Note: This is the complete text of an article published November 1997, in somewhat abridged form in the Swedish magazine,Ordfront.
ONE WOULD ASSUME that a politician who built his career on a furious chase after foreign submarines that eventually turned out to be genuine Swedish minks, and who also bears primary responsibility for the worst economic catastrophe in his country’s history, would be forced to content himself thereafter with an appropriately modest role.
But not Carl Bildt. The leader of the Conservative (“Moderat”) Party has never enjoyed broader support. Just now, he is surfing on a wave of popularity as a result of his energetic efforts as peace co-ordinator in former Yugoslavia– an assignment he received due in larger measure to the enlightened foreign policy which he, himself, has always opposed and continues to dismiss even today.
“By a modest estimate, the annual drop in production [as a result of the Bildt government's economic policy] will amount to fifty billion kronor, or 350 billion during the seven years, 1993-1999. It is a waste without precedent in Sweden’s economic history. . . . The Bildt government’s legacy to the future is one of absurdly high real interest rates, mass unemployment, and the biggest budget deficit in modern Swedish history.”
– Att Leda Sverige in i Krisen, by Dag Rolander and Carl Hamilton, 1993
It is certainly a remarkable turn of events, and one may well ask how such a political career can be possible. The answer undoubtedly has a great deal to do with Carl Bildt’s powerful supporters at home and abroad. Among them can be reckoned the economic elite and its compliant news media, weighty politicians in the European Union, and the United States’ security establishment-- all of which seem to nurse the expectation that Bildt will leave his mark on Sweden with the same kind of deep impression that Olof Palme once made.
Just this– the linking of Bildt to Palme– is the weirdest aspect of the former’s current popularity. There seems to be a general perception that Bildt’s two years in Bosnia can somehow be equated with Palme’s life-long efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. It also appears that Bildt’s political standing is to be strengthened with a little nostalgic nudge from the murdered man whose politics he still cannot refrain from criticising.
Further, the Swedish people and the world at large are apparently to be lulled into the notion that Carl Bildt represents continuity in the Swedish foreign policy of peace and solidarity that has long been admired by so many around the world. But considering everything that the Conservative Party leader has said and done in the past, that is a proposition which bears inspection, to put it mildly. There is much at stake, including Sweden’s place on earth during the 21st century.
“It was more natural for Swedish prime ministers to give speeches at meetings in Mozambique, or before the revolutionary masses in Managua. . . . Europe was a fleck on the map of Swedish foreign policy and public debate. Southeast Asia was situated just south of Stockholm, South Africa south of Malmö, and one ran into Central America just a bit west of Göteborg. . . . Helmut Kohl almost got the impression that I commuted to Bonn.”
– Carl Bildt in his memoirs, 1991
The Swedish peace model
It hardly came as a surprise, except perhaps in Sweden, that a Swede should be appointed as peace co-ordinator in war-ravaged Bosnia. For much of the 20th century, a long succession of Swedes– including Hjalmar Branting, Dag Hammarskjöld, Alva Myrdal, and in particular Olof Palme– have played leading roles in international peace efforts.
At least as significant as those prominent figures have been the contributions by tens of thousands of Swedish diplomats, foreign aid workers, solidarity activists, U.N. peace-keeping forces, etc. As U.N. General-Secretary Perez de Cuellar noted at Palme’s funeral: “Throughout the world today, the name of Sweden is synonymous with peaceful stability and human compassion.”
But that Carl Bildt, of all people, should be chosen to become peace co-ordinator in Bosnia– that was definitely a joke on history. For, no one has more consistently opposed the peaceful tradition represented by Olof Palme. Time after time and in every possible context, he and his party comrades have depicted Palme’s foreign policy as hopelessly naive, misdirected, injurious to Sweden’s real interests and, in some respects, bordering on treason (see “Worlds Apart”, below). Bildt has demonstrated a much greater interest in war and its instruments than in peace-related issues– and solidarity has been regarded by him and the Conservative Party as an expression of distasteful and/or ludicrous socialist hypocrisy.
