Sea Control - Sea Control 425 - Sweden's Navy in NATO with Dr. Sebastian Bruns

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Links1. “The Swedish Navy in NATO: Opportunities and Challenges,” Dr. Sebastian Bruns, CIMSEC, January 11, 2023.2. Dr. Sebastian Bruns Twitter Feed.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, Dr. Sebastian Bruns joins Jared Samuelsson to discuss his recent article for CIMSEC, The Swedish Navy and NATO Opportunities and Challenges. Dr. Bruns also highlights how Sweden and Finland's NATO bids changed the strategic geography in Europe. Jim Jarvie edited and produced today's episode. CIMSEC is looking for a volunteer to join our technical team and support our web operations. We're looking for someone with a background in WordPress implementation and support, as well as knowledge in web hosting and networking. Some knowledge of identity management and security operations is also helpful.

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that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International America. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is our old friend, Dr. Sebastian Bruns, and we're going to be discussing Sebastian's article for SimSec, The Swedish Navy and NATO Opportunities and Challenges. So, Sebastian, welcome back. Could you refresh the listeners on your background, please? Sure, Jared. It's a pleasure to be here. I am a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Policy at KU University in Germany. I'm also a senior associate at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, D.C. And until last summer, I was the inaugural McCain-Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, United States of America.

Well, welcome back. I appreciate you coming on today. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated. I'm also going to throw on an additional caveat, which I think you'll agree with, Sebastian. So we're kind of proceeding on the assumption that this NATO session for Sweden and Finland is going to happen. Looks like Hungary is scheduling a vote here for early or mid-March, and we're recording this on Saturday, February 25th. But if anything changes to kind of throw off our assumptions or change timelines or something, obviously, that's why we're caveating this as an assumption. And then I think we're still waiting on Turkey after Hungary with no firm date in sight, unless I'm mistaken. So with all that being said, Sebastian, how does Sweden and Finland's NATO accession change the strategic geography in the Baltic?

That's a great, great question. So in a true strategic geopolitical sense, it's a strong signal. It's quite a game changer for NATO. It's a game changer for Northern Europe. But of course, it took Russia's unlawful incursion into Ukraine and that bloody war, which we've just passed the one year anniversary, to really push Sweden and Finland, I should say, into NATO. On the military and operational level, it's not so much such a game changer. Now, that might sound a little bit mixed up, but try to hear me out in the air. Because Sweden, as much as Finland, have been cooperating very closely with NATO as part of the Partnership for Peace program, to which, by the way, Russia also was a part at some point.

And so Sweden has adopted a lot of NATO standards operating with NATO units and working a lot on the bilateral field with the United States of America and with other large NATO navies. In addition, Sweden and Finland have joined the European Union many, many years ago. So they've been working closely with the northern European allies, which happen to be often both EU and NATO members. And so they've been able to to to change or to evolve rather an ally as they possibly could be without all the political ramifications of being a physical NATO member state. Article five comes to mind, but also, you know, providing staffing around the NATO headquarters and NATO maritime commands and all these kind of beautiful places. Can I offer one thing on the geography and you tell me what you think? I actually do see it as quite a change just because of the nature of the Swedish and Finnish coastline there that is now interposed as NATO territory in between the ports of Kronstadt and, I'm sorry, Baltisk, am I pronouncing that correctly? But the port portion of the Kaliningrad Exclave, now connecting those two, is no longer possibly neutral territory in any sort of real confrontation. Now it's hostile territory with, I think, you know, Poland was in between those two and the Baltic states in the past. But they have pretty, how do I phrase this respectfully, it's like pretty insignificant naval presence at the moment.

There's some minesweeping capability there. There's probably some mine lane capability there, and I know the Polish Navy has some plans to kind of upgrade its fleet, but I think what the Finns and the Swedes are working with, particularly the challenging nature of that coastline, just with as many little inlets and fjords and everything else where you can have small vessels that carry missiles hide, presents a different problem set. if you are a Russian planner looking to provide any sort of support via sea to Baltice? Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. From that point of view, you are spot on in that Sweden, as well as Finland, but Sweden even more so, is a venerable sea power. The Navy just celebrated its 500th anniversary last year, and it's a traditional sea power in the sense of the word. It's very strong on the amphibious point of view, given the rugged terrain that you just outlined earlier, and as opposed to other NATO member states which joined in the late 1990s and early 2000s, namely Poland and the Baltic states, they weren't really sea powers. They were not sea powers, let's face it. And they still have a very continental-minded mindset, which, of course, if you have a border with Russia or Belarus, for that matter, that's, of course, it makes sense.

