By Jonathan Michael Feldman, June 28, 2022

Linus Hagström’s article, “Debatten om Nato begriper inte begreppen,” (“The debate on NATO does not provide an understanding of key concepts,”) has added important value to the debate about NATO, but in an article like this authors have limited space to make their points. His focus is on how security, threats and power have not been clearly defined in the Swedish debate about Russia, Ukraine and NATO. There are some key components which could complement his analysis and these relate more to why the debate takes the form it does, not simply how the debate takes the form that it does. A key problem is that the superficial character of the NATO debate (as opposed to its speed and the lack of democratic input, the low hanging fruit of criticism). This superficiality has been driven by key support systems for NATO involving champions from above and below.

Point 1: NATO as an Elite Project from Above I: Links to U.S. Militarism as an Ideological Support System

The mis-specified parameters of threats, security and power do not simply represent cognitive failure or mis-labeling. These mis-fires represent the power to project socially constructed conceptions of interests which are basically wrong. There is also a divergence between Sweden’s objective interests and the interests of those engaging in a kind of piggybacking on the U.S. military machine’s framing of issues. The mis-specification of Swedish interests occurs as political entrepreneurs live vicariously or directly off of the U.S. war and media machine. Vicariously means the politicians gain from association with U.S. discourse, media and proclamations of the U.S. warfare state. Directly means that there are cooperative agreements and joint exercises with NATO. Certain very famous international relations spokespersons in Sweden made their careers on echoing or supporting U.S. policy goals. A whole part of the Swedish military machine lives vicariously off of its U.S. counterpart, which some of the left believe is very bad for Sweden without considering that it’s a bad deal for the U.S. as well. Ola Tunander laid out this conflation or linkage among military elites in Sweden and the U.S. decades ago in an article published in Cooperation and Conflict.

Point 2: The Power to be Wrong: NATO as an Elite Project from Above II

The social construction of interests rest on a power to be wrong. We have politicians who really don’t know what they are talking about but know how to harvest the limited bandwidth of information available to the public. The sequence runs like this: (a) Russia attacks Ukraine; (b) an irrelevant solution, joining NATO, is proposed by bourgeois politicians; (c) the Social Democrats, rather than hold the established line, eventually cave into the bourgeois politicians (an archaic description of parties which matches these parties’ use of the word “socialism” as a pejorative expression for anyone not caving in to all dictates of the market or for persons who want an alternative, democratic governance system for firms). Why did the Social Democrats collapse? Their first priority is votes and calculations on how to harvest them by appealing to the lowest common denominator (LCD). The LCD has shifted towards NATO because of the combined action of: (a) the bourgeois politicians, (b) the weak resistance if not indirect support from the left, (c) lobbying concealed as “commentary” involving militarist security experts, (d) the mass media as a platform for limited understanding, and (e) the actions of the Swedish military which is tied to accumulating military power for the sake of doing so. Understanding a critical view of international relations or the past discourse of Swedish anti-militarism is a non-existent consideration. Russia is supposed to make critical ideas about war irrelevant, when the opposite is precisely true. The militarist and non-nuanced framing by leaders, politicians, security experts, and the mass media are part of the surplus militarism network, i.e. militarism at the expense of a foreign policy not based on military power and military alliances. I have defined surplus militarism elsewhere.

Point 3: Harvesters of Mass Ignorance: The Grassroots Purveyors of Militaristic Hegemony

Another key component of the surplus militarism network can be found in an audience that ratifies mis-statements and false narratives about military threats, security definitions or the utility of NATO. There is a grassroots militarist machine where one key cheerleader is Lars Wilderäng whose followers are gleeful militarists who gravitate to his blog. The other day I learned that such individuals have been termed möpare or a militärt överintresserad person in Swedish, i.e. a “military over-interested person.” A Wikipedia entry refers to this as “a derogatory or self-ironic term for a person who shows an unhealthy and great interest in the military and weapons.” In Wilderäng’s blog, Cornucopia?, we enter a special world in which Sweden’s attempt to juggle weapons exports and a military industrial complex with concerns for disarmament or converting away from the military economy (the Olof Palme international relations regime) is lost to a Swedish copy of U.S.-hyper militarism tied to a love of war, over-valuing military technology and a love affair with large military budgets. Disarmament champions like Inga Thorsson and Noam Chomsky are never even discussed. Alva Myrdal gets one reference, but only as the parent of Jan Myrdal. Persons like Hagström, who add nuance to the debate, are similarly ignored (zero references), where of course Micael Bydén, head of Sweden’s military, gets countless references. Similarly in Almadalen’s program for 2022, Bydén will appear over and over and over.

