviet Union's position as the dominating power in the Baltic sea.[18]

 

Domestic Structure

Some critics have called attention to a point made in the 1996 Foreign Ministry analysis of submarine incursions. This report stressed that one has to consider the nature of political systems in potential violating powers. Transgressions of international law by incursions into the territory of another state could have quite different political consequences for those responsible in Western democracies than in WP countries. Also, in a democratic system there are greater possibilities to control intelligence services and armed forces, and to cut short activities that go beyond those authorized by the government. According to the Foreign Ministry analysis, one should note that for historical reasons, civilian control of the military is particularly well developed in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Investigator presents a fairly extensive account of the 1996 Foreign Ministry report (pp. 324-326) but fails to mention its views in this respect. There are critics who object to this omission and argue that when assessing the likelihood that a certain power would take the risk of violating the sovereignty of a European neutral, the political system of the power in question must surely be taken into account. The Soviet regime had no scruples and could easily handle its own "public opinion". With regard to Western democracies, one has to consider the kind of sanctions that would hit those - in the military or in government - who turned out to have authorized such incursions if they were to be exposed. It is hard to believe, these critics add, that Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor in 1981-82 (the years of intense international attention to the submarine incidents) would not have made sure with considerable forcefulness that the Bundesmarine toed the line. However, as noted by these critics, there is nothing in the Report to indicate that the Investigator attaches any importance to such considerations. They are neglected without discussion.

 

Rungs of Ambition

The 1996 Foreign Ministry report contained a list of ten possible kinds of military motives for incursions into Swedish waters. The inventory starts with intelligence, training, and testing of improved submarine technologies. It ends with preparing for destruction of Swedish naval resources or for liquidation of key functions in Swedish defence and society, either in an initial or a later phase of a war on the central European front. Obviously, the last stages represent ambitions which might be a prelude to a major invasion, aiming at occupying or subduing Sweden. In view of the limited number of established submarine incursions, however, the Foreign Ministry report thought it unlikely that the incursions were part of preparations for an extensive debarkation of special forces.

The Investigator, having made clear his view of possible motives for Soviet incursions (cf. p. 2 above), agrees with the last point (p. 326). He adds that in his view it is dubious indeed whether the incursions can be seen as preparations for landing of diversionary units, as these are normally precursors of a major invasion. However, he does not want to exclude the possibility that a limited use of diversionary units might have been called for in order to sabotage Swedish radar and signal intelligence stations and the Swedish air defence.

One commentator remarked - and I agree - that these assessments of 1996 and 2001 bring up at least four crucial bones of contention in Swedish submarine debates over many years.

(1) Number of Incursions. The 1995 Commission, mainly consisting of scientists, chose to give detailed accounts of certain incidents where in their view the material made it possible to draw definitive conclusions on technical grounds such as tracks on the seabed, sonar contacts and magnetic indications. With regard to optical observations by navy personnel, coast guards, fishermen or the general public, they concluded that there had been credible observations, but that is was not possible in retrospect to decide, on the basis of such evidence, whether or not a violation had actually taken place in a particular case. To single out a specific number of credible optical observations and make a clear distinction between these and other observations was not considered possible.[19]

Whether the Investigator, for his part, has felt able to select a number of such optical observations is not clear. Some of the incidents he classifies as "should be taken seriously" ("about thirty") may indicate such a selection, but he does not say so explicitly (cf. pp. 288-289).

On this point, one of the members of the 1995 Commission was not willing to subscribe to the majority's statement that credible observations had indeed occurred. She took the view that the optical observation material was simply not valid.[20] Several experts have made an entirely different assessment, however. They find it strange to disregard for instance observations made by two or three people at different locations along the path of an intruding sub, sightings reported immediately and independently, and backed up by information on e.g. characteristic conning tower and periscope profiles not known to the public.

To this ambiguity should be added yet another one, according to several critics. As Mr. Bildt has put it, no one can believe that the figures produced by adding the established incursions and those to be taken seriously in the Investigator's view, represent all operations by foreign submarines in Swedish waters. It is in the very nature of submarine operations that only some of those which were carried out in Sweden's extensive waters were observed by attentive individuals or indicated by the imperfect and spotty technical systems in place. "Even with conservative estimates of the ratio of total to observed events, a pattern of persistent and large-scale incursions emerges", Mr. Bildt concludes.[21] In the view of these critics, this is a point which has to be addressed in any serious investigation but is ignored in the present Report.

(2) The "numbers" issue is related to the question of home bases and facilities for intruding submarines. The greater the number of incursions, the greater the need for a fairly substantial organization to run the operations. The officer in the Swedish navy in charge of the talks between Swedish and Russian naval experts in 1992-95, Commodore Emil Svensson, observes that his Russian colleagues agreed that the intruding subs must be based in the Baltic Sea. Further, they never argued that there were any such facilities on West Germany's coast strip on the the Baltic Sea. For his own part, Commodore Svensson asks whether anyone can seriously think that an organization capable of more than ten years' of intrusions into Swedish waters could be based on the narrow West German Baltic coast without being tracked down by either Soviet or Swedish intelligence. [22] However, there is no discussion of this point in the Report.

(3) The "numbers" issue is, of course, also related to the question of purpose. The 1983 submarine Commission, which determined that the Soviet Union was the only credible source of nearly all incursions, considered them to be "part of preparatory stages in military operational planning", without specifying the scope of the ultimate operation. This is the position adhered to by the only member of this Commission who is still an active participant in the discussions, Mr. Bildt. His point in recent debates has been that any military action against Swedish territory by a foreign power was a threat to Swedish security by dramatically reducing the chances that Swedish neutrality would succeed.[23] Thus, he has preferred to leave open the question of the likely scope of intended war-time operations.

Many other participants in the debates of the 1980's, however, interpreted the incursions as the final proof that the Soviet Union in fact intended to launch the kind of major invasion of southern Sweden which was the basis for Swedish defence planning during the Cold War decades. Thus the submarine issue became part of a traditional bone of contention bearing on defence policy and defence budgets, including the fight for resources among the services. While these aspects do not figure prominently in the Investigator's report, and have not been much talked about in recent discussions, it is my impression that they still influence the way in which the issue of submarine incursions is perceived. In this context, it seems to me that consensus among experts is moving towards the view that the Soviets in the 1980's simply did not have the resources to launch a major invasion of southern Sweden except under very special circumstances.[24]

(4) There is the related issue of the strategic context for aggression against Sweden. Here, the Investigator has come in for criticism with respect to his emphasis on the Baltic Sea dimension and neglect of the North Atlantic one. Critics concede that the Investigator does mention the increased importance of the North Atlantic areas bordering on Scandinavia when describing Sweden's security environment. Otherwise, however, and particularly in his conclusions, he refers only to "the Baltic Sea's growing strategic role".

Mr. Bildt, for his part, argues that it might have been possible in the 1950's to discuss the Baltic Sea as an issue in and of itself, but that at the end of the 1960's it became clear that the issue was one of the increased importance of the entire North European region between northwestern Russia and the crucial points of intersection in the North Atlantic. This perspective was unanimously adopted as a basis for the reports of Sweden's parliamentary Commissions on Defence both in 1979 and 1985, and in Mr. Bildt's view, there is no evidence to the contrary today.[25]

Obviously, if this is so, the submarine incursions have to be seen in a wider strategic context than that of the Baltic Sea as a flank to the Continent. For instance, some experts, who share the view of the sceptics with regard to Soviet capabilities to launch a major invasion of southern Sweden, but subscribe to the strategic perspective outlined by the Commissions on Defence rather than that introduced by the Investigator, believe that submarine operations may have been part of a much more chilling design than any presented in public debate at the time.

