Ola Tunander
Encyclopedia
Ola Tunander is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Oslo
, Norway
, He is the son of the Museum Director Ingemar Tunander and his first wife Gunvor (born Lilja). Ola Tunander is married to the Chinese scholar Yao Xiaoling. He has written and edited 12 books and a number of articles on security politics, naval strategy
, submarine operations, geopolitics
, dual state, psychological operations (PSYOP)
and Cold War
history. He has initiated east-west dialogue conferences.
. In 1989, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Department for Technology and Social Change, Linköping University
. While finalizing his doctoral thesis Cold Water Politics (1989) on US Maritime Strategy, technology and the geopolitics of the North, he received a research position at PRIO in Oslo. In 1989, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow and was given tenure. He lectured at the U.S. Center for Naval Analysis
and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School
. In 1995, he became the head of PRIO’s Foreign and Security Policy Program. In 2000, he was appointed Research Professor.
, confidence-building measures, region-building and US remaking of world order. He headed a Nordic study group, “A new Europe” from mid-1980s with Prof Ole Wæver
, the founder of the concept of “securitization”
and the Copenhagen School of International Relations
; Prof Iver B. Neumann
, Research Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs; Sverre Jervell, the architect of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
launched by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg
and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in 1993; and Espen Barth Eide
, later Norwegian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Defense. Prof. Robert Bathurst (PRIO and U.S. Naval Postgraduate School) and Tunander initiated Norwegian-Russian dialogue seminars in the early 1990s. In 1994, he co-edited a volume on the post-Cold War regional cooperation in Arctic Europe, The Barents Region, with chapters by the foreign ministers (Kozyrev and Holst
) and foreword by former foreign minister Stoltenberg. Tunander wrote contributions about Northern Europe, Nordic Cooperation and Scandinavism
published by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Olof Palme International Center. He contributed to Russian journal International Affairs with the Norwegian and Russian ambassadors, Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland
and Foreign Minister Bjørn Tore Godal
and his Russian counterpart Yevgeny Primakov
. Tunander wrote and edited two Swedish books on power, identity and territory and co-edited Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe (1997). Some of these books were on the reading lists for universities and military colleges in Europe and the United States, and a number of these projects were carried out for the Norwegian ministries of defence and foreign affairs. After 2000, he organized Nordic-Chinese dialogue conferences with the CIIS (Chinese Institute of International Studies) and the Nordic peace research and international affairs institutes. He also participated in a Washington dialogue. His new focus on China might be explained by his marriage with Dr Yao Xiaoling, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the Chinese reform policy.
case in 1993). He wrote articles on geopolitics
, "amputation of territories" and the geopolitical scholar Rudolf Kjellén
for Security Dialogue, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, and Geopolitics as well as for the Italian journal Limes. He argued in articles for above journals, for the European Commission, and for a book volume Government of the Shadows (2009) that U.S. hegemonic power divided the single Western state into a “dual state”: a regular democratic hierarchy versus a security hierarchy linked to the U.S. With reference to Schmitt
, Morgenthau
and Fraenkel
, he developed the concept of “dual state” as composed by a regular democratic state or “public state” (Peter Dale Scott) that acts according to the rule of law, and by a covert "deep state
" or “security state” able to veto the decisions of the former (Morgenthau) and to “securitize” regular politics by making certain activities an issue of life and death (Wæver). Cold War military coups or coup attempts (i.e. Turkey
, Greece
, Italy
, France
and Spain
) were understood in terms of the “veto power” of the “deep state”, which “securitized” regular democratic activities by the use of terrorism
or what in Italy has been called the "strategy of tension
". Tunander quotes his conversation with former CIA Director and former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger
, who spoke about a Swedish “dual state”: the neutral “Political Sweden” versus the “Military Sweden” that, according to Schlesinger, was “planning to get the USA involved as soon as possible”. Tunander quotes U.S. secretaries of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and U.S. Chief of Naval Operations
, as saying: when it came to the most sensitive issues, as the Swedish-U.S. military ties, there was only one rule: “Nothing on paper”.
