Norsk forsvarssamarbeid med Nederland og Sverige. Ikke så like likevel?

Abstract

The security environment after the Cold War has created new challenges but also new opportunities. With no Iron Curtain dividing Europe, new patterns of cooperation in the field of defense and security have emerged. For smaller European countries like Norway this has offered a possible way out of what seemed to be a problem without solution: how to maintain a credible defense organization with all the elements considered necessary without exceeding politically defined economic limitations. The core of this problem lies in the fact that to keep any particular capability in the inventory requires an overhead cost whatever the number of elements of that capability. Increasing demands for expeditionary forces have added to the considerable challenge facing national defense communities. The present study analyzes the premises for cooperation in the field of defense, especially land forces, between Norway and Sweden and between Norway and the Netherlands. Defense cooperation between Norway and the Netherlands has taken place within the framework of the Atlantic Alliance for a long time. Relations between Norway and her closest neighbor Sweden have been of a different quality, owing to the latter’s ambiguous political position in the East–West conflict until 1990. Still, there has been some common ground. To extend this common ground with Sweden – as well as the Netherlands – remains a stated objective of Norwegian political and military leaders. This study points at possibilities for deeper and wider cooperation, but also suggests that different military experience and traditions constitute limitations to cooperation.