They envisage demands for major military concessions from the Swedish government in order to facilitate an attack on Norway, and backed up by threats of nuclear strikes at Sweden's main cities. They believe that such nuclear blackmail would have been preceded by a wide variety of surprise sabotage actions by special forces, some of them debarking by submarines, knocking out crucial installations and increasing a sense of helplessness among the Swedish leadership. If intimidation did not have the effect intended, and it were considered impossible to effectuate the threat of nuclear strikes at this stage because of wider concerns, it would have been imperative to use all available means to knock out Sweden's air and naval resources. A coalition of Sweden's and West Germany's air and naval forces would constitute a significant threat to Soviet supremacy in the Baltic Sea as well as a major impediment to an attack on Norway and Denmark.

These critics do not claim that their scenario can be "proved" any more than others, with today's limited access to crucial source material. But it serves to illustrate, they feel, the kind of more openminded analysis, not restricted by a Baltic Sea focus, which the present Report does not provide.

 

Soviet Planning

When discussing Soviet military priorities in the event of a major war in Europe, the Investigator emphasizes that documents on WP war planning now available support the thesis that attacking Denmark was the priority (pp. 321-22). He adds that he has been in touch with international researchers in order to ascertain whether any plans for direct attack on Sweden have been discovered in WP military archives. "No trace of such plans have been found."

However, the Investigator does not mention that no relevant archives have been opened in the dominant WP power which would have been responsible for the planning of an attack on Sweden in this period, that is the Soviet Union. Nor does he mention that documents on WP war planning so far available originate in states (chiefly the GDR and Poland) which for obvious reasons would have had hardly any role in an operation against Sweden. This point was made by Ambassador Leifland and myself in a follow-up to the article mentioned above. We added that the highly qualified Swedish professor of history whom the Investigator cites as his source, had in fact pointed out when consulted that no Soviet relevant documents have been declassified. [26] This crucial piece of information was, however, ignored in the Report.

It is of course a truism that it is only in the future, when Soviet military and intelligence archives have become available, that we may get definitive answers about the role of the Soviet Union in submarine incursions into Swedish waters, and about Sweden's role in Soviet war planning. Meanwhile, it is bound to raise concern, we felt, when an official investigation suggests that evidence in the latter respect is now at hand.

 

Scrutiny and Selection of Sources

After it became known that I had been asked to write this overview for the PHP website, several Swedish and Finnish researchers in contemporary history got in touch with me to point out what they regard as nonchalance in the Investigator's perusal of sources consulted, and also in his effort to locate source material of importance for his subject matter. In most cases, I have not had time to check the validity of these criticisms and will thus leave them aside. In two cases, however, I am satisfied that there is substance in the criticisms.

The diary of Sweden's Supreme Commander in 1979-86, Lennart Ljung, is a type-written, easy-to read source, much used in the Investigator's account. In a diary entry of August 1985 during an official visit to Finland, General Ljung notes that his Finnish colleague, General Valtanen, informed him on his own initiative that there had been one or possibly two incursions by foreign subs in Finnish waters in the summer. "He gave me exact data about location and time of one of these, and even asked his Chief of Staff General Stewen to put them in writing on a piece of paper for me."

However, when dealing with submarine incursions into Sweden's neighbouring countries, including Finland, the Investigator ignores this information. He quotes a semi-official account cleared by the Finnish military for publication in 1997, in which there is no reference to any incursion in 1985, and he gives no hint of the information to the contrary conveyed to General Ljung by his Finnish colleague at the time (p. 292). For obvious reasons, the Finns were not inclined to deal publicly with the subject of incursions as long as their 1948 treaty of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union was still in force. After 1991, they have understandably not regarded it as a priority task to delve into possible  hush-ups in the past in which their military took part (or had to take part). For a Swedish investigation, however, it would seem important to bring to public knowledge any authoritative indication that the number of incursions in Finnish waters may in fact have been greater than officially admitted, and that such indications were personally conveyed to the Supreme Commander in Sweden. Thus the absence of any reference to General Ljung's diary entry seems to indicate that the Investigator has made either a superficial or a selective perusal of this source.[27]

In April 2002, a news reporter with Sweden's TV Channel 4 revealed the content of a discussion on the submarine issue in May 1983 in the Excutive Committee of the Board of the Social Democratic Party as registrered in the Committee's verbatim record. The discussion was introduced by Prime Minister Palme, and several key members of his cabinet took part. Their statements gave a most interesting insight into the reasoning of the Party leadership, and thus of the Swedish government, immediately after the publication in April 1983 of the 1982 submarine commission's report.

When the news report was brought to my attention by a university colleague and I got in touch with the Archives of the Labour Movement, it turned out that the reporter had obtained access to the record of this meeting through a mistake at the Archives and that the 1983 record remains closed under the Party's 20 years' rule. Thus it would not be proper for me to discuss the implications of the quotes from the record (the accuracy of which I could not check) that the news reporter provided. However, it further turned out that the Investigator had not asked to be granted permission to consult the records for the 1982-94 period, although the regulations laid down for access make explicit reference to the competence of the Executive Committee to grant exceptions from the 20 years' rule.

It is of course conceivable that the Investigator did not know about the existence of these complete verbatim records, even though they have often been referred to in publications of independent researchers as well as in at least one previous official investigation of Sweden's post-war security policy. If ignorance of a key source to Sweden's modern history is indeed the explanation, there is reason for concern about the thoroughness of the Investigator's effort to locate relevant sources for his Report. As things now stand, one can only hope that the Investigator, when preparing his forthcoming report on Sweden's security policy in 1969-89, will care to take a look at the 1969-82 records and ask for access to the 1983-89 records.

 

Creation of Source Material

From the point of view of the research community, there is one major advantage with official investigations into important events in the recent past. Many of those who took an active part in these events are more inclined to agree to be interviewed in such an "authorized" context than when approached by independent researchers. Also, they normally take greater care to ransack their minds and provide as honest answers as they are able to. Thus, at least in the Swedish experience, records of interviews conducted by official investigations and preserved in their archives have become important sources for research in contemporary history. When standard rules for record-keeping of interviews in historical-political research have been observed, these investigations have in fact created an invaluable new source material.

The present Report states that the Investigator personally conducted almost a hundred interviews which produced a great amount of new information, "signifying that the perception of the submarine incursions has been modified" (pp. 28, 333). This sounds very promising indeed with respect to the historical importance of the source material created. Thus it is with some alarm that one reads the Investigator's footnote statement that "a precondition for these interviews has been that no record should be kept for the archive" of his Investigation (p. 28).

However, when Ambassador Leifland and I expressed surprise and dismay in the article referred to above, the Investigator asserted that his statement was only intended for cases where the interviewees asked that no record should be kept, which in fact never happened.[28] From a research point of view one can, of course, only feel relieved that the Investigator apparently never applied his intended modus operandi. Hopefully, future researchers will find that appropriate records of interviews have indeed been kept in the archive of the Investigation.[29] Still, especially in the context of Swedish legislation, it is worrying that an official investigator has been prepared to receive important factual information from anonymous sources[30] without preserving any record, and has not expressed any awareness of the risks inherent in the course of action which he contemplated and defended publicly.[31] If put into general practice by similar investigations, it would mean that their accounts could be influenced by undocumented sources, and thus made unavailable for checking and control, by today's journalists as well as by tomorrow's researchers.

 

Analysis of Decisions

The Government asked the Investigator to analyze Sweden's political and military reactions to the submarine incursions from 1980 until today and evaluate measures taken and how they were decided upon. Opinions differ about the way the Investigator has performed this assignment. Some commentators are irked by the supremely self-confident tone in which, they feel, the Investigator passes judgement on Prime Ministers as well as everyone else. A more common view[32], however, is that his very subjectivity, and the verve with which large parts of the report are written, make for enjoyable reading. As for substance rather than style, commentators display similar differences of opinion in a number of respects.[33] Two of them will be reported here.