“It is extremely unlikely that Palme would have quietly stood by and observed the disaster in Bosnia without intervening.” More to the point, Bildt failed to demonstrate any particular interest in Bosnia and former Yugoslavia during his term as prime minister (1991-94), when the civil war was raging at its worst. He chose, instead, to function as an appendage to Germany’s Helmut Kohl, whose meddling in Yugoslavia’s affairs is now regarded by many– including Carl Bildt– as one of the principal contributing factors to that unfortunate country’s violent dissolution.
The contrast with Palme was striking for, among others, Pär Fagerström, a former Palme associate and currently a newspaper executive in southern Sweden: “What did Sweden do to put an end to the war? Essentially nothing. It is extremely unlikely that Palme would have quietly stood by and observed the disaster without intervening.” (To some extent, the same criticism can be applied to the Social Democratic government of Ingvar Carlsson; but that is another story, which is briefly touched upon below.)
“Even as one who has been dealing with these questions for some time, I can sometimes be personally filled with an inner rage over the impudence behind these repeated territorial violations.”
– Carl Bildt, 1983, on alleged intrusions of Soviet u-boats
Our man in Bosnia
The reason that Carl Bildt was selected as peace co-ordinator in Bosnia, despite all this, is that the five powerful nations responsible for the appointment wanted him in that post; Tory-England’s John Major is reported to have been especially insistent. The nature of the case has been explained by Alistair Millar, a research analyst with the British-American Security Information Council in Washington, D.C.:
“When Bildt was elected Prime Minister, he was seen by George Bush, John Major and others as a kindred spirit whose intent was to radically alter the direction of Sweden’s socio-economic and foreign policies. Among other things, it was felt that, given the chance, Bildt would lead his country into NATO, and was to be supported and promoted in every way possible. It was therefore hardly surprising that Bildt was chosen by EU/NATO decision-makers for the assignment in Bosnia– especially given the peace-making reputation that Sweden had previously built up under the leadership of people like Olof Palme.”
Carl Bildt has said that he was not at all inclined to accept the difficult challenge, but felt that he was forced to do so, “as my duty to Europe”. Perhaps. But in a purely political perspective, the offer could not have come at a better time. In the spring of 1995, Bildt’s expectations were not especially great: His “only way” to economic success had led Sweden into its worst economic crisis within living memory; and fear of foreign submarines, in which Bildt had heedlessly invested for thirteen unhappy years, turned out in the end to be as poorly substantiated as Olof Palme had warned (see “The Great Submarine Chase”).
In short, the Conservative Party leader has led the charge for the two greatest fiascos in Sweden’s recent history– the one in domestic and the other in foreign policy. In both cases, the economic and human costs have been enormous.
It is, of course, possible that there one day will emerge some confirmation that foreign submarines have in fact sneaked into Swedish waters, and that some or all of them originated in the Soviet Union/Russia. But the fact remains that thirteen years’ of intensive hunting have failed to yield an ounce of evidence.
The comical aspects of all this have not gone unnoticed. In response to Carl Bildt’s entreaties not to doubt the existence of the presumptively Russian u-boats– because, “We do the nation a disservice if we act dumber than we are”– Commodore Karl Andersson observed: “Alas, that disservice is already a fact. Internationally, we have made ourselves an object of ridicule.”
The commodore might well have had in mind the televised reactions of an experienced Russian-submarine hunter in the Norwegian Navy who, chuckling in astonishment, listened to a tape recording of the mink-generated noises which Bildt and his allies have eagerly accepted as proof of large enemy warships prowling the waters of the Stockholm archipelago.
“There is a tiny clique of persons who can never get the Soviet u-boat violations to conform with their world-view or political ideas.”
– Carl Bildt, 1985
“I felt that it was necessary to raise my own voice a little, in order to disarm the most hysterical loudmouths.”
– Olof Palme, 1985
Other aspects of the u-boat hysteria are, of course, less humorous– including the considerable sums of money that have been invested in direct hunting expenses. To what good? According to Commodore Andersson, “After thirteen years’ intensive hunting, the results are nil. Not one u-boat has been sunk or forced to the surface. No material of any kind has been found that can be linked to submarine activity. . . . During four-and-one-half years of World War II, 2002 u-boats were sunk, including 46 in the Baltic Sea.” Etc., etc.
