ABSTRACT
The Nordic pattern has combined the presence of both East and West in the region through treaty arrangements with a local "backbone," "not-aligned" and armed Sweden. Two phenomena have challenged the Nordic model of security. First, the conference on security and cooperation in Europe process led to the Europeanization of Nordic security. Second, the importance of the strategic North for the Soviet Union rose as a consequence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' buildup on the Kola Peninsula and of its northern fleet as well as US and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countermeasures against this Soviet buildup. The Nordics themselves have been building up their own military resources in the far North during the late 1970s and early 1980s as a response to the growing strategic significance of their region. "New thinking" in the Soviet Union has so far had relatively little direct impact upon Swedish conceptions of national security policy.