(1) Selection of Decisions. The Investigator provides detailed information on Sweden's political and diplomatic handling of the submarine issue from the "Whiskey on the Rocks" in October 1981 to the Government's official note of protest to the Soviet Union in April 1983 and its immediate sequel. He proceeds to stress (p. 339) that Sweden faced a crucial dilemma as to the best way of putting an end to the incursions. In his view, the Prime Minister at the time, Mr. Olof Palme, chose to try and restore Soviet confidence in Sweden's policy of neutrality, whereas the Moderate party in opposition seemed to wish to make Swedish policy less dogmatic with regard to neutrality.

As pointed out by several critics, the Investigator does not tell us anything, however, about the numerous Swedish-Soviet exchanges on submarine-related issues during the following years, as the Social Democrats stayed in power under Mr. Palme and his successor in 1984-91. These critics, including Mr. Bildt (a key participant in the debates during these years), observe that the nature of these exchanges was quite controversial at the time. The debates were stirred by unauthorized leaks of secret documents purporting to illustrate these talks, and by new incursions indicating to the public at large that the chosen method had not been successful.

Those who recall these disputes are puzzled as to the reasons why there is not any description of (not to say attempt to analyze) the Swedish-Soviet conversations in the 1984 to 1991 period. They feel that there should now be scope for dispassionate appraisal of the mix of political and military measures that would have stood  the best chance to stop the incursions. In view of the way in which the Investigator emphasizes the importance of the basic issue - i.e., by which means does a small neutral state best impose respect for its territorial integrity on the part of an adjoing super-power? - this neglect is considered hard to understand.

The explanation offered by the Investigator is that they will be "analyzed in depth" in his forthcoming report on Sweden's security policy in 1969-1989.[34] This argument has not impressed Mr. Bildt, who notes that the Investigator has indeed thought it a good idea to deal with Swedish-Soviet exchanges during his own years as Prime Minister in 1991-94, although only with selected episodes, and in a careless manner "which is difficult to explain by sloppiness only".[35]

This is probably a reference to the Investigator's account of Prime Minister Bildt's letter to President Yeltsin in May 1994, in which he informed Mr. Yeltsin of the Supreme Commander's recent report on submarine incursions in 1993, and also told Mr. Yeltsin that in view of earlier Swedish experiences with Soviet subs, it was natural to believe that various post-Soviet structures or patterns of behavior could be responsible for these activities. However, I will not  try to convey the main points in the polemics between Mr. Bildt and the Investigator on this episode.[36] It occurred at a time when I was serving at the Prime Minister's Office, and even though I had nothing to do with the drafting of the letter to Yeltsin or indeed with the submarine issue in general,[37] I feel it is wiser not to endeavor to portray a debate about an occurrence in the office where I served.

Mr. Bildt's comment may also be intended as a hint of party-political motives, however. To that extent it shows, it seems to me, how the Investigator's way of picking political-diplomatic decisions to analyze has unfortunately breathed new life into the controversies in Swedish domestic politics surrounding his appointment in October 2000.

(2) Quality of Judgment. Among the Investigator's evaluations of Sweden's political leadership, the most controversial seems to be his criticism of Prime Minister Palme's decision in late October 1982 to appoint the Submarine Defence Commission, primarily to investigate the incursion in Hårsfjärden (a naval base area near Stockholm) which occurred in early October 1982. The Commission was chaired by Sven Andersson, a former Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party and also a former Minister of Defence (1957-73) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1973-76). Two members were prominent representatives of  the opposition parties (one of them Mr. Bildt), and two of the Social Democrats.

The Investigator states that by appointing the Commission, Mr. Palme "ceded control of the political outcome". If the government had kept to itself the political follow-up of the submarine issue, it would have been able to "prevent many of the problems which were to haunt Sweden's foreign policy in coming decades". In the Investigator's view, the Commission's report in April 1983 provided good reasons to doubt Sweden's capacity to protect its territory. Even worse, it might raise questions about the credibility of Sweden's policy of neutrality as the incursions revealed that this policy was not respected. This made "a rational approach to security and defense policies" more complicated. However, Mr. Palme and his government, elected in September 1982, would have been able "to live up to the confidence of the electorate" if he had kept the submarine issue under control. The Investigator brands Mr. Palme's decision to appoint the Commission as "an abdication of the responsibility incumbent upon the Government according to the Constitution" (pp. 151, 330, 340-41).

Mr. Bildt (not normally a supporter of Mr. Palme's policies) took issue with these judgments in his first newspaper article commenting on the Report, and has followed up his critique in later statements. He considers this decision of Mr. Palme as a responsible way of dealing with the crisis of confidence which followed upon the escape of the intruding submarine and the wide-spread rumours that the Government had ordered the military to allow the getaway to avoid provoking the Soviet Union. In his view, the appointment of a parliamentary Commission indicated that the Government wished to maintain national consensus on how to handle the intrusions, and also to secure a measure of independence for the investigation of the Government's way of dealing with the latest incursion and thus counter suspicions of a cover-up. The idea that this would be in contravention of the Constitution is, in his view, not only false but bizarre.[38]

This discussion raises at least two interesting points for political scientists. On the one hand, commentators agree that recourse to investigative commissions which include members of the opposition is an established means in Swedish politics to "clear the air" in sensitive issues where the Government is implicated. Thus, there is general consternation as to the Investigator's notion that, in Mr. Palme's case, this would run against the Constitution or constitute a betrayal of the confidence accorded to him by the people at the polls.

On the other hand, there is some understanding for the view that the Commission's chairman, Mr. Sven Andersson, enjoyed such a prestige both within his Social Democratic party and among the Swedish public at large that his assessment of the kind of evidence required to identify the power launching the incursions would be quite hard for the Government to challenge if they so wished. Also, having retired from party politics several years before, it was obvious that Mr. Andersson would be a genuinely independent investigator, making full use of an experience unrivalled in Sweden (27 years as a Minister, of which the last 19 in key positions within the security policy field). Thus, some commentators feel that the Investigator indeed has a point: the Government did lose control to a considerable extent. More importantly, most of these commentators consider that such loss of control is unfortunate in matters of national security in which the executive has to be in full command.

More common in my experience, however, is the opposite view. The ideal of "full control" may be congenial, it is argued, to people steeped in hierarchical or manipulative mindsets, but it is an outdated and even dangerous one for a society in which open debate and scope for criticism of the Government has become essential, even in matters of security policy. In this view, the engagement of independent personalities and members of the parliamentary opposition is crucial for sustaining credibility in matters of national security, especially when the Government is the object of nasty rumourmongering and the need for secrecy prevents full disclosure.

Of course, this is basically a question of political values. For some of those who take the "liberal" position, the Investigator's insistence on prime ministerial control becomes a major reason for distrusting his judgment - a more fundamental reason, in fact, than his pronouncements about violation of the Constitution.

 

Analysis of Incidents

The detailed description of various incidents, which takes most of the volume of the Report, has been commended by several commentators who feel that for the first time they have been offered a exhaustive but quite readable overview of major incursions. On the other hand, there are critics who argue that while in several cases the accounts do indeed seem to be correct, others contain errors of facts and judgment.

For my own part, I must admit that in view of the numerous misleading statements in the sections of the Report dealing with matters that can be checked, I am inclined to share the view of the skeptics. Most academic reviewers would agree, I believe, that if there are easily established deficiencies in one part of the study at hand, they tend to occur in other parts as well. However, it is not easy to check whether my skepticism is well-founded or not with respect to the analyses of incidents in the present Report. The controversies surrounding them bear on naval-technical questions which you can't judge without access to classified source material and without the assistance of experts whom you trust. Let me illustrate this point by two examples.