There have also been a number of indirect costs that can be attributed to u-boat hysteria, including that portion of Sweden’s defense budget which would not otherwise have been approved. When all that is added to the constantly accumulating billions which the Bildt government’s “only way” has cost the country, the question inevitably arises: Can Sweden afford Carl Bildt?
“Palme’s international contacts are an orgy in poor judgement. . . . His eagerness to build a bridge between east and west can result in his becoming a Neville Chamberlain, and Sweden a nation under attack.”
– Gunnar Hökmark, Secretary of Conservative Party, 1985 Palmephobia
Certain other costs are difficult to set a price on, but they have been no less destructive. For over a decade, u-boat hysteria poisoned the Swedish foreign policy debate. Large quantities of time, energy and other resources had to be allocated to the submarine-chasers’ repeated demands and accusations, blown out of proportion in customary fashion by various news media.
The u-boat hysteria was at its most intense during a critical phase of the Cold War, and it was zealously employed as the heaviest weapon in a general attack on Palme’s peace and disarmament policy. His failure to share Bildt’s “inner rage over the impudent violations” was loudly interpreted as a frightening indifference toward a serious threat.
“The prominent Conservative, Staffan Burenstam Linder, other Conservative politicians, and representatives of the Swedish business community encouraged the United States in the spring of 1973 to refrain from sending a new ambassador to Stockholm, as that might help Olof Palme and the Social Democrats to an election victory the following autumn.”
– Dagens Nyheter newspaper, citing former ambassador Leif Leifland, 1997
Over and over again, Bildt and his allies implied that Palme was doing the Soviets’ bidding. “The government’s peace policy is a series of unjustifiable and increasingly unreserved embraces of basic Soviet thinking,” is how it sounded in one of numerous similar formulations. Essentially everything that Palme and his associates did to promote disarmament and mediate the end of the Cold War was called into suspicion in similar terms.
The consequences for the principal target were easy for anyone to work out: With his repeated intimations of treason, Bildt backed viewpoints that do not appear to have been supported by anyone outside the intimate circle of Palmephobics, whose hatred reached such violent intensity that in certain circles it has even survived Palme’s death.
It was, in short, a protracted demonstration of the Cold War’s evil spirit and demagogic arts, as one might well expect of Carl Bildt and his party. For, even though they have until recently sworn their devotion to Sweden’s long-standing policy of neutrality, they have in fact served as the U.S. empire’s loyal supporters in Sweden for quite some time. In their eyes, anti-Americanism is among the worst sins that a Swedish politician can commit– especially if it is soiled with “Third World romanticism”, as global solidarity is called in Conservative-speak.
Carl Bildt’s ties to the western superpower came to the surface in 1983, in connection with the first u-boat commission. Even before its findings were made public, he took the liberty of travelling to Washington– without troubling to consult either the government or his commission colleagues– in order to discuss Sweden’s national security with U.S. intelligence and defense officials. That certainly gave the Soviet Union something to think about, particularly with regard to Sweden’s capacity for independent analysis.
Clearly, Bildt was at that time already eager to assume responsibility for the nation’s security, but was less inclined to wait until the voters should entrust him with that task. There are no historical precedents. But as a thought experiment, one might speculate how Bildt would have reacted if, for example, Gudrun Schyman (leader of Sweden’s Left, formerly Communist, Party) had intruded herself into Bosnia’s various conflicts in the midst of Bildt’s efforts to resolve them.
“Prime Minister Bildt represents a growing generation of leadership for a people who are seeking a new role in Europe, and a new birth of freedom in Sweden’s domestic politics. ”
– then-president and former CIA chief, George Bush, at White House shortly after Bildt’s election victory in 1991
In any event, Bildt’s unprecedented violation of democratic procedure was condemned by the Palme government, the Centre Party and, in particular, Liberal Party leader Ola Ullsten. Bildt replied that he intended to continue travelling wherever he wanted, without asking for permission– a characteristic verbal manoeuvre for avoiding the actual question.