The problem, however, is that the Cornucopia? blog is grossly popular. According to a post in the website, “the blog had 7,667,919 visits, 1,623,560 so-called users (“unique visitors”) and 16,175,604 page views in 2020, according to Google Analytics.” In addition, Statcounter reported “16,244,109 page views and thus roughly the same block as Google Analytics.” Wilderäng’s status as a blogger or celebrity figure has clearly risen in recent years, especially with the growing interest in NATO (and by extension Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) (see Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1: Interest in Lars Wilderäng (blogger)

Source: Google trends search by author, June 25, 2022.

Figure 2: Interest in Lars Wilderäng (blogger, blue) and NATO (red) from June 27, 2021 to the Present

Source: Google trends search by author, June 25, 2022.

Wilderäng’s popularity cannot be reduced to a piggyback effect related to the Ukraine War and NATO, however. Rather, he represents the kind of celebrity figure who exchanges their media capital for political capital because of the devalued character and power of mass culture. In this sense, Wilderäng is somewhat like Ronald Reagan (former movie actor and then president) and Donald Trump (celebrity TV host and then president) in the U.S. or even Swedish versions on the left like the novelist Jan Guillou, who is regularly called upon to comment on political matters. The Massolit publishing company reports that: “In 2019, [Wilderäng] won the Grand Audiobook Award with Höstsol. Film, television and gaming rights have been sold for nine of his titles and he has sold over 700,000 books.” A devalued cultural consumption in intellectual terms tied to war and militarism on the fictional or fantasy level becomes embodied in support for actual, real life Swedish militarism via Wilderäng’s machinations.

Point 4: Reactionary Politics Builds by Colonizing, Harvesting or Forging Links with Progressive Culture: From Left to Right through the Militarist Collage

In the modern era, politicians, political ideas, progressive visions and popular culture have often been linked, but this linkage can de-evolve into support for retrograde, militarist causes. In Sweden, this pattern was exemplified by the transition from the Gothenburg African National Congress (ANC) gala in 1985, analyzed in detail by Pernilla Bjelkenbrant, to a later event just fourteen years later. In the first event, participants ranged from politicians like Olof Palme and various artists and cultural workers such as the Swedish singer and songwriters Mikael Rickfors and Björn Afzelius as well as Sanne Salomonsen, Denmark’s most popular female vocal artist during the 1980s and 1990s. Later the ANC increasingly became associated with various problems, including corruption and Neoliberalism. In addition, an Economist article in June 2022 revealed that one in eight South Africans told pollsters they had taken part in ‘violent action’ against foreigners. Later Sweden exported its jet fighters to South Africa, a development partially based on the Social Democratic party’s cashing in on its earlier opposition to the apartheid regime. This sale, filled with scandals, took place when millions with HIV were threatened because of a shortage of resources. As the South African Minister of Health then explained: “We cannot afford antiretroviral drugs because we have to buy weapons.”

The next event of interest, an important counterpoint to the Gothenburg gala was the “the so-called South African initiative.” In this episode, Sydafrikasatsningen, representatives of the culture and business elite flew down to South Africa in what became “a failed PR campaign orchestrated by the then Social Democratic government” in November 1999. As Per Gudmundson explained in an essay in Svenska Dagbladet, part of the mission was to sell Jas Gripen,” but “the big introductory concert with Dr Alban, Uno Svenningsson and The Real Group” taking place “in an arena in Soweto with room for 30,000 spectators, attracted only three people.” Despite this cultural failure, the Jas sale was successful. This episode shows how the progressive alliance between cultural celebrities and artists for a progressive cause was later inverted in an alliance for a reactionary cause. In the pro-JAS concert, concerns about a (former) victim were linked to “solidarity” or progressive causes as well as a celebration of militarism, with Social Democrats conducting this public relations performance and linkage system. This episode was a prologue for what we saw later in the NATO campaign.