The first one is the role of the Navy Analysis Group established in 1980 with the task of, i.a., assessing and screening reports indicating possible submarine incursions. The Investigator states that the Group would have worked better if "broader foreign policy expertise" had been included. For instance, when dealing with the 1980 Utö incident, which introduced a new pattern of more aggressive intrusions, he suggests that "the West German alternative" should have been taken more seriously (p. 63). He refers to an alleged assessment of the Chief of the East Coast Naval Base that the West German submarine type 206 squared with the described behavior of one of the intruding subs (p. 56). This statement is rejected by Commodore Svensson, a veteran member of the Group in the 1980's, who maintains that no such assessment was made by the Chief of the Naval Base.[39] The Investigator gives no source reference to the document where the alleged assessment is to be found. Still, one would like to believe that it does exist. But the source material is classified, and even on a small precise point like this, a reviewer is unable to check the facts.[40]

Another recent illustration is the  increasingly bitter public dispute between three of the experts in the Investigator's Secretariat which erupted after the publication of their Report. The controversy has to do with the facts of one of the incidents, the 1982 Hårsfjärden incursion, which according to one member of the team, Dr. Ola Tunander, was performed by a US submarine.[41] This thesis is strongly rejected by two of his colleagues as based on conspiratorial fantasies and twisted facts.[42] I believe they are right, but the articles and rejoinders published so far are at least twice as voluminous as this paper, and even to try and convey here the controversial points would require inordinate time and space.

Thus I will focus on just one case, in which the evidence is somewhat easier to judge, and which also happens to be the most widely publicized one - that is, the "Whiskey on the Rocks", or the Whiskey class U 137 (or to the Soviets, S 363) which ran aground in the Gåsefjärden Bay close to the Karlskrona naval station in the evening of October 27th, 1981, and spent the night in frantic efforts to get free.

The Investigator states that it has come to his knowledge that next day, October 28th, the Soviet side "searched for the submarine for six hours in its designated patrolling area east of the island of Bornholm before realizing that the submarine was on Swedish territory". He further states that "this has been known to the Swedish Armed Forces ever since the incident". The Investigator refers to Swedish signal intelligence on the movements of Soviet ships and airplanes east of Bornholm, and concludes that the stranded sub had probably misreported its position back home (p. 90).

For obvious reasons, this became the news item dominating the media coverage when the Report was presented in November 2001. If the Soviets were indeed carrying out a search operation for their S 263 east of Bornholm, quite far away from the Karlskrona area, it becomes much less likely that the intrusion was in fact deliberate. And of course, as the Investigator observes, the Swedish perception of  a deliberate incursion contributed to creating the presumption that other incursions were of Soviet origin as well. Finally, the Investigator's  question why information about these results of Swedish signal intelligence were not included in the reports of the Armed Forces (p. 91) was bound to raise a lot of worrying possibilities which the media understandably picked up.

There are two critical questions which - to judge by my own experiences - come easily to mind even for civilians when discussing this part of the Report. The first one is whether the Soviets (and later the Russians) have ever invoked the purported search operation when refuting the Swedish view of a deliberate incursion rather than a navigational mistake. As one critic put it, what better proof could there be, at least for the layman, of the Soviet version than an extended search operation in the patrolling area designated for the sub? It is common knowledge that the Russians never used the argument publicly, but what about the confidential Swedish-Russian talks?

I referred the question to Commodore Emil Svensson, who stated that no reference to a search operation was made during the talks between Swedish and Russian naval experts in 1992-95. I checked with the Secretariat of the Investigator which did not deny that this was indeed so. However, my follow-up on why this information is not included in the Report did not get any reply.[43] To my mind, though, the Soviet/Russian "non-use", even in confidential talks, is in itself a fact which not only the public should have been informed about, but which also should induce grave doubts about the entire thesis of a search operation.

The second question which comes naturally to people without any military expertise is how it is possible to establish whether the Soviet airplanes and ships were in fact searching for their sub rather than doing something else. In the Investigator's account there is no information about his analysis on this point (p. 90-91). However, the question was brought up during a discussion open to the public arranged in Stockholm by the security policy section of the Royal Academy of War Sciences in March 2002. During  this meeting  -  in which the Investigator, Ambassador Ekéus, as well as Mr. Bildt took an active part  -  two points were made by Mr. Svensson.

First, Mr. Svensson disclosed that in an interview in February 2002 with a former senior officer in the Soviet Baltic Fleet, the officer informed him and two of Mr. Svensson's colleagues that when serving in the Baltiisk headquarters during the night to October 28, he was alerted at 02.00 Moscow time that submarine S 363 had run aground in Sweden. He was on board one of the ships which set out, and at 05.00 Moscow time was informed of the stranded sub's exact location close to Karlskrona. Thus, according to this former senior Soviet officer, in the early hours of 28 October there was no uncertainty on the Soviet side as to the position of the sub.

With regard to the Soviet ships and airplanes moving in the Bornholm area later that same day as monitored by Swedish signal intelligence, Mr. Svensson observed that they were not searching for the S 363. They were on a routine mission to train operations to block the advance of West German submarines, a kind of Soviet exercise often observed in the Baltic Sea. In Mr. Svensson's view, it is not hard to distinguish the typical operation pattern in this kind of mission from typical behavior in a sub rescue mission. The sub U 137/S 363 had originally taken part in the blocking exercise, but withdrew to perform a special top secret mission on Swedish territory which however did not turn out as planned.

Mr. Svensson's disclosures, presumably based on intelligence data within the Armed Forces Headquarters, were not commented upon by the Investigator. In fact, in his most recent comment on the story, he avoided any reference to a "search operation" and talked only about "Soviet air and naval movements".[44] However, according to his Secretariat in response to my question, there has been no change in the Investigator's position. Further, the Secretariat maintains that Mr. Svensson's presentation of the purpose of the Soviet air and naval movements "does not square with our facts".[45]

However that may be, it seems obvious to me that the search operation thesis requires much additional analysis to be credible, and may well prove to be entirely mistaken. As to the reasons why the Investigator chose to present his thesis in his Report, a senior official in the Ministry of Defence has given me information that may be part of the explanation. Dr. Nils Gyldén - for many years head of the Ministry's Secretariat for Security Policy and Long-Term Planning - told me that when remarking to a key member of the Investigator's secretariat that they should have checked the facts much better before including their story in the Report, and before deciding on the categorical statement in their Summary, the only answer was that they had been anxious to provide these new findings and conclusions to the media. Thus it seemed to Dr. Gyldén that preoccupation with publicity took over other considerations.[46]

 

Intelligence Service Support

The Investigator emphasizes that the Military Intelligence and Security Directorate of the Armed Forces Headquarters has "been helpful in providing pertinent and important input" to his Report. He adds that some of this material is reported for the first time in his study, but that part of this information has been impossible to publish because of secrecy considerations. However, he wishes to make it perfectly clear that "nothing of this classified information would change the assessments of this Report" (p. 29).

As pointed out to me by a retired specialist in the field, the reader is left with the distinct impression that the data provided to the Investigator in briefings by the experts in the Military Intelligence and Security Directorate back up the Investigator's account in his Report, or at least do not contradict his version. To the extent that these intelligence briefings have been submitted in writing, or have been properly recorded by the Secretariat when given orally, independent researchers will be able in due time to check the unpublished intelligence data presented to the Investigator as well as the use he has made of them. But such a check will only be allowed in a more or less distant future when the secrecy considerations have become invalid and the records have been declassified.

Thus, for some years to come, we are asked to rely on the Investigator's professionalism in his requests for relevant data and in his use of the data provided to him. According to the retired specialist who got in touch with me, this is a tall order for intelligence officers who find it hard to believe that the information presented by the Intelligence Directorate match the Investigator's assessments.

There is, of course, the possibility that the Investigator may be wrong when contending that nothing in the unpublished input from the Military Intelligence and Security Directory is of such nature as to change his assessments. In fact, there are some indications that this may be the case.

