Sweden: Now Without Military
Advice for George W Bush: If you want to invade another country during 2008, then you should include Sweden in the axis of evil with immediate effect (heck, they’re Social Democrats and as such enemies of the free world according to the Wingnutosphere. They even have a single-payer health care system which according to the same nutosphere is even worse than planning nuclear terrorism) and just go for it. An easy victory is guaranteed.
The reason? It seems that the Swedish defence forces have run out of money already at the start of January and after blowing a couple of millions of SEK on promoting the head of the armed forces on a film sent to all defence employees (couldn’t they just have bought a couple of macs and used iMovie to make the thing?), serious redundancies and moth-balling half of the air-force is on the agenda. The armed forces are even said to be contemplating abandoning its participation in the Nordic Battle Group.
There is probably a strong element of bureaucratic politics in all of this but it also reflects the fact that the Swedish armed forces and Swedish politicians still are trying to define a role (and a budget) for the armed forces after the break-down of the Soviet bloc.
PS: Ulf Bjereld on the same subject. UB is of cause not exactly a card-carrying Conservative 
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