The Conservative Party’s connections with the U.S.A. and its foreign policy have led to a compulsive defense of the empire’s various misdeeds around the world. There seems to be no limit to the services that Bildt and his party comrades are prepared to perform in that regard. Consider their reaction to the Vietnam War, for example.
It so happened that the first Swedish prime minister ever to visit Vietnam was Carl Bildt. During his official visit in 1994, he took the opportunity to instruct his hosts in democracy and human rights, indicate his displeasure with the alleged waste of Swedish foreign aid and, on behalf of the United States, take up the issue of the “remaining U.S. prisoners of war” who seem to be as difficult to locate as the elusive foreign submarines in the Stockholm archipelago.
Included on the agenda was a visit to a war museum with photos of the horrors endured by the Vietnamese during a quarter-century of French-American democracy. “These pictures are familiar,” observed the prime minister from Sweden, “although it seems a bit odd to see only one side presented after so much time has passed.”
It was, in its own way, an interesting proposal for appropriate balance in war exhibitions which Bildt has apparently not yet proposed to his U.S. friends. It would mean, for example, that the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington– so often movingly portrayed by western mass media, with its 58,000 plus names engraved in a 180-meter wall– ought properly to be complemented with another wall of an estimated 13 kilometres’ length in order to accommodate all the no-longer-current Vietnamese names on a proportional basis.
“I always thought that our allies and other countries were derelict with their silence. Sweden was the one honourable exception.”
– Daniel Ellsberg, the former U.S. civil servant who disclosed The Pentagon Papers, the Defense Dept.’s self-incriminating history of the Vietnam War; 1995
“We were wrong, so terribly wrong.”
– Robert MacNamara, USA’s Secretary of Defense during Vietnam War, 1996
But not even that would serve to reflect the actual relationship between victim and aggressor. Another wall of indeterminate length would be required for the names of all those who “after so much time has passed” continue to be killed and maimed by residual war materiel. And yet a third, for the hundreds of thousands of miscarriages and birth defects caused by the lingering effects of the United States’ chemical warfare, plus a great deal of other unpleasantness that the U.S. population has never been exposed to. An estimated thirteen percent of Vietnam’s population is invalidised today as a direct result of the war. That amounts to about 8.5 million people, roughly the size of Sweden’s total population.
These facts are well-known to everyone familiar with Vietnam’s recent history, no doubt including Carl Bildt. That he nonetheless feels compelled to pretend that there exists some kind of equality between the U.S. and Vietnam in matters of suffering and responsibility is an index of how much violence must be done to known facts, and how much indifference to other peoples’ suffering is required, in order to justify the Conservatives’ foreign policy.
The extensive crimes of the United States against international law and humanity have been documented by historians and a number of former C.I.A. officers. See, for example, William Blum’s web site, with detailed information on the “American holocaust”.
Tragic indifference to the facts
It is much the same with a long list of other tragedies, such as the one that befell Chile in 1973. On that subject, Carl Bildt wrote in 1983: “Left-wing propaganda has often accused the U.S.A., Nixon and Kissinger of organizing the coup against Allende in 1973. That there exists no support for such an accusation has not prevented it from being constantly repeated.”
In point of fact, there are few CIA operations that have been more exhaustively documented than that against the democratically-elected government of Chile. The details have been thoroughly exposed by, among others, former CIA agents and numerous witnesses at a comprehensive hearing in the mid-1970s under the leadership of congressmen Pike and Church. It was then that Henry Kissinger explained that, “The issues in Chile are too important to be left to the voters.” All this, several years before Carl Bildt’s solemn defense of his allies in the United States.
Swedish Conservatives’ support for the United States has even extended to environmental issues. Among those who criticised Bildt’s complicity in the Bush government’s obstructionist tactics at the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development was his own Minister of the Environment, Centre Party leader Olof Johansson.
Bildt & Co. have continued to spread the empire’s propaganda long after it has lost all credibility even in the U.S.
In some cases, Bildt & Co. have continued to spread the empire’s propaganda long after it has lost all credibility even in the U.S. The purpose has evidently been to mislead the Swedish people for political advantage.