One of them is a comment by Commodore Svensson at a seminar in Stockholm in January 2002, attended by the Investigator and his Secretariat and documented by a published verbatim record. Mr. Svensson stated point blank that there is nothing in the analyses of the Navy Analysis Group which would indicate that a NATO power would be the source of any incursion. "Nor is there anything in the material of the Intelligence and Security Directorate", he continued, "and I believe I know what they have said." There was no comment on the part of the Investigator or his team to this statement[47], even though it explicitly referred to what had been said to the Investigator.[48]

Also, Mr. Bildt has made a hint of similar nature with respect to the Investigator's account of Soviet midget submarine systems. Mr. Bildt states that this account is erroneous in several key respects, adding that the Investigator "has likely got a full report of the information available and the assessments made in the Swedish intelligence service" with respect to midget submarines.[49]

However, there is yet another possibility. The Investigator's phrasing of his comment on the "pertinent and important input" received from the intelligence service may be more ingenious than an innocent reader would grasp. The subtext may in fact be the opposite to what meets the eye. The comment may be intended to imply that the information provided by the Military Intelligence and Security Directorate but which is still secret has been considered unreliable by the Investigator, and for this reason would not have changed his assessments if he had been able to refer to it. In fact, according to his Secretariat, this is how we should read the Investigator's comment.[50]

I must admit that this interpretation never occurred to me until pointed out by the Secretariat. I also have to admit, though, that it is indeed an interpretation which is grammatically possible. Thus the Investigator's wording may be regarded as a masterpiece of diplomatic obfuscation. To the cynic in me, this feat of suppressio veri and suggestio  falsi is great fun. On second thought, however, it does not increase my confidence in the Investigator's way of addressing his task.

 

The Meaning of "Evidence"

The question of criteria for defining "evidence" is, of course, a crucial one, not only when deciding the number of "established" incursions (cf. p. 14 above), but also when identifying the nationality of intruding submarines. In the latter respect, some critics fault the Investigator for constantly using concepts like "conclusive evidence", "sufficient evidence" or "direct evidence" for indentifying the Soviet Union as responsible, without any discussion of the criteria underpinning his use of these terms. A more common view, however, is that such criticism is unfair, as almost everyone else has been equally reluctant to enter into a discussion of definitions.

With regard to "conclusive evidence", one commentator reminded us that the Soviets were not at all impressed by the seemingly conclusive evidence in the form of Soviet-made torpedo parts which indicated in 1942 that it was indeed Soviet subs that were sinking Swedish merchant vessels inside Swedish waters. Moscow simply invented a story of German machinations, a story which after all could not be excluded from the realm of the possible and thus provided the requisite straw to clutch at for those who wanted to believe in Soviet innocence. Hence, according to the commentator referred to, there is no such thing as "conclusive evidence" in this kind of interstate controversy in which no police force is at hand to search and interrogate the suspect. Not even a stranded Soviet sub in a Swedish naval base area is necessarily accepted as anything more than evidence of a navigational mistake.

On the other hand, as argued by several observers, the Investigator's insistence on strict criteria (however defined) for "conclusive evidence" is in a way validated by the reviews of previously accepted evidence in the mid-1990's. These reappraisals led to a collapse of two kinds of technical evidence invoked by the Armed Forces to supplement other indications of incursions (though not to identify the nation performing them). Both the "type sound" and the "compressed cavitation effect" could be caused by biological phenomena, it turned out as techniques for analysis improved and changed the assessments of experts consulted in Sweden and abroad.

Thus the Supreme Commander had to submit a revised analysis to the Government. In his March 1994 report on submarine activities in 1993, he had stated that three established incursions had occurred, basing this conclusion on cavitation effect indications. A few months later, these indications were in effect invalid, according to reassessments by those civilian and military authorities which for many years had been involved in analyzing the sound recordings. Meanwhile, in May 1994 Prime Minister Bildt had informed President Yeltsin of the Supreme Commander's March report, suggesting that these incursions might have been performed by Soviet vessels.

While this incident illustrates possible pitfalls in deciding "established incursions", there is no agreement about conclusions to be drawn. Some commentators contend that improved methods for analyzing technical evidence are easy to predict but impossible to wait for - as impossible for the military in this case as for the courts in criminal cases. They both have to act on the basis of best available knowledge at the time.

Regarding the problem of identifying those responsible for indisputable incursions, Mr. Bildt argues that all experts agree that it is virtually impossible to establish beyond doubt the nationality of a single intruding sub. A much wider set of information and circumstantial evidence is necessary. In fact, as Mr. Bildt observes, even the Investigator seems to be moving towards this view after the publication of his Report.[51] Thus, in a statement in January 2002, the Investigator makes a distinction between on the one hand "a formal and absolute identification" and on the other "an identification of nationality based on security policy and probability considerations", a reasoning not to be found in his Report. [52]

The Investigator seems to be increasingly willing to apply the second kind of identification. Thus in February 2002 he wishes to "express definitely his belief" that the Soviet Union performed most of the incursions.[53] Presumably, this belief is related to his assertion two weeks earlier that "the Soviet Union was the state which had the strongest reasons to violate Swedish waters", an assertion which he claims to have made already in his Report [54] (without indicating, however, where such a statement is to be found, or why his Report contains a quite different assertion). In March 2002, the Investigator is convinced that there was an extensive Soviet planning for an attack on Sweden, even for an "isolated attack", i.e. not related to any war in the rest of Europe. He refers to the KGB political, technical and social espionage activities, and to the Polish and East German contributions to these endeavors. These were "crucial parts of the planning for a possible attack on Sweden". Further, the Investigator refers to documents showing Soviet preparations for a major war in Europe in which the control of the Baltic Sea "and thus also of Swedish territory" would be necessary. [55]

These statements have caused some consternation among critics of the Report as well as among those who take a more positive view of it. Obviously, the statements have no counterpart in the text of the Report and in one or two cases are in fact contrary to what the Report affirms. Most critics note the change with satisfaction, though voicing surprise at such reassessments of the Report within a few months after publication.

One of the critics emphasized, however, that while these statements certainly represent powerful examples of the kind of "security policy and probability considerations" which the Investigator began referring to in January, he has not changed his view on the fundamental issue. He still stands by a crucial qualification which he made in February 2002 when publishing his statement referred to above about Soviet responsibility for most of the incursions. He then added a critical proviso: "The problem is that we cannot show this."

As remarked by one commentator with an eminent background as a judge in Sweden, it is perfectly possible to take this view of the evidence required to "show" responsibility for incursions, but it is equally possible to take the opposite position. It all depends on which weight you assign to optical observations and, even more importantly, to circumstantial evidence and probability considerations. In domestic affairs, this is a matter for the courts to resolve, by trying to apply a set of criteria developed over time in each country. In international affairs, however, where the setting is entirely different regarding intrusive investigation of suspects, it is a matter of political judgment. And this is one of the core issues in two decades of Swedish debates, he concluded - rather perceptively, in my view.

 

Two Foreign Policy Options

Having discussed the issue of submarine incursions with a great number of people for several months, it seems to me that two schools of thought are easily discernible with regard to evidence required for identifying the nation responsible.

The first one argues that Sweden should require incontrovertible hard evidence before assigning responsibility to any state. This is perhaps even more important if the suspect is an adjoining superpower which, as we all know, entertained doubts about Sweden's neutrality because of her Western type society and the focus of her military efforts on countering threats from the East. The risks of getting bogged down in an inconclusive and drawn-out controversy with the superpower, spilling over into the relationship in general, are great. To run such risks is acceptable only when the evidence is absolute and compelling. Besides, action speaks louder than words. The build-up of Sweden's anti-submarine resources was the appropriate action.

The other school of thought emphasizes that a neutral state is bound to prevent any use of its territory by belligerent powers in time of war. Thus, to sustain the credibility of its neutrality it has to be quite touchy - more than allied states, in fact - about any peace-time infringement of its territorial integrity. This is particularly so if there are risks that an adjoining superpower intends to enforce silent acceptance of its peace-time operations in the neutral's territorial waters. The only way for the neutral to impose respect for its integrity is to state clearly and publicly its conclusions with regard to responsibility on the basis of wider considerations than technical evidence. Especially when a stranded sub has established for the whole world that the super-power neighbor is no stranger in Swedish waters, clear language is called for. In this way, credibility is sustained, and some political cost may be imposed on the superpower. Military measures are indispensable, of course, but likely to be even moderately effective only after many years.