Lars Wilderäng clearly fits the pattern found in the earlier South African militarist “solidarity” campaign. On the one hand, he has been critical of “greenwashing.” On the other hand, a profile published in Svenska Dagbladet reveals that “Lars Wilderäng wants to see twice as much money for the defense – and believes that Putin has no chance in the long run.” Another article reveals that he does not always side with the bourgeois parties, but that was in a dispute over the (now pro-NATO) defense minister Peter Hultqvist. So Wilderäng is a militarist who is also an ecological champion (and therefore someone who has not “connected the dots”).

The militarist collage, in which fragments of progressive and reactionary ideas mix, is partially what has made the militarist mobilization for NATO in Sweden so successful. Another example can be seen in the case of feminist arms dealers like Canada and Sweden, here “feminist branding” is not simply misappropriated “feminism” but part of a system to diminish if not negate flak about selling weapons, i.e. the militarist opportunity costs are displaced. In the NATO episode, “feminism” is not the key displacement lubricant, which instead can be found in the real problem of Ukrainian victims. Ukrainian victimhood, which is real, is used to displace any concerns about the U.S. role, absence of authentic diplomacy, or even problems with Ukrainian state policies as we will now analyze. Ukrainians perform the same function which South Africans used to play: an authentic victim is linked to a militarization campaign using the framing of “solidarity.”

Point 5: Hegemonic culture as antagonistic to authentic diplomacy

Some argue that there are people on the left who are Putin’s “useful idiots,” but (irrespective of the veracity of that argument) there are also many “useful idiots” for NATO. Of course, Putin and Russia are engaged in a senseless, brutal war against Ukraine. Yet, there is far more to what is happening in this conflict than this one dimensional morality play. Wilderäng is part of the process which links mass culture, superficial framing and burying of inconvenient arguments and facts. He is one of many cheerleaders for a self-destructive Swedish militarism and a militarism in Ukraine where weapons transfers and NATO are supposed to be sufficient responses. We need to expand our understanding of the role played by such cheerleaders in propping up a celebration of military power, especially now that Ukraine is losing territory in part because such cheerleaders could not identify any reason to think about diplomatic openings or the pernicious and well-documented role played by the U.S. and NATO in helping to initiate and prolong this conflict. The initiating takes place not because Russia made a “moral” response to NATO expansion, but because NATO expansion helped motivate his attack on Ukraine or legitimate it in the eyes of some in the Russian elite. The prolonging takes places because the U.S. and NATO never actively promoted early solutions such as neutrality or a diplomacy that delinked from NATO and “the right to provoke Russia.”

In Wilderäng’s blog, Cornucopia?, we can see a kind of useful idiocy in support of NATO clearly at work. Consider the June 27, 2022 entry entitled, “Nato stärker sitt defensiva försvar av medlemsländerna i öst till brigader istället för stridsgrupper – ökar snabbinsatsstyrkorna från 40 000 man till 300 000,” i.e. “NATO strengthens its defensive military forces of member states in the east to brigades instead of battle groups – increases rapid reaction forces from 40,000 men to 300,000.” Wilderäng comments on these increases as follows: “It is clear that the Russian threats should only lead NATO to step up its preparedness and defense of the alliance’s most vulnerable countries. The above is the largest increase in NATO’s readiness and capability since the Cold War.” He continues, that NATO’s move is “a message to Russia to back down and that NATO will not bow to threats, but stands in solidarity behind threatened member states such as the latest Russian threats against Lithuania or proposals on Russian television that Russia decides how much of Western Europe should remain.”