The same sort of accusation used to be aimed at Palme, of course. The difference is that Palme turned out to be right on just about every foreign policy issue he addressed. As a U.S. vice-president acknowledged seven years after the end of the Vietnam War, “You were right, and we were wrong.”
. . . In other words, there is very little in Carl Bildt’s past to unite him with Olof Palme. It is presumably for that reason that attempts to demonstrate otherwise so often rely on similarities between the two men’s class background, education, appearance and similar superficialities– rather like equating Churchill and Castro on the basis of their mutual fondness for cigars and sunny climes.
If one focuses, instead, on the politics of the two men, the differences are striking. Palme’s consistent efforts on behalf of peace and global solidarity were rooted in values and insights that were already well-developed during his younger years. His attempts to apply those values in action were met with a furious resistance that eventually degenerated into an ugly atmosphere of hate that almost certainly contributed to his death. Palmephobia was, of course, most rabid among Sweden’s and the world’s military and monetary elites.
“Olof Palme has a passion for confrontation. I have a passion for factual analysis. . . . It is a point of honour for me always to have solid evidence.”
– Carl Bildt, 1983
“It would be unrealistic to expect that the Soviet Union will ever make fundamental changes in the direction of western ideals and values.”
– Carl Bildt, 1987
For Bildt, it has been just the opposite, and for much the same reasons. His political career has been characterised by an overshadowing interest in weapons and military affairs, as well as a hostile attitude to essentially everything that Palme stood for. Despite the failures of his most important political projects, Bildt has never had to struggle against the forces of darkness from which Palmephobia emerged, for the simple reason that he represents those interests. It is probably for that reason that Bildt has been wrong on just about every important issue.
So terribly wrong, in fact, that the general impression of Bildt as being intellectually gifted– an impression which is probably his most valuable political asset– is difficult to understand, to say the least. It cannot be based on the results of his policies, which have been disastrous for Sweden. Nor can it be based on his self-proclaimed “passion for factual analysis” or his oft-cited detailed knowledge, which very often have shown themselves to be something quite different. It is not only a question of demonstrable error, as in the case of the furious submarine chase, but of significant blank areas on the intellectual map.
Prior to the 1992 U.N. conference in Rio de Janeiro, for example, then-prime minister Bildt signed a debate article in Sweden’s leading newspaper which was astonishing in two regards– the profound environmental ignorance which the article displayed, and an apparent lack of awareness that anyone would notice. Regarding Latin America, the public pronouncements of Bildt and his party comrades indicate a strong belief that its history began about the time of Fidel Castro’s accession to power in Cuba; there is much talk of Castro, but not a word about Batista, Teddy Roosevelt or the C.I.A. It is much the same with Bildt’s publicly discernible knowledge on a variety of important issues.
“The only problem with the balance of terror is its name. . . . The purpose of the balance of terror is to defend against military attack from those who base their defense on some form of terror. . . . A properly designed terror balance frightens only those who contemplate taking the step from peace to war. . . . The u-boat violations provide a good illustration of this. Our defence’s inadequate ability to frighten off the admirals in Kaliningrad from ordering the intrusions has created a situation in which the reduction of tensions between Sweden and the Soviet Union is seriously threatened.”
– Carl Bildt, 1985 Best and brightest
The available evidence suggests that, in Carl Bildt, Sweden has a politician with a quick wit and a quick tongue, a passion for facts that often are not facts, and an apparently unshakeable self-confidence linked to an unreflecting ideological dogma– roughly the same traits that characterised the clever guys in the White House who organized the Vietnam War, thereby earning David Halberstam’s sardonic epithet, “the best and the brightest”.
But things are going pretty well, nonetheless. Carl Bildt has at his disposal an authoritative and suitably aggressive speaking style that is well-adapted to this era of broadcast entertainment. He handles himself with ease in the sort of superficial verbal fencing that passes for news interviews, and he is especially adept at diverting disagreeable questions into more advantageous areas of discussion.