I am not saying that anyone has defined his position in exactly those terms; they are no more than my attempt to describe considerations which seem to underpin the views of the two sides. Nor am I saying that the Investigator clearly subscribes to the first school of thought. True, he censures the Government for appointing a commission in 1982 which might draw conclusions that could raise questions about the credibility of Sweden's policy of neutrality by reporting incursions which would reveal that this policy was not respected. He faults the 1983 submarine commission, and its chairman in particular, for identifying the Soviet Union as responsible for the 1982 Hårsfjärden incursion as well as others. He argues that the commission's assessments were not sufficiently reliable to provide guidance for "balanced political decisions", which made "a rational approach to security and defense policy difficult".

However, the Investigator does not spell out what such a "rational" policy would have meant in concrete terms. It seems safe to assume, though, that it would have avoided any identification of the state responsible for the incursions. If this is the Investigator's view, he does not at all discuss the implications of such a policy for Soviet-Swedish relations. To illustrate this point, I would like to convey a counterfactual scenario as sketched by several critics roughly like this.

Moscow knew, of course, the facts of the incursions as well as the conclusions drawn with respect to their origin by most Swedes, including the diplomatic, military and political elites. If Moscow knew that we knew but were not prepared to speak out, would they really think that this was because the Swedes needed "direct evidence"? Would the Soviets not rather, given their mindset, conclude that Swedish reticence was due to fear, and that the Swedes were displaying a tempting receptivity to pressure?

In my view, the point is not whether this particular scenario is likely. The point is that possible consequences for Swedish-Soviet relations of the course of action ostensibly recommended by the Investigator should have been discussed and analyzed in his Report.

* * *

At this point, I think more than enough examples have been recorded of the Report's deficiencies, as clearly established or as plausibly argued. Obviously, I have not hesitated to report even the most damning criticisms. The only type of arguments I have chosen to exclude is ad hominem speculation on ulterior motives on the part of those who wrote the Report (or those who have criticized it), and diverging contentions as to whether the Report has given adequate credit or not to previous studies by independent researchers.

With regard to the defects registered, they seem to fall into three broad categories: selectivity, superficiality, and sloppiness. It is true that the instances of superficial analysis and sloppy accounting of facts almost invariably turn out to have one common denominator. They tend to make the Investigator's chosen security policy perspective more plausible by excluding considerations and facts which might support alternative interpretations. Thus it may be argued  that nearly all defects recorded in this paper should in fact be subsumed under the single heading of selectivity. However, this will not be my assumption as I now turn to likely reasons for what has happened.

 

The Format of the Investigation

Some of the unfortunate features of the Report may be due to pressure of time. In October 2000, the Investigator was assigned the task of exploring two quite substantial and complex subjects of Sweden's contemporary history - the issue of submarine incursions since the early 1980's and Sweden's security policy in general in 1969-89 - within eighteen months. This deadline was later extended but still called for the two reports to be finalized within two years.[56] This would have been a tall order even for a professional researcher and seasoned manager of research teams. For a retired diplomat with no previous research experience it is, of course, even harder. If in addition he chooses to accept two or three other concurrent assignments, the result is pretty much inevitable.[57]

Another reason for the shortcomings is the unique setup of this investigation. For official inquiries of important events in Sweden's contemporary history, there are normally two kinds of arrangements. Either a commission of several members with different background and experience, some of them professional researchers. [58] Or a one-man investigator, supported by a team of professional researchers as experts. [59] In the Swedish system, both alternatives mean that if a commission chairman or an investigator seems inclined to turn a deaf ear to critique and advice from co-members or researchers, these have recourse to a potent deterrent: they are free to publish dissenting views as attachments to the report. Of course, as everyone knows these ground rules, a consensual approach is part of the system.

In the present case, however, the Investigator chose not to ask the Government to provide him with support of experienced researchers.[60] While this gave him full control of his Report, it meant that he did not get professional checking of his drafts. As anyone with research experience would agree, critical examination of drafts is where serious checking begins. [61]

The absence of qualified researchers may also explain why the Investigator has had difficulties in tackling the problem of objectivity, i.e. resist the temptation of selectivity. Admittedly, this is a particularly tough requirement in this case. All Swedes who take an interest in foreign and security policy tend to have formed long ago their views on the East-West conflict, on Swedish-Soviet relations and on the issue of submarine incursions.[62] Thus, while it is never easy to attain the required degree of objectivity, in this case there are special reasons why pluralism and independent minds would have been called for as a way to keep in check the inclinations to subjectivity which may tempt us all.

Concluding Remarks

Each country has its own way to deal with contentious issues in its recent past. In Sweden, as indicated above, when public attention is drawn to an issue in which the Government at the time was implicated, the method to clear the air for today's Government is to use a classic instrument in Swedish public life, i.e. to establish a Commission or an Utredning, the report of which is published in a prestigious series established in 1922, Statens Offentliga Utredningar (SOU). To the extent that reports on such subject matters have retained their reputation for integrity and thoroughness, it is because they have lived up to standards which are in fact nearly identical to those required for research in contemporary politics at our universities.[63]

I feel rather sure that official investigations of controversial events in the recent past will prove indispensable for Swedish governments in the future as well. There will continue to emerge indications of additional skeletons in the cupboard, the public will get concerned, and something will have to be done to establish the facts reasonably soon and in a credible way. Also, I take a more positive view than many (or most) of my academic colleagues with respect to the value of official investigations from a research point of view.[64] At the same time, I am of course aware that this is a delicate instrument. It might rapidly loose the credibility accumulated over many years if one or two reports were to prove substandard, or if personalities who were themselves involved in the events they investigate take on the task of evaluating their own activities in the past.[65]

This, however, is a purely Swedish problem. For an international audience of Cold War researchers, the crucial question is, of course, to what extent the issue of submarine incursions in Sweden in the 1980-92 period has finally been elucidated as much as is possible under current restrictions of access to relevant source material. To this question, there is regrettably only one answer. This has not been achieved.

While the Investigator's post-publication backtracking has provided some balance to his security policy perspective, no new version, integrating these insights into his text, has been published so far. And this is only one of the numerous revisions required. Thus, the situation is aptly indicated, I believe, by a remark at the end of a seminar on the Report arranged in January 2002 by the Investigator and the Crisis Management Research and Training Program in Stockholm. The Chairman of the seminar, representing the research side of the table, concluded that this Report will not be a summing up, but an incentive for another investigation in the future.[66] Meanwhile, I hope that the present survey will contribute to identifying items on the agenda for such an investigation, not least by prompting comments from others, in Sweden as well as internationally.

 

KRISTER WAHLBÄCK taught international relations at the University of Stockholm in 1964-76, joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1976 as a policy planner, served in London and Helsinki in 1984-91, and was one of Prime Minister Carl Bildt's security policy advisors in 1992-94. Since 1994 he has been an is Ambassador at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Adjunct Professor of International Politics at the University of Umeå.

 

Notes

[1] This conclusion is further backed up by the Investigator's statement that "in essential respects, the motives for the incursions have been fairly evenly divided between East and West (p. 335, not included in the Summary). - However, the Investigator's Secretariat considers that the sentences quoted above indicate a "nuance" which I have failed to see (seminar of 18 September 2002, cf. footnote 7).

[2] "Den främmande undervattensverksamheten på svenskt territorium under perioden 1980-1995 sedd ur ett säkerhetspolitiskt perspektiv" (Foreign Submarine Activities on Swedish Territory in a Security Policy Perspective). Mimeo. 78 pp. Appendix to Government Decision 30 March 2000. Available in Swedish only.