There are several responses to Wilderäng’s commentary here which are relevant. First, his analysis always ignores the complicating factors which if addressed could provide a basis for authentic diplomacy and avoiding the escalation of conflict. In this specific case, the conflict with Lithuania was set off “when Lithuania banned the transit of steel and other ferrous metals under EU sanctions.” As the BBC reported, “the Kremlin condemned the sanctions as illegal and unacceptable.” According to the Lithuania’s Prime Minister, this blockage affected only about 1% of Russian freight. Wilderäng would likely respond that the blockade was justifiable because Russia invaded Ukraine. Yet, this invasion was itself complicated by other motivating factors such as NATO’s eastward expansion, deployment of Nazi-linked military brigades, shelling of Donbas by Ukrainian forces, and incursions against Russian-speakers’ rights within Ukraine. These motivations don’t justify Russia’s actions, but if properly addressed earlier might have lessened the chances of war. When one ignores this association of peace building measures and reduction of conflict, one engages in useful idiocy for NATO.

Second, Wilderäng builds a simple plot line based on evil Russians and innocent Westerners, even when the reality of the conflict is far more complex. Wilderäng engages in sins of omission, particularly when it concerns the relationship between the West and Russia. He writes: “NATO is acting exactly right here. The only thing the Kremlin understands is strength, and nothing says strength as much as 300,000 men backed by NATO’s state-of-the-art defense system. Remember that Russia attacked Ukraine with about 190,000 men it had managed to scrape together. Within 48 hours, NATO will be able to get more than that in the field and as a defender have not only doctrinal and material superiority, but also numerical.” Wilderäng’s analysis here is faulty because it assumes that military superiority is the primary issue in international relations or an issue that displaces all other considerations, e.g. sanctions which are not tied to an authentic diplomatic regime, provocations, military expansion as a trigger for conflict, or the track record of the U.S. (and by extension its allies who legitimate U.S. actions) of invading countries without any legal foundation whatsoever.

Third, Wilderäng exaggerates the risks of Russian attacks and misunderstands the limits of military power. Wilderäng writes, “as for dismissing the risk of war as negligible, many useful idiots have done this in recent years by saying that ‘Russia would never…’, but on February 24, those who said the opposite were right. Russia’s ability is not the problem, but the problem is Russia’s willingness to start a war.” Wilderäng appears to suggest that there is a high or probability that Lithuania is under a military threat. In contrast, Andrew Higgins at The New York Times (which by my assessment is to the left of most left media in Sweden on the Ukraine crisis) explained the situation in a story published June 24, 2022 as follows: “Around half of the Russian troops and hardware that was previously based in Kaliningrad, for example, has now been redeployed to Ukraine. The United States, in contrast, has boosted NATO forces in Lithuania, with around 700 American soldiers now on rotation in the country to supplement a regular contingent of 1,150 German, 250 Dutch and 200 Norwegian troops.” Higgins interviewed Peter Nielsen, a Danish colonel who commands a NATO unit in Vilnius, who “said that he had seen no signs in recent days that Russia is preparing any new military action against Lithuania.” The NATO forces already in Lithuania, Nielsen said, made “a Russian military strike against Lithuania highly unlikely — ‘even if they are crazy.'” In sum, Lithuania was already secure before NATO’s announced massive build up announced on June 27, 2022.

The organizing principle of NATO is to take rhetorical flourishes by the Russians and use that as an excuse to extend NATO’s own military operations, i.e. discourse as rhetoric is met with material response. In contrast, when NATO does that it is insufficient or irrelevant in stopping the financing of the Russian war machine. In March of this year, the NGO Transport and Environment said Europeans were financing Russia with $285 million a day in oil imports. A different analysis by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland found that “Russia earned EUR 93 billion in revenue from fossil fuel exports in the first 100 days of the war (February 24 to June 3). The EU imported 61% of this, worth approximately 57 billion EUR.” Despite Wilderäng’s belief that military build ups were the best response, Euronews reported that “several public and private websites in Lithuania were temporarily hit by a concerted cyberattack” on Monday June 27, 2022. NATO build ups of fighting troops and traditional weapons are useless responses to such attacks. CNN noted that “a Russian-speaking hacking group, known as Killnet, claimed responsibility for at least some of the hacks, saying they were in retaliation for Lithuania blocking the shipment of some goods to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.” In sum, promises of a major NATO build up did nothing to improve Lithuania’s immediate security, with Lithuania already secure prior to the announced mobilization according to NATO’s own military leaders.