But they are sea-blind. They don't have navies. They have coast guards, better coast guards. And traditionally, those were not factors for the Russian Navy to provide a link between St. Petersburg and the Kaliningrad enclave. This is changing now. Sweden has all the opportunities and all the abilities to make life for Russian naval planners more worrisome. Hopefully even more worrisome than they already are. But when it comes to this kind of connection, that really is something that's strategically, from a geography point of view, as you pointed out, is very significant. And hopefully NATO planners will take note, and hopefully Russians will take note, and hopefully everyone around the Baltic Sea, frankly, will take note. Certainly, as someone, as I am a German, living in Kiel and looking at the Baltic Sea sort of through a German lens, both as an analyst and as a citizen of a country, it's going to change, hopefully for the better, the dynamics in the Baltic Sea. One point I really want to make sure to bring across is, I don't want to, well, one shouldn't use that term or that phrase of this is going to be a NATO leak. I've read it a few times now, and it just doesn't resonate because Russia is still a player in that field. And let's assume that Sweden and Finland will join NATO eventually. it's it has a it has a strong strong smell of self-delusion you know if you keep repeating

that this is a nato lake you try to believe it but what are the implications and does it really mean you don't have to exercise sea control well none of the above and historically i mean there's there's been instances where the mediterranean or the uh the even the north atlantic were called nato lakes even with a very strong soviet and later russian naval presence and in the future now the chinese naval presence in the area so i would be very cautious in fact i will not be cautious i will be very frank that uh we should not we should not call the baltic sea a nato nato lake anytime soon so what does the swedish navy's order of battle look like and what's been its focus during the cold war and since so in the cold war it was very much a coastal defense navy

of course with the history of 500 years one could go back and go indeed into the year 1522 we're not going to do this today and besides i'm not i'm a political scientist i'm not a naval historian so i've been treading water here but in the cold war obviously sweden was very very determined and very proud to be a non-aligned member not being a member of the warsaw pact and not being a member of nato and the european community and which was later the nato um which um were sort of the western the western alliance um their navy was principally tasked with coastal defense and to that end they had destroyers and fast patrol boats a lot of amphibious uh assets and when the cold war ended sweden felt vindicated enough to say well you know sort of a little bit like i think

that's why the swedes are sympathetic to the germans and vice versa the end of history is here uh we don't need a large navy anymore and we can we can focus on you know we can spend the money on other things and reap the peace peace dividend the uh swedes for instance gave up the uh the big ships they built agile new corvettes of vispe type which are these sleek stealth looking ships gorgeous ships and very capable but they really shrank their navy they uh the accession into the european union allowed them to um cooperate with as part of the european union's naval forces in the mediterranean and in the uh on the horn of africa so they they got a little bit of uh well you know sea legs so to speak uh staffing wise but they really slowed

down the uh the the naval procurement and really decommissioned ships without replacing them with new ones on the other hand sweden has sweden unlike my home country uh really understood the implications of 2014 the taking of crimea by the russians and the the beginning of the civil war in eastern ukraine in that they understood that this posed a what the german chancellor called the Zeitenwende, a sea change only last year, the Swedes understood it in 2014 that this was the true sea change in Russian potential aggression against Sweden.

And so they've been trying to re-up their navy. They will procure new submarines. They hope to procure new submarines. They are currently building a signal intelligence ship together with the Poles at a Polish yard, I should say. They are looking at a replacement of the Visby or the next generation Visby class frigates. And they've been very, very, very strong

on the amphibious assault and amphibious defense issues. Some of the listeners might recall that shortly after 2014, there were some instances of potential Russian submarines in Swedish coastal waters. Of course, a reminder of the Whiskey on the Rocks incident in the early 1980s, where a Soviet whiskey-class submarine

lodged itself on an undersea mountain of Karlskrona naval base, much to the amusement, enjoyment, and horror of everyone involved. And Sweden, on the political level, began installing a concept of total defense. So to get the society ready to support both in person as well as financially and politically a larger navy, a larger national defense force and posture, sort of not going back into the Cold War days, but trying to adapt it to the future that's now here. That's been certainly very present since last year, since February 24th, 2022.