activities in Swedish archipelagoes and naval bases in the 1980s. His books from the 1980s accepted the official view. In 1983, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
protested against the “Soviet intrusions”. He was forced to cancel his policy and deep-freeze Sweden’s diplomatic relations to Moscow. In 1980, 8 % of the Swedes viewed the Soviet Union
as a direct threat and 33 % considered the Soviets as hostile. After a stranded Soviet submarine in 1981 and primarily after a dramatic anti-submarine operation in 1982 with midget submarine
s inside Swedish naval bases, these figures changed to 42 % and 83 % respectively, which forced Sweden to deep-freeze its Soviet ties. However, in the 1990s, Tunander was told by U.S. and British officials that these operations were run by the U.S. and the U.K. In 2000 former U.S. Secretary of Defense
Caspar Weinberger
and former U.K. Navy minister Keith Speed
stated on Swedish TV that their subs had operated "regularly" and "frequently" in Swedish waters to test Swedish defenses after navy-to-navy consultations. This information was confirmed by British Chief of Defence Intelligence Air Marshal
Sir John Walker. Chairman of the NATO Military Committee
Vigleik Eide
, and NATO Secretary General
George Robertson
added that these were not NATO operations but operations under national command (U.S. and U.K.). This led to a Swedish Government inquiry under Sweden’s former Washington Ambassador Rolf Ekéus
with Ambassador Mathias Mossberg as Secretary and with Tunander as a civilian expert. Tunander wrote a Swedish book Hårsfjärden (2001), articles for the journal of the Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, the Swedish Journal of War Sciences, the Zürich-based Parallel History Project
, and an English volume for the Frank Cass Naval History Series The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (2004), which emphasized the submarines role to change Swedish public opinion and foreign policy. Tunander argued that Soviet submarines might very well have entered Swedish waters, but the more visible operations were most likely PSYOPs decided by a U.S. “deception operation committee” chaired by CIA
Director William Casey
, and some of them were run by a CIA-Navy liaison office, National Underwater Reconnaissance Office
(NURO), headed by Secretary of Navy
John Lehman
.
and ZDF
, 2005) was largely based on Tunander’s work and aired all over Europe. In 2007-2008, Swedish TV aired documentaries based on Tunander’s work and The Sunday Times
in Britain presented his work. This provoked a controversy. Sweden’s Royal Society of Naval Sciences
and the Royal Academy of War Sciences
organized seminars. Sweden’s former chief of defense and former chief of staff wrote articles against Tunander. Tunander was supported by Ambassador Mossberg, the Submarine Inquiry Secretary, who wrote a book I mörka vatten: Hur det svenska folket fördes bakom ljuset i ubåtsfrågan [In Dark Waters: How the Submarines were used to Deceive the Swedish People] (Stockholm, 2009) with a cover text by Ambassador Ekéus. Mossberg similar to the Danish Government Inquiry and the German TV documentary stressed Tunander’s argument that some operations were very likely U.S. and U.K. PSYOPs. Tunander received similar support from Finnish President Mauno Koivisto
, who called the operations "provocations" and recalled Soviet leader Yuri Andropov
telling him that the Swedes should sink every intruding submarine, so they could see themselves what turned up. Prime Minister Palme never pointed to the Soviets after his conversation with President Koivisto in August 1983. Tunander was supported by French Naval historian Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
and former U.S. attaché to Moscow Captain Peter Huchthausen
. The Swedish controversy, however, is still ongoing with a volume written by Sweden’s former Chief of Defence General Bengt Gustafsson 2010. and with a public debate between general Gustafsson and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on the one hand and Tunander, Ambassador Mossberg and Ambassador Ekéus on the other.
The Barents Region: Regional Cooperation in Arctic Europe, with Olav Schram Stokke eds. (London: Sage, 1994). ISBN 0-8039-7897-9; ISBN 978-0-8039-7897-3.
Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory and Identity, with Pavel Baev
and Victoria Einagel eds. (London: Sage, 1997). ISBN 0-7619-5549-6; ISBN 978-0-7619-5549-8.
European Security Identities: Contested understandings of EU and NATO, with Peter Burgess, eds. (Oslo: PRIO, 2000). ISBN 82-7288-210-8.
The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (London & New York: Frank Cass & Routledge, 2004). ISBN 0-7146-5322-5; ISBN 978-0-7146-5322-8.
På Autobahn mot sekelskiftet [On Autobahn towards the Turn of the Century] (Lund: Symposion, 1985). ISBN 91-7868-016-6.
Norden och USAs maritima strategi – En studie av Nordens förändrade strategiska läge [The Nordic Countries and the US Maritime Strategy – A Study of the Changed Strategic Position of the Nordic Area]. ’Försvarets Forskningsanstalt [Swedish Defense Research Establishment], Stockholm: FOA Rapport C 10295-1.4, 1987. ISSN 0281-0247.
Murar – Essäer om makt, identitet och territorialitet [Walls – Essays on Power, Identity and Territoriality] (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-72-6; ISBN 82-7198-025-4; ISBN 91-88484-10-6; ISBN 9979-837-10-1.
Europa och Muren – Om ‘den andre’, gränslandet och historiens återkomst i 90-talets Europa [Europe and the Wall – On ‘the Other’, the Borderland and the Return of History in Europe of the 1990s], ed. (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-69-6; ISBN 9979 -837-07-1; ISBN 82-7198-023-8; ISBN 91-88484-08-4.
Hårsfjärden – Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot Sverige [Hårsfjärden – The Secret Submarine War against Sweden] (Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag, 2001). ISBN 91-1-301038-7.