Thus far, there have been precious few journalists with the interest or ability to keep Bildt to the subject, and it has therefore been a rather simple matter for him to set the agenda. He will not be any easier to challenge, now that he is being portrayed in the news media as the hero of Bosnia. Sweden’s leading daily newspaper, for example, has published lengthy admiring portraits with titles such as, “A Thoroughbred Comes Home” and “NATO Dove with a Touch of the Scarlet Pimpernel”.
“The Swedish model is dead.”
“The Swedish model never existed.”
– Carl Bildt, 1991
Analyses like the one presented here, which is based on what Bildt and Palme have actually said and done, will no doubt be dismissed as foul attacks on a true statesman, while simple-minded comparisons between the two swells from Stockholm’s high-rent district will be accepted as the real stuff of journalism.
There is probably more than ordinary journalistic incompetence behind that kind of simple-minded comparison. A large portion of the Swedish news media have actively participated in Bildt’s worst misadventures, and they are understandably reluctant to remind their audiences of that fact. This is, in all likelihood, the principal reason that Bildt has emerged from the u-boat fiasco with hardly a splash. By contrast, it is not difficult to imagine how Palme would have been treated had the outcome been the reverse, i.e. if some clear evidence of intruding Soviet submarines had finally surfaced.
An advertisement of the airline SAS, with a message that is quite common in Swedish media
It is practically impossible for an ordinary Swedish news consumer to acquire an impression of foreign reality that does not reflect U.S. interests and interpretations.
American pictures
The complicity of the news media has been a contributing factor in both the drawn-out submarine chase and the wild ride down the dead end of “the only way”. But the most important support provided Carl Bildt by the Swedish media consists of the world view which is everyday etched into public consciousness. It provides a suitable framework for certain images, but not others; and those media glimpses of reality often have a perspective that is pleasing to the United States.
There was, of course, a brief interlude during the 1970s when other perspectives were allowed into the public arena on a somewhat more frequent basis, largely as a consequence of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement in the U.S. It was then that Carl Bildt charged that Swedish state television had permitted “Hanoi to lead it by the nose” when it broadcast a report from Vietnam’s point of view.
But in recent years, order has been restored in the world of the mainstream news. Swedish state television has no doubt sharpened its image in the eyes of Carl Bildt, by such means as broadcasting lengthy reports on Nicaragua without once mentioning the United States’ devastating involvement in that unhappy land’s internal affairs– roughly equivalent to describing the current situation in East Timor without mentioning Indonesia, or Tibet without China.
During the Persian Gulf War, Swedish news media functioned as a component of the United States’ world-wide propaganda apparatus, and at least one over-excited editor cried “traitor” at anyone who failed to give whole-hearted support to the U.S. attack on Iraq (advertised as a U.N. operation, but publicly disavowed by that organization’s general-secretary).
Svenska Dagbladet has written that Patrice Lumumba “was overthrown and executed by Mobutu” in the former Belgian Congo, without cluttering its readers’ world-view with the C.I.A., whose creature Mobutu is well-known to have been. Dagens Nyheter has in its news columns referred to the U.S. State Department’s annual report on global human rights as though it were the genuine article, even though it is widely regarded as a political document that is often used to stigmatise current enemies and ignore atrocities committed by current allies. Etc., etc. . . .
With a handful of shining exceptions, it is practically impossible for an ordinary Swedish news consumer to acquire an impression of foreign reality that does not reflect U.S. interests and interpretations. It has not become any easier, now that there is only one superpower remaining– the one that has long reigned as world leader in propaganda. It is a state of affairs with obvious advantages for the Swedish politicians who Washington leads by the nose, while anyone foolhardy enough to venture a Palme-like foreign policy can count on a misinformed resistance based on that which “everybody knows”.
“Sweden has thereby backed demands and viewpoints which, to my knowledge, have not been supported by any government outside the intimate circle of Soviet allies.”
– Carl Bildt on Palme government’s “yes” vote for a 1982 U.N. disarmament resolution, which actually had its origins in the U.S.; 87 countries voted for the resolution, 19 against and 18 abstained
The new Carl Bildt
But things are going to be different from now on, it has been repeatedly stated and implied. Carl Bildt has been in Bosnia for two years, and there are rumours that he has matured in service– that he may even have developed a less deferential attitude toward the United States, now that he has himself felt the bite of its arrogance and arbitrary ways. One may well hope so, and even wish him further education in such matters, for example by putting in a few years as a Central American peasant.