And the point here is, and I'll close with this, is it would have been probably very easy for the Swedes to say, well, we're going to need the same Navy or the same kind of Navy as we had in the Cold War. That's the mindset that I keep seeing in Germany, which where a lot of people, certainly those who were in uniform, still moan the decommissioning of the Schnellboote and say, well, you know, basically it's the same situation as 1985 in the Baltic. Let's bring back the Schnellboote and, you know, let's bring back the air defense destroyers, the Lütjens class, and we'll be in good shape. Nothing could be further from the truth. And the Swedes might have had those discussions. I'm not sure about the number of armchair admirals in Stockholm and Göteborg. They've been pushing a modernized navy, plus all these political movements and the probable accession to NATO, to try to bring the navy and the mindset into the 21st century. All right, that's kind of a perfect lead into one of my next questions.

So how do you anticipate Sweden trying to balance its naval ambitions going forward? Because on the one hand, you do have that rugged Baltic coast where you want kind of those smaller units that are well suited for that. And you talked about the amphibious capability there. I don't think it's maybe necessarily the amphibious capability that our American audience might be thinking about, which, you know, we talk about like LPDs and these larger vessels here. I think when we talk about the Swedes, we're talking about like small boats, teams of what are basically coastal rangers that go in. They can do the reconnaissance stuff. I think they have done some of that with the U.S. Marines in the recent past year. I think Task Force 161 or Task Force 61, I can't remember who came up and did some operations on Baltic, but those may have operated together. We don't know that for certain. And then the larger vessels, though, which are much more favored for signaling information operations, naval diplomacy, kind of like, hey, we want to send this frigate around the world, integrate it in your fighting formations, or do some sort of maritime security operation off of a coast of a country where we're concerned about weapons trafficking or something.

so for the time being i believe that the swedes will be very much focused on the baltic sea and on national and alliance defense if only because as long as the the war is is raging in ukraine that is the chief worry for the swedes certainly while they're outside of of nato but hopefully soon they'll be inside of nato uh and then of course the calculus changes but given given that a navy needs to have the political top cover why why a navy why do why does sweden have the navy or why should it have the navy that it has or will have there's much more demand for the national defense and alliance defense rules and while i can see the vispe class or other you know the successor class of the vispe the vispe is being integrated into the standing nato maritime groups

which they will be and should be, sort of patrolling the North Atlantic. These corvettes are not really equipped for, you know, for instance, what the German Navy, we sent the frigate Bayern to the Indo-Pacific, these kind of things. Sweden does not have and probably will not have for the foreseeable future a warship that's able to have the sea legs to travel to these other parts of the world. Brought brush here.

So the Northern flank, I think that's something that they'll, they'll be able to do. I could also see that they do a replay, so to speak, of a conventional submarine exercise that they did with the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy actually loaned a conventional submarine, the Gotland, in the 2000s to play with it, to try to hone its, for the U.S. Navy, to hone its submarine hunting skills. And they were quite surprised by the fact that these Very modern, conventionally driven submarines can create some real headaches for carrier strike forces or, for that matter, for any U.S. naval warship captain. So that's something that I think Sweden will try to bring into a larger NATO North Atlantic exercise and or strategic signaling scenario. Something like the big NATO exercise Trident Juncture in 2018, which happened off the coast of Norway, could well see some significant Swedish participation all by sort of on the around the Scandinavian perimeter.

