Humanitarian Laws of Armed Conflict in Sweden: Ogling the Socialist Camp

The inhabitants of a country with the military-geographical location of Sweden should find it natural, one would think, to consider extensively the political and legal-philosophical message of the world which surrounds the country, most conspicuously to the east and to the south, and, by navies below the horizon, less conspicuously to the north and to the west. Everywhere is the Socialist Camp - a not unlikely adversary in some future conflict. In Sweden, however, there prevails a surprising reluctance to discuss the realities of the Camp. To say the least, such discussion is up-hill work.

Looking for the reasons why, a few things stand out. Many top people suffer from the Hammarskiold complex: they need the Socialist assent to their international designs and feel that they cannot afford to upset the leaders in the Camp. Mass media are massively uninterested. With few exceptions, the scholarly world looks resolutely the other way.

A Royal Academy may even refuse to publish the papers of one of its own members if he has addressed too directly the issues which Swedes would prefer did not exist.