[3] Perspektiv på ubåtsfrågan. Hanteringen av ubåtsfrågan politiskt och militärt. SOU 2001:85. Stockholm: Fritzes, 2001. Available at http://forsvar.regeringen.se/propositionermm/sou/. A full translation in English is expected to be published.

[4] Unfortunately, no professional reviews have so far appeared in any of the scholarly periodicals in the field of history, political science, international relations or military affairs. There have been a few review articles published in daily papers to which the Investigator has sometimes responded. An extensive, detailed review has been published by former Prime Minister Carl Bildt on his website, www.bildt.net. Among the seminars referred to, one was open to the public and arranged by the Royal Academy of War Sciences in March 2002, while another, set up by "The Crisis Management Europe Research Group" in January 2002 in cooperation with the Investigator and accessible by invitation only, is documented by a verbatim record. One week after the publication of the Report, a former member of the Investigator's team, Dr. Ola Tunander, published a book on the Hårsfjärden incursion in 1982 criticizing the Report's account of this incident (cf. p. 27).  Many of the points recounted in the present survey were made to me by experts in academia, in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, or in other parts of the security policy and military establishment. Comments in daily papers (in editorials or news articles) which only convey generalities without entering into the substance, are not reported here.

[5] Krister Andrén, "Om kriget kommit - Centraleuropa och Sverige i Warszawapaktens krigsplanering" (Had There Been a War - Central Europe and Sweden in Warsaw Pact War Planning), in Brobyggare. En vänbok till Nils Andrén, Stockholm: Nerenius & Santerus, 1997.

[6] Jan Leijonhielm, Dagens Nyheter, 3 February 2002, and "Det sovjetiska hotet mot Sverige: stolpar för Sovjetseminarium 22.10.2001" (The Soviet Threat Against Sweden - Talking Points for a Seminar on the Soviet Union 22.10.2001).

[7] Discussion of 24 April 2002. In this discussion, as well as in another on 10 April 2002, I asked for comments to critical points raised with me by colleagues in the Swedish research and security policy communitites. In a seminar at the Defence College in Stockholm on 18 September 2002, five members of the Secretariat attended and took an active part in the discussion of my draft to this paper. Further, I had a follow-up discussion with the Executive Secretary on 3 October 2002. I wish to thank them for their comments, which have made me drop some of the critical points put to me, or to get in touch with the critic to check again the point in question. - The title of the report of the 1995 Commission is Ubåtsfrågan 1981-1994. SOU 1995:135. Stockholm: Fritzes, 1995 (with a Summary in English).

[8] Carl Bildt, "Svar på en Sammanfattning" (Reply to a Summary), p. 5. Available in Swedish at www.bildt.net.

[9] This applies, of course, only to comments on the Report which convey views and observations that any attentive reader with a scholarly background or a knowledge in security policy could have made. I have not asked for comments which would in effect be witness accounts from people taking part in the events of 1980-1992, or which would provide factual information regarding the incursions. If such kinds of comments have nevertheless been given, they have been reported here only if the source has agreed to be identified by name.

[10] Bildt, op.cit., p. 4. - The Secretariat objects that the Investigator did not intend to suggest such a situation (seminar of 18 September 2002). In my view, though, Mr. Bildt's comment on this point is of interest regardless.

[11] The Investigator's Secretariat argues that there is a reference to this possibility on p. 44, repeated on p. 354 of the Summary (discussion of 3 October 2002). In my view, though, this one-sentence reference is to a different situation, and inadequate as a discussion even if it had in fact addressed the relevant scenario.

[12] Ubåtsfrågan, pp. 240-242, 267. - The Secretariat wants to point out that in one of these cases there is "a strong theory" that the damage was in fact caused by timber (discussion 3 October).

[13] The Secretariat argues that some cases of destruction have in fact been dealt with in the Report, referring to pp. 166-67 (discussion of 3 October 2002). When I passed on this comment to one of the critics, she said that it is correct that one case of deliberate destruction, not reported by the 1995 commission, is mentioned on these pages, but that if anything, this additional case should have made it even more important to provide a summing up analysis of deliberate destruction, including the cases reported by the 1995 commission.

[14] For a balanced account on this point, cf. Wilhelm Agrell, Bakom ubåtskrisen (Behind the Submarine Crisis), Stockholm: Liber, 1985, passim, pp. 83, 115-116, 140, 148.  - There is, of course, one instance of established West German violation of Swedish territorial waters. It occurred in 1990 outside Simrishamn, a town in the south-eastern part of southernmost Sweden, and was not registered by the Swedes, but reported by West German authorities with their apologies (Ubåtsfrågan, p. 41).

[15]   Gunnar ijelius, "Preventivanfall mot Sverige - ryska och sovjetiska marina planer 1914-1940" (Preventive Attack on Sweden - Russian and Soviet Naval Planning, 1914-1940), Tidskrift i sjöväsendet 1999:4.

[16] Leif Leifland and Krister Wahlbäck, Dagens Nyheter, 7 January 2002.

[17] Lars Ulfving, "Sjökriget Sverige-Sovjetunionen" (The Swedish-Soviet Naval War), in Bo Hugemark (ed.), Vindkantring 1942 - politisk kursändring, Stockholm: Probus, pp. 227-272, and Wilhelm Carlgren, Svensk utrikespolitik 1939-1945 (Swedish Foreign Policy 1939-1945), s. 467.

[18] For information on both points, cf. for instance Agrell, op. cit., pp. 47-50, 130.

[19] Ubåtsfrågan, pp. 271-273.

[20] Ibid., pp. 313-318.

[21] Bildt, op.cit., p. 27.

[22] Tidskrift i sjöväsendet 2002:3, p. 208.

[23] Bildt, op.cit., p. 26

[24] On the other hand, this view has been criticized as too simplistic in the sense that the Soviets tried to  get around the resource restrictions by planning for various kinds of  surprise actions aimed at subduing Sweden with a minimum of conventional forces (see section (4) below).

[25] Bildt, op. cit., pp. 3, 26.

[26] Dagens Nyheter, 16 January 2002, and interview with Prof. Carl Axel Gemzell on 5 January 2002.

[27] The Report's silence on this point is all the more remarkable as Ljung's diary note has been observed and quoted in Wilhelm Agrell, Fred och fruktan: Sveriges säkerhetspolitiska historia 1918-2000 (Peace and Fear: The History of Swedish Security Policy 1918-2000), Lund: Historiska media 2000, p. 236. This book is included in the Report's list of literature consulted, but does not seem to have been closely studied.

[28] Dagens Nyheter, 8 January 2002.

[29] This is my hope, even though the Secretariat argues that their interviews are "different" from those conducted by other commissions, and admits that some of the interview records are "summary" (discussion of 10 April 2002). Further, it is a bit worrying, from the point of view of respect for standard research rules,  that the Report does not provide any listing of persons interviewed, and that eyewitness accounts are sometimes referred to as sources of factual information without any identification of the persons in question (pp. 107, 142-143).

[30] Here it may be advisable, in order to avoid misunderstandings, to point out a distinction which should be obvious. While the use of anonymous sources for factual information is, of course, most inappropriate, in particular in an official investigation, I see no problem in my quoting in the present paper critical observations about the Report which have been put to me, without identifying the persons in question. These persons are not eyewitness reporting factual data, they are providing observations which any attentive reader could have made (cf. footnote 9). In a small country like Sweden, there are unfortunately understandable reasons why people (not only in Ministries and official agencies) may not wish to be identified as critics of an official report.

[31] In a letter to the Chancellor of Justice of 15 January 2002 , Ambassador Leifland and I argued that the modus operandi intended by the Investigator is not only most regrettable from several points of view, but in effect prohibited, in cases where the interviewee provides factual information, by Swedish legislation with regard to safekeeping of public records. We asked that this should  to be stated clearly and authoritatively by the Chancellor as a guidance for other official investigations. In his decision of 29 January 2002, the Chancellor declined to take any action, advancing juridical arguments which have since been, in my view, effectively demolished by the National Archives (letter to the Chancellor of 19 June 2002) and by a distinguished archivist, Dr. Lennart Lundquist (letters to the Chancellor of 13 March and 26 May 2002). The Chancellor has so far not replied to these letters.