I could well see that the Swedes will be trying to be very conscientious about which staffing jobs they'll fill, which billets to fill in the NATO realm. NATO Maritime Command comes to mind, but also perhaps Sixth Fleet with sort of a liaison in Naples, Strike Force NATO in Lisbon. But we should also not forget that Sweden is a country that's comparatively small in terms of its population. Well, it's large in geographic scope, so they will have, it's a pure numbers game. They will have to be very conscientious how many of their best and the brightest they can send to staffing jobs and how many of its precious ships they can send into NATO's standing NATO maritime groups. All right, you walked right into my next question, which is where can we expect them to contribute in the NATO maritime command hierarchy,

particularly given sort of the experience and expertise in littoral operations that I think is not necessarily, quote-unquote, prevalent in NATO. So when I look at I remember betting with my German students when I was still at the Furings Academy that that Baltic command that the Baltic command up in Rostock as it was being established for the German Navy is like I bet that's going to be a NATO command within the next 10 years. Just the way everything was shaping up, and that was obviously pre the second invasion of Ukraine. That seems like a natural fit for them. Also, you know, you're there in Kiel with the NATO Center of Excellence, or I'm trying to remember what it was for, it was like close or inshore. Confined. confined shallow water operations also seems like a natural fit so you threw out a couple examples any others that you can think of there and i i guess a follow-up question i have to you know you talk about the best and brightest but it's not just i don't want to you know imply that anyone

here is not the best and brightest but uh european navies retain their officers for much longer than the u.s navy does so this is kind of a mindset mindset shift thing where someone in one of these european navies may make commander in 18 years in the same way an american would and then remain as a commander in the navy for another 20 years and just go staff job staff job staff job staff job to the point they're expert staff officers in a way that we are not necessarily that so i don't know how much capacity sweden has from that perspective of like hey these old salts yeah they're not going to go out to sea anymore but they can plug into any staff you want and fill just about any job you want and be expert level at it so to your first question or the first point

the current the way the world is turning right now mandates a very much about operational mindset in terms of the navies as academics try to take a step back and look at nato command structures how has it changed in the last 30 40 years and even though i badmouthed the uh the uh the armchair admirals just early on but what are some of the issues from the 1980s some of the command structures from the 1980s that we maybe should revive um now you know i'm not calling for just another staff who if anything we've had there's a there's a tendency to create too many staffs but are there other issues are there command let me let me call them organizations or arrangements that we can pick up again and say, hey, it worked well in the past,

let's try it again, or let's try to model something that's evolving in Rostock, the Baltic Maritime Component Command, and really taking the things that worked in the 80s and in the early 90s and redo them. I know there's some tensions between the regional component commands, one in Rostock is not the only one in the NATO area, and the NATO Maritime command in northward in london and that tension needs to be worked out somehow because if anything the swedes as much as any ally should know where are we sending our people and how can we make the how can we get the best bang for the buck so and and related to that is is my point that the north stream 2 sabotage in last last fall has created a sudden demand it's it's not surprising to us

who are in the know, but a sudden demand politically to say, what about our critical infrastructure? And so NATO Maritime Command has been pushing that issue, and so has the command in Rostock, to look at critical undersea infrastructure, which also relates to seabed warfare and the whole undersea domain. And guess what? The amphibious issues and the critical infrastructure, You know, when you put them on top of one another, there might be actually, if there wasn't a chance to bring those two topics together. So that's one thing, you know, that might just bring Swedish amphibious capabilities and capacity into NATO and NATO will be very welcoming to have that kind of asset and to have that kind of expertise on its staff as well as in its operational cadre.

The other question, the other aspect that you mentioned is something that, you know, in the larger, in the big picture, and of course, as a strategist, we're all about big pictures, is the whole question of how do NATO navies, not just Sweden, not just the balding navies, how do we get enough men and women into the forces? And is the accession of a new member state, Sweden, an opportunity to really drive things like unmanned capabilities? Is it an opportunity to be honest about oneself that we're not going to fill all those billets? Certainly not in Europe. And what are we going to do about it? Is that the final push that it sometimes might take to go really into a binational arrangement? The Swedes and the Finns have been integrating their navies, unlike any two navies I know of, certainly not in the Western world. And that's something that was born out of necessity.