Many who have followed Bildt’s work in Bosnia agree that he has comported himself well. Even old opponents among the Social Democrats have praised Bildt’s contribution, and have supported him completely– in glaring contrast to the Conservatives’ often sneering reaction to Olof Palme’s far more extensive peace-making efforts.
But two years of an otherwise coldly war-like career stretching over three decades does not provide an especially solid foundation for a lasting commitment to peace. It remains to be seen what Bildt’s experiences in Bosnia may mean for the future direction of the Conservative Party, with its traditional military orientation and its laissez-faire intellectual baggage from the 19th century. The first indications may well reveal themselves in public debate over domestic political issues.
“It would ring false if we were to speak ever so eloquently about the need to help the poor peoples of the world, while at the same time allowing class divisions and income disparities to increase in our own country. There has to be a clear and direct connection between our policies at home and what we stand for in the global arena.”
– Olof Palme, 1985
“That Swedish asshole.”
– President Richard Nixon’s epithet for Olof Palme
Exquisite irony
As Olof Palme and Martin Luther King often emphasised, there is a direct connection between a nation’s domestic and foreign policy. The United States’ brutal assaults on the “inferior peoples” of Indochina and Latin America could hardly be perceived by black Americans as a historical anomaly. In much the same way, the emphasis of Swedish Conservatives on self-interest and their indifference to human destinies beyond the confines of their immediate area’s “little world” are reflected with forthright clarity in the party’s foreign policy.
It is even possible to understand why Conservatives are so willing to tolerate the recent comparisons between Bildt and the formerly detestable Palme. What an exquisite irony– to cloak oneself in a despised opponent’s politics, in order to exploit them for one’s own purposes.
On the other hand, it is not always easy to understand what certain elements of the Social Democratic Party have been up to lately. According to one interpretation, the party leadership has wandered astray, and has ended up on something like the Bildt government’s “only way” out of sheer confusion and stupidity. That way has led straight into the European Union and soon into NATO, so the theory goes, with a fuzzy foreign policy profile as a consequence.
The Social Democratic leadership has squandered a large portion of the political legacy left by Olof Palme. An alternative interpretation is that control of the party has been captured by a gang of neo-liberal EU/NATO enthusiasts who have exploited the confusion which they, themselves, have created in order to nudge the country in a Conservative direction. This interpretation is supported by several indications, including: the unprecedented violation the eagerness for maximal co-operation with NATO demonstrated by Defense Minister Björn von Sydow; and the remarkably undemocratic decision by EU enthusiast Maj-Liis Lööw to cling to her party’s group leadership in the EU parliament, despite her phalanx’s electoral defeat.
Whatever that case may be, the Social Democratic leadership has– intentionally or otherwise– squandered a large portion of the political legacy left by Olof Palme. Those best equipped to continue his foreign policy have ended up in peripheral roles; and Palme’s warnings about the economic and social consequences of neo-liberalism stand as a prophetic rebuke of the jobless path along which his successors have dragged the country.
It would appear that both Conservatives and Social Democratic “renewers” have much to gain by blurring the distinction between Palme and Bildt.
Common obscurity
It would appear that both Conservatives and Social Democratic “renewers” have much to gain by blurring the distinction between the politics of Palme and those of Bildt. One thing is fairly certain: The day that ordinary Swedes can no longer tell the difference between Olof Palme and Carl Bildt, Sweden in its finest expression will have been eliminated from the political map of the world, presumably to disappear into the EU and NATO.
For many, this would probably be regarded as a positive development. There has long been a sizeable contingent of Swedes who like to think of the United States as a kindly and protective “Uncle Sam”; and it is true enough that the U.S. has taken on a less grim and ugly appearance since the end of the Cold War a few years ago. But it remains a warrior society with great internal tensions and conflicts. It has often had need of various external threats, real or invented; and there is little doubt that its foreign policy will continue to be dominated in the future by the same kind of violence-prone men as previously.