[32] When referring to "a more common view", or when using similar expressions in this paper, such  estimates are, of course, only based on comments I have heard or read. I certainly do not claim that they represent any statistically valid sample of the views held by the Swedish research and security policy communities.

[33] For my own part, I think the Investigator's description of the relationship between the Government and the Supreme Commander in the context of submarine incursions provides a lot of information which may be of interest in particular for those studying civil-military relations. (Unfortunately, this Swedish practice, as it emerges from the narrative, is too subtle to be summarized here.) Also, in terms of  specific episodes, the Investigator seems to be the first to observe that Prime Minister Palme, when receiving the Soviet Ambassador in Stockholm in April 1983 to deliver a note of protest, used tougher language about Soviet responsibility in his remarks than those in the official note (p. 146).

[34] Academy of War Sciences seminar of 18 March 2002. - Another argument is advanced by his Secretariat, which contends that as the Swedish government did not in 1984-93 assign responsibility for incursions to the Soviets, there were no specific Swedish-Soviet talks on this topic in these years (seminar of 18 September and discussion of 3 October 2002). To my mind, though, the way in which the Swedish side chose to bring up the issue of respect for Sweden's territorial integrity, and Soviet reactions to this, is fundamental for an understanding of Soviet calculations at the time.

[35] Bildt, op.cit., p. 20.

[36] They are available, i.a., in Bildt, op. cit., p. 20-21, and Ekéus, Dagens Nyheter, 12 January and 3 February 2002.

[37] As I had no expertise in submarine operations, and had never served in the Soviet Union, I thought it would not be a good idea for me to be engaged in this issue, a wish which was respected.

[38] Bildt, Dagens Nyheter, 5 and 20 January 2002, and "Svar på en Sammanfattning", p. 9, 11.

[39] Interview of 7 October 2002.

[40] However, the Investigator's Secretariat feels that the present paper should have dealt much more with the analyses of incidents in the Report (seminar 18 September). I have not been told, however, how this would be feasible (except, of course, as a simple account of what is said in the Report). To my knowledge, no one among  those commenting on the Report (including myself, as stated above) has access to the classified source material on which these analyses are based.

[41] Ola Tunander, Hårsfjärden: Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot Sverige, Stockholm: Norstedts, 2001.

[42] Cf. Tidskrift i ղlogsväsendet 2002:1, 2 and 3, and Kungl. Krigsvetenskapsakademiens Handlingar och Tidskrift 2002:1 and 2002:3.

[43] Discussion of 10 April 2002.

[44] Dagens Nyheter, 29 January 2002.

[45] Discussions of 10 April and 3 October 2002.

[46] Interview of 26 July 2002.

[47] Fredrik Bynander, Ubåtsfrågan - ett symposium (The Submarine Issue - A Symposium), published by the Swedish National Defence College 2002, ISBN 91-89683-07-2, p. 25.

[48] However, the Secretariat of the Investigator perceives Mr. Svensson's comment as a statement about the absence of indications of incursions by NATO powers in the materiel of the Intelligence Directory, and emphasizes that as such, the statement is not correct (seminar of 18 September 2002, discussion of 3 October 2002). Mr. Svensson, for his part, states that when referring to "the materiel", he had in mind indications which had been assessed as reasonably reliable after analysis, and thus included in the materiel used for briefings of the Investigator. Of course, there were all sorts of reports which did not pass the test. And certainly, no one can totally exclude that minor mistakes may have been made in the screening process (interview of 28 October 2002).

[49] Bildt, op. cit., p. 25.

[50] Discussion of 3 October 2002.

[51] Dagens Nyheter, 20 January 2002.

[52] Dagens Nyheter, 12 January 2002.

[53] Dagens Nyheter, 3 February 2002.

[54] Dagens Nyheter, 12 January 2002.

[55] Svenska Dagbladet, 27 March 2002.

[56] The submarine report was published in November 2001, and the 1969-89 report is scheduled for presentation before 20 December 2002.

[57] Ambassador Ekéus was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in July 2000. In November 2000, he was elected High Commissioner on National Minorities within the OSCE, a full-time job as set up by his predecessor, former Foreign Minister  Max van der Stoel. Recently, he has been a member of the Carnegie Endowment Group which produced the report on a WMD inspection regime for Iraq presented in Washington on 12 September 2002.

[58] This is how the 1999 Commission on Sweden's Internal Security Services during the last few decades is organized. Its report will be published in December 2002.

[59] This is how the 2001 Investigation of the Swedish Foreign Ministry's handling of the Raoul Wallenberg case is organized. Its report will be published in December 2002.

[60] According to the Report's preface, the Investigator's "expert in historical science" is a Ph.D. student. A graduate student, however competent, can't be expected to possess the experience and authority required to single-handedly enforce respect for standard research rules in a setting of diplomats and civil servants.

[61] This is a view which does not seem to be shared by the Investigator. When I deplored the absence of professional researchers in his staff during an Academy of War Sciences seminar in Stockholm in which he took part, he responded by mentioning several discussions he had had with independent researchers. To my question whether they had been asked to read his drafts to the Report, he replied that "I am the one who is the Investigator".

[62] This applies, of course, in equal measure to myself as I am writing this survey, even though it is less of a problem in a paper that has no official status whatsoever and is only a review essay aimed at encouraging debate. Still, the problem should be kept in mind. This, incidentally, is why I have been anxious to secure any comments and rebuttals that the Secretariat of the Investigator has presented.

[63] In my opinion, the difference is mainly that no ambitions to add to theory or method in the discipline are expected, or indeed desired, in official investigations. On the other hand, in view of the vast resources and prominent status of official investigations, deficiencies in analysis and factual accounts in their reports will be considered more embarrassing than in academic studies. - On this point, the Investigator's team disagrees. They make a distinction between forskning (research) and utredning (investigation), arguing that one cannot ask as much of the latter as of the former (seminar of 18 September 2002). In my view, while this is true for the vast majority of investigations published in the SOU series and which propose various reforms in the public sector etc., it does not apply to those investigations which have been assigned the task to reconstruct historical events in the recent past. These do research in contemporary history and politics, and they should be judged accordingly.

[64] Admittedly, my favorable view is influenced by my experiences as expert or member of two such Commissions, headed by Chairmen of impressive competence and drawing upon a number of independent personalities as well as qualified professors and researchers: the 1992 Commission on Neutrality Policy 1949-1969 and the 1997 Commission on Jewish Assets in Sweden at the Time of the Second World War. In addition to establishing the facts in a way which has not been challenged, they opened up avenues for future researchers by identifying relevant issue areas and by arranging that large series of previously classified source material were declassified, all within two years time.

[65] This might have been a problem in the 1992 Commission on Neutrality Policy in 1949-69 with respect to two of its members. However, Ambassador Leif Leifland, Permanent Under-Secretary in 1977-82, did not serve in any relevant capacity in the decades investigated. Nor was Ambassador Yngve Möller (a member of Parliament in 1954-72 and of its Foreign Policy Committee in 1964-72) involved in any of the discussions and decisions analyzed. Even if anyone of them had in effect played some role in the events under investigation, and had tried to put themselves or their views in the best possible light in the report, the other five members of the commission would likely have provided an adequate bar to any improper influence on the text. In any event, it is obviously a major advantage to include personalities with practical experience in these kinds of commissions. However, the risks of selective analysis of events in which investigators have themselves played a role increase substantially in cases of one-man investigations, in particular if no independent researchers have been asked to serve as experts.

[66] Bynander, op.cit., p. 130 (Professor Bengt Sundelius).