But, you know, could this be made into a real opportunity? And, you know, I'd be surprised if the home of Ikea would not have ideas how to how to one up the, you know, the recruitment of future navalists. And I'm extremely tempted to go down a rabbit hole with you talking about the maritime security implications of the maritime infrastructure stuff, because it's important as I see that. I'm just not sure that that is another thing that we want to throw navies at when Coast Guards are available. So that seems like, yes, you and I can have an entire hour and a half discussion about that one, given all the other demands on navies that are out there. But you mentioned, I'll ask a final question for this time, then you and I can circle back to the other one. But you mentioned challenges in the headline. Where are some of the more onerous challenges that Swedes and NATO will face as they come together?

so from a swedish point of view and i should say you know in full disclosure i'm a uh i'm also a fellow at the royal swedish society for naval sciences so i've been i've had the opportunity to talk a lot with swedes about how they view nato i mean you are until those podcasts airs then they're going to be very upset we'll we'll see how it goes uh one thing i found out is that well one thing i wanted to well there goes the chinese and I wanted to put a pin into was the idea that Sweden might be joining one NATO. As an outsider, NATO looks like this monolith, but frankly, everyone who's been looking at NATO, even studying it or even participated in various NATO activities or as an exchange officer such as you,

Jared, knows that there's various NATOs, there's various speeds, there's sort of a northern flank NATO, There's a southern flank NATO. There's an eastern front NATO. And there's the the United States and Canadian NATO, which is sort of the so that, you know, creates a crosshair, which I feel Germany is in the center of that crosshair because we, you know, we have relations to all these all these parts and we're not pulling our weight. But that's still for another episode. So my first point towards my Swedish counterparts was to be prepared that there are different NATOs, even though there's one NATO staff and, you know, it's all under the same flag and everything. But to try to learn the intricacies of such a large, successful, but large alliance is something that creates a true challenge as this progress moves on further. and as with any uh such with with these kind of instances you know just imagine there's a big group of 30 30 countries you know living together in an apartment and then 30 31st and 32nd person comes along and wants to live live in the same apartment you know what about the rules uh does it change who's doing the chores so and the honeymoon might be over very soon um or sooner

than people think. I know I haven't really found anyone, even in Sweden, perhaps I talked to the wrong people, but I haven't found really anyone who says we need not go into NATO. There's an incentive, there's an enthusiasm,

there's an appetite to join NATO, but that honeymoon might end very soon. We don't know how the situation in Ukraine is going on or will be going on and how long it will be going on. And we don't know, and you alluded to that in your opening remarks, We don't know about NATO cohesion, Hungary and Turkey, and their view of Sweden joining or sort of, you know, trying to extradite some things from the alliance or from the countries for their domestic political gain.

And of course, there's always things like the next U.S. presidential election in 2024. We don't know. Of course, nobody of us has a crystal ball. But should there be a situation where someone becomes president who might follow through with taking the United States out of NATO, Sweden might find itself in an alliance which will be crumbling, which might be losing its largest security guarantee. so uh to to to you know to use my my image from earlier they might be moving into this new fancy building and then the landlord kicks them out or you know the the biggest the guy who pays the rent uh leaves and then that creates a new headache so those are two two of the more more systemic challenges that i see uh sweden and nato having or so from swedish swedish perspective for nato the one challenge that I think NATO needs to face is there's a lot of you talk about unity right now and I applaud that this is this is great of course but for NATO as well it's this is a this is a different accession round than you know the ones that we've seen post 1991 and I hope NATO is able

willing able and willing both to bring Sweden and eventually Finland into the alliance and make them feel not as a second class or newbie member but as a full member of the alliance well i'm sorry that's all that we have time for today i'd like to thank my guest dr sebastian brun sebastian where can we find you online and what are you working on next i'm gonna limit you to talking only about like your next six projects because i know you got well you know i've jared i turned 40 last year and i've been i've been very much i've been trying to be more cautious about my my my projects um there's only there's only five of them right now um but uh jokes aside so um my main project right now is um i'm in i'm part of a research project

that we do with the center for military history and social sciences of the german armed forces which will deal with nato maritime strategies and naval operations since 1985 it's a five-year program we'll do workshops we'll do research archival research or histories all these kind of things and and we want to try to bring along uh we want to try to research the role that nato nato maritime uh assets and strategy played in the larger scheme of things in the last 40 years i also support the work of the isbk kill sea power series we have various conferences uh and publications so there's always something something going on there you can find me on twitter um still uh at naval gazing and of course that's naval with two a's

well thanks again for joining us Sebastian to listeners thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time Thank you. Bye-bye.