ABSTRACT
An often overlooked aspect of the crisis of democracy is foreign and security policy. The high costs of the war and unearthing of the United States (US) schemes that escalated the Vietnam conflict into a full-scale war meant a crucial loss of legitimacy for the US regime. Andrew Cottey has stated, referring to other scholars, that non-alignment has become a part of the identity of the European neutrals, and therefore it is rather unlikely that they would abandon this policy. During the Cold War, both Sweden and Finland relied by necessity on publicly proclaimed neutrality and non-alignment. In order to attain this status in the international system, while simultaneously keeping pace with Western trajectories, both countries, albeit sceptically at first, focused on international cooperation, mostly under the auspices of the United Nations (UN). The Swedish non-notification traumatised Finland. The Baltic Sea region sphere of interest contributes to the Finnish and Swedish defence dilemmas.
