Comment, by Göran R. Wallén and J.J. Widén
In October 2000, the Swedish Government appointed a special investigator to analyze the political and military conduct of the submarine issue from 1980 onwards. The Swedish ambassador to the United States, Rolf Ekéus, who was retiring in the fall of 2000, was chosen for the task. The investigator’s assignment was to describe and evaluate the manner in which the Government, the Armed Forces and other competent authorities had dealt with underwater violations of Sweden’s territorial waters since the early 1980s. The decision to appoint a special investigator was mainly caused by the remarkable statements made in April 2000 by the former US Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. In an interview aired by the Swedish Television, Weinberger stated that submarines from NATO countries had regularly tested Sweden's military preparedness and naval defence capabilities by means of intrusions into Swedish territorial waters. However, such operations had, according to Weinberger, only been carried out after agreement from Swedish authorities. From the Swedish Government’s point of view, these allegations had of course to be investigated thoroughly, since neither the Government nor the Armed Forces had ever heard of such tests. Early on in the Submarine Inquiry, Ola Tunander approached ambassador Ekéus and volunteered to participate as an expert in the inquiry. Having studied the submarine intrusions and related issues for several years, and with many contacts in the field, Tunander was one of the few civilian analysts in Sweden who had studied the subject. During the early phase of the inquiry Tunander presented, and argued in favour of, several astounding theories and speculative hypotheses. Although his assertions seemed odd and strange they had to be investigated thoroughly – such was the assignment given to the special investigator by the Swedish Government. The character of Tunander’s bold ideas demanded in fact that considerable resources and time had to be spent on investigating the basis of his theories. During most of 2001, the sources presented by Tunander in the early draft of his book were reviewed and evaluated by the inquiry (from July 2001 onwards Tunander did not participate in the inquiry). As stated in the special investigator’s official report, Perspektiv på ubåtsfrågan [The submarine issue in perspective] (SOU 2001:85), which runs to nearly 400 pages (in Swedish but with an English summary), Tunander’s allegations have been explored in depth and overwhelmingly refuted. One week after the special investigator presented his report to the Minister of Defence, in November 2001, Tunander’s book on the Hårsfjärden incident (later to become The Secret War Against Sweden) appeared on the counters of Swedish bookshops. In this book he delivered the same hypotheses and scenarios as found in his newly published article on the PHP’s website. At that time, we considered it necessary to refute his assertions, which we, as well as many others, did in several articles in the journals of The Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences (2002:1 and 2002:3) and of The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences (2002:1). In these articles we expressed our astonishment that a person, who claims to use scholarly methods in his argumentation, was using dubious second and third-hand sources, anonymous sources or oral statements from now deceased persons, sources which the reader was unable to verify. We also criticized the author for considering entries in war diaries or statements by military individuals on various levels as sacrosant facts. Although a war dairy is intended to be an important document, in which entries of various events (such as orders, reports, etc.) are made in consecutive order, the stress and scarcity of experienced personnel, in combination with the unexpected scope of observations and reports during the Hårsfjärden incident, resulted many times in deficiencies or even complete errors. Erroneous observations on lower tactical level were quite often not sufficiently filtered and were thus transmitted onto higher levels of command. These uncertainties in the source material have to be taken into consideration by the critical and objective observer. It is therefore surprising that Tunander, who has been doing research for several years, does not show an awareness of these shortcomings and adjust his reasoning accordingly. Nor has he commented on, referred to, or made note of our previously mentioned articles in the English text that he now presents to PHP’s readers. A close reading of the speculative theories that Tunander presents to the reader makes it obvious that his arguments contain many methodological deficiencies. The conspiratorial character of his reasoning makes for a selective and uncritical use of sources to fit his own hypotheses. No attempts are made to change or modify these hypotheses, when the information found is contradictory. Such sources, which are plentiful, are either irrelevant (and left out completely) or deemed as manipulated by Swedish authorities. Furthermore, he often uses controversial hypotheses as supposedly solid premises in deductive reasoning, which might at times create an appearance of credibility but is instead wholly unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. To the best of our knowledge, Tunander’s conspiratorial allegations are purely based on circumstantial evidence, “evidence” that when thoroughly examined does not stand up to scrutiny. Consequently, Tunander’s work should not be read as a scientific non-fictional product, but rather as a book like Dan Brown’s, The Da Vinci Code, in which the general background and some obvious and tangible facts are mixed with a large amount of pure fiction. This goes for the latest English version of his theory as well.
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