It need not take many years before those facts once again acquire great significance for the people of Sweden. To take just one plausible scenario: There is much to indicate that the 21st century will witness a mounting test of strength between the U.S. and China. This is one explanation for the United States’ eagerness to preserve and expand NATO, despite the end of the Cold War that it was devised to fight. Strong and reliable allies in Europe may come in handy during the years ahead.
How many Swedes want to see their children drawn into that sort of global contest; and where will it be possible to find an Olof Palme to mediate a reduction in tensions, or speak in the interests of the less powerful peoples of the earth?
“The Nobel Prize will not provide more food for Moscow.”
– Carl Bildt on the selection of Mikhail Gorbachev for the Nobel Peace Prize, 1990
The world the Conservatives might have made
These are some of the questions that invite a reminder of how the world might have looked if the policies of Carl Bildt and the Conservative Party had prevailed during the post-war era. Obviously, it is impossible to be certain about the course of events in such an eventuality. But the Conservatives have been sufficiently clear on a number of issues to suggest that the developments sketched below would have been far from improbable, if their foreign policy had won general acceptance in the western world:
Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of conciliation would have been impossible, and the Cold War would have escalated along with its arms race. The Berlin Wall would still be solidly in place, and the Iron Curtain would have been extended northward to divide the Baltic Sea. Finland would have been even more firmly bound to the Soviet Union, by more or less “peaceful” means.
Sweden would have long ago become a member of NATO and, like Norway, would have actively taken part in the rape of Vietnam. Sweden would either have developed its own nuclear weapons, or accepted the presence of NATO’s on its territory. The Defence Ministry’s portion of the national budget would have been substantially larger, and the Swedish arms industry would have been set loose on the world in the same fashion as other NATO countries. Ronald Reagan’s dreams of “Star Wars” would have come true, with Sweden as a willing sub-contractor.
“I admire Sweden enormously, and the entire world owes Sweden a large debt of gratitude for its leadership on environmental issues, which began with Olof Palme.”
– Canadian businessman and diplomat Maurice Strong, chairman of the U.N. environmental conferences in Stockholm, 1972, and Rio de Janeiro, 1992
“Recent decades have shown. . . that free market economies do not consume, but actually create new resources for sustainable development.”
– Prime Minister Carl Bildt commenting on Rio conference, 1992
“Sweden is well-situated for demonstrations. Now that Vietnam has served its purpose in that regard. . . South Africa can function as a suitable object of indignation.”
– Conservative Party’s official organ, 1977
Return to Part I The Vietnam War would have dragged on for several additional years, while the U.S. attempted in vain to bomb its ill-equipped enemy “back into the Stone Age”. A weakened and disunited Vietnam would have been unable to stop the mass murder in Cambodia. In general, the position of Asian communists would have been strengthened, and the region’s remarkable economic development– so often and approvingly cited by Conservatives– would have been indefinitely postponed.
There would have been no U.N. Environmental Conference in Stockholm in 1972, nor any follow-up twenty years later in Rio de Janeiro, and thus no Agenda 21. Sweden’s nuclear industry would have expanded, and the Swedish business community would have been free to ignore the environment in the name of The Market.
The United States’ brutal suppression of peasant revolts in its Latin America client-states would have continued with no significant opposition from the outside world. The genocide of Guatemala’s Indians would have continued, and Nicaragua would not have enjoyed even a few paltry years of public health and education before the CIA succeeded in reinstating the economic elite. Naturally, Sweden would have given its full support to the United States in its thirty years of military and economic aggression against Cuba.
In the Middle East, there would have been no peace process for Israel’s Likud government to sabotage, and the Palestinians would still not have a patch of ground to call their own. In South Africa, Nelson Mandela would have ended his days in prison; and the apartheid system would at this stage be in relatively solid condition, thanks in part to the investments of Swedish industry, and the passive consent of the Swedish government.
And no Swede would have been regarded as the self-evident choice for peace co-ordinator in Bosnia– least of all, Carl Bildt.
– Al Burke
