ABSTRACT
Within a month of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. bombers began to pummel Afghan mountainsides in their hunt for alQaeda operatives and to oust the Taliban government. At the time, Sweden did not face a threat to its territorial integrity or an increased threat of impending terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan. Yet, it quickly accepted to contribute to a western military intervention into the conflict-ridden country. The Swedish troop contribution is puzzling in at least two ways. That a military non-aligned country commits relatively large resources to a NATO-led operation is an empirical anomaly. We can compare with other non-aligned countries such as Finland, Austria, and Ireland, who kept a relatively low military profile in Afghanistan. In addition, the absence of an immediate threat also suggests that the standard explanation of military action as a result of an increased threat cannot explain Swedish troop contributions. We, however, suggest that ideational factors – a strategic narrative – can make the Swedish choices understandable. A narrative shapes the public perception of a particular policy and establishes so-called interpretative dominance of how a particular event should be understood. In this, analogies and strategic narratives share common ground (e.g., Angstrom 2011). The contents of the story as well as the manner in which it is told, in short, opens certain policy routes, but forecloses on others (Ringmar 1996). Or, in Finnemore’s (2003, 15), terms, ideational frameworks do not cause interventions, but it enables them. For legitimizing the use of force (hence, making such a strategy possible), a strategic narrative that appeals to critical support groups becomes imperative. Managing the strategic narrative – the story of the ongoing military operations – is increasingly seen as important in western use of force. Offices for so-called strategic communication have even been institutionalized in many western armed forces over the last decade as evidence of its growing policy importance. One of the essential prerequisites of the alleged strategic utility of narratives is that they should be coherent,
realistic, hold a promise of success, and correspond with the reality on the ground, i.e., the story needs to be upheld against public perception and it needs to be free of inconsistencies (e.g., Freedman 2006; Betz 2011; Dimitriu 2011; Ringsmose and Børgesen 2011; Simpson 2013). In the case of Swedish intervention in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF ), however, the narrative cannot be accurately described as coherent, unified, and corresponding with operations on the ground. Instead, the Swedish narrative is most aptly described as a heterogeneous catch-all, involving several layers of, sometimes competing, motives. The catch-all narrative, moreover, is not a result of using different empirical sources in our analysis. By only focusing on the political elites, we would have expected a more coherent narrative. If we would have included other actors in the analysis, a greater heterogeneity would not have been surprising. This reinforces our claim that the Swedish narrative is a catch-all. In this chapter, we argue that the catch-all narrative is not a case of illadvised, haphazard strategy, but rather a response from a consensusseeking political culture faced with multiple target audiences that need to be seen to have an impact on the strategic guidance of the mission. In effect, the end result can of course be a bad strategy, but since operations in Afghanistan are still ongoing, it is premature to excessively criticize Swedish policy-makers for their strategic choices. What we can criticize, however, is that in the attempts to please as many target audiences as possible, the Swedish strategic narrative has become too heterogeneous. This, as we shall see, has led to inconsistent results in opinion polls and a polarized and often confusing debate in media and parliament. In the long run, there is, moreover, a risk of a widening gulf between public perception and governmental policy. This can have a detrimental effect on the utility of the operations, the support of the Swedish troops, and undermine general public confidence in Swedish foreign and security policies.