Even if one says Russia is completely responsible for brutality in Ukraine and for attacking Ukraine (which on one level is true), the idea that weapons transfers are sufficient for defending Ukrainian territory has proven to be a big lie. Even the sanctions on Russia seemed to have the opposite of the intended impact, at least as of late June, leading the Russians to profit more from sales to China and India. These considerations should lead to a more concerted mobilization for a diplomatic solution, but that has not occurred. One reason is that the comfortable and low utility position of just condemning Russia is useful for accumulation power in a world of superficiality from above and below. A lot of the power of sanctions and arms transfers to stop Russia have been neutralized by actions by China, India and Europeans purchasing Russian oil as well as the failure to link sanctions and arms transfers to an active, authentic diplomacy. The big lie is to suggest that meaningful diplomacy won’t work when it was not really even attempted. Sins of omission and failed policies which don’t stop Ukraine is what we can expect from the likes of Wilderäng and NATO.

Conclusions: An Alternative to Structured Superficiality

Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the most sophisticated left critics of the 20th Century, argues that an authentic democracy requires more than the mechanics of voting, but also critical education and reflection. This leads to the obvious question of how such critique and reflection is generated.

First, one way is through deep engagement with foundational thinkers who have a broad view of social problems and are able to “connect the dots.” In contrast to such thinkers large parts of the media, academic, political, and scholarly patronage world do not like to “connect the dots,” or prefer to do so in a way that is not critical, i.e. not anti-militaristic.

Second, one has to break out of a pattern of non-debate in which structured superficialists hold sway. This move to the past involving fundamental thinkers is violated by the hegemony of the present, so that “majority opinion” and what is considered “controversial” can easily change. There is no deep anchoring system created by following the logic of mass media and cultural propaganda artists. The skillful manipulation of the Ukraine crisis by the forces of superficiality from above and below have now locked in advocacy of NATO as “mainstream,” whereas just a few months ago opposition to NATO was “mainstream.” This shift has a common foundation because the opposition and the support for NATO both took place as the ruling Social Democratic Party did not cultivate much of a debate about NATO (an idea someone suggested to me, which now seems rather plausible). So the movement from (a) no debate about NATO and where NATO support is not mainstream to (b) no debate about NATO and where NATO opposition is not mainstream, does not seem like as big a leap as some might think. Yes, the mobilization and change was rapid, but the shift took place under a common umbrella of superficiality and non-debate. In this debate vacuum, the combination of power and superficiality of the key actors described above could easily seize the advantage. The opposition forces have limited resources.

Third, various elements present within Swedish culture such as fear of the other, recycling of past social movement formations, consensus as conformism, and moral framing detached from deep analytical insights about militarism and security require incubators of a different kind of culture. The decades long repressive tolerance of arms exports have been a kind of dress rehearsal for the new, expanded love of NATO and military budgets. Russia’s invasion has brought out and facilitated the worse elements of these tendencies. The understanding of security is rather superficial. While Russia has not killed a single Swede in Sweden, rampant gang violence, threats of extensive forest fires (as in 2018), patterns of past ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra involvement, and under-investment in the need for an ever more rapid climate mitigation all point to far more profound security problems (not to mention the previous burning down of refugee shelters in 2015, 2016 and 2017). Russian military maneuvers involving jets or ships near or in Swedish territory or in the Baltic are easily matched by Swedish equivalent engagements aimed at Russia. In any case, alternative incubators for a more critical analysis of security could be formed by the creation of a Swedish “Peace University” linking critical scholars from the universities and folk high schools as well as disarmament or critical thinkers in the ranks of journalism, religious organizations, as well as various NGOs and non-profits engaged in peace and development work. Most essential would be to raise funds for doctoral students focused on analyzing militarism, anti-militarism and the demilitarization of Swedish society. One should note, however, that it would be very easy for such a critical institution to be overwhelmed by the contemporary international relations discourse which itself was established in a way that negated or ignored the discourse of militarism and anti-militarism.

Postscript, September 15, 2023

A profile of Lars Wilderäng was published in Dagens Nyheter on October 13, 2022.