Spelet under ytan – Teknisk bevisning i nationalitesfrågan för ubåtsoperationen mot Sverige 1982, published by the Swedish research program: ’Sverige under kalla kriget’ [Sweden during the Cold War], no. 16 (Gothenburg Univ. & Stockholm Univ., 2007). ISSN 1402 -5507 (A revised edition was published on the PRIO website in 2009). http://www.prio.no/upload/people/ola_tunander/Spelet%20under%20ytan.pdf
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, He is the son of the Museum Director Ingemar Tunander and his first wife Gunvor (born Lilja). Ola Tunander is married to the Chinese scholar Yao Xiaoling. He has written and edited 12 books and a number of articles on security politics, naval strategy
Naval strategy
Naval strategy is the planning and conduct of war at sea, the naval equivalent of military strategy on land.Naval strategy, and the related concept of maritime strategy, concerns the overall strategy for achieving victory at sea, including the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and...
, submarine operations, geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
, dual state, psychological operations (PSYOP)
Psychological Operations (United States)
Psychological operations are planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.The purpose of United States...
and Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
history. He has initiated east-west dialogue conferences.
Early scholarly career
After attaining a Masters in Economic History (with Human Geography and History of Science and Ideas) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) in 1981, Tunander wrote for philosophical magazines and in 1985 he published two book volumes in Swedish. In 1987, he wrote a volume on US Maritime Strategy for the Swedish Defence Research EstablishmentSwedish Defence Research Agency
The Swedish Defence Research Agency is a Swedish government agency for defence research that reports to the Ministry of Defence. It has its headquarters in Kista, Stockholm and other locations in Grindsjön south of Stockholm, Linköping and Umeå...
. In 1989, he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Department for Technology and Social Change, Linköping University
Linköping University
Linköping University is a state university in Linköping, Sweden. Linköping University was granted full university status in 1975 and is now one of Sweden's larger academic institutions. Education, research and PhD training are the mission of four faculties: Arts and Sciences, Educational...
. While finalizing his doctoral thesis Cold Water Politics (1989) on US Maritime Strategy, technology and the geopolitics of the North, he received a research position at PRIO in Oslo. In 1989, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow and was given tenure. He lectured at the U.S. Center for Naval Analysis
Center for Naval Analyses
CNA's Center for Naval Analyses is a federally funded research and development center for the Navy and the Marine Corps. It also provides research and analysis services to other military and government agencies to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S...
and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School
Naval Postgraduate School
The Naval Postgraduate School is an accredited research university operated by the United States Navy. Located in Monterey, California, it grants master's degrees, Engineer's degrees and doctoral degrees...
. In 1995, he became the head of PRIO’s Foreign and Security Policy Program. In 2000, he was appointed Research Professor.
Dialogue projects and writings on region-building, security and identity
From early 1990s, Tunander wrote on military strategyMilitary strategy
Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
, confidence-building measures, region-building and US remaking of world order. He headed a Nordic study group, “A new Europe” from mid-1980s with Prof Ole Wæver
Ole Wæver
Ole Wæver is a professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen. He has published and broadcast extensively in the field of international relations, and is one of the main architects of the so-called Copenhagen School in International...
, the founder of the concept of “securitization”
Securitization (international relations)
Securitization in international relations is a concept connected with the Copenhagen School, and is largely seen as synthesis of constructivist and classical political realism in its approach to international security . In contrast to materialist approaches of classical security studies,...
and the Copenhagen School of International Relations
The Copenhagen School (international relations)
The Copenhagen School of security studies is a school of academic thought with its origins in international relations theorist Barry Buzan's book People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, first published in 1983. The Copenhagen School places particular...
; Prof Iver B. Neumann
Iver B. Neumann
Iver Brynild Neumann is a Norwegian political scientist and social anthropologist. He is a professor of Russian studies at the University of Oslo and has been research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs since 2008.Neumann obtained his first DPhil in Politics from Oxford...
, Research Director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs; Sverre Jervell, the architect of the Barents Euro-Arctic Region
Barents Region
The Barents Region is a name given, by political ambition to establish international cooperation after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the land along the coast of the Barents Sea, from Nordland in Norway to the Kola Peninsula in Russia and beyond all the way to the Ural Mountains and Novaya...
launched by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg
Thorvald Stoltenberg
Thorvald Stoltenberg is a former Norwegian politician. His ancestors stem from Northern Germany and emigrated to Norway in the 17th century. He served as Minister of Defense and Minister of Foreign Affairs in two Labour governments.From 1989 to 1990 he was appointed Norwegian Ambassador to the UN...
and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in 1993; and Espen Barth Eide
Espen Barth Eide
Espen Barth Eide is Norway's Minister of Defense. He is a political scientist and a politician for the Labor Party.Eide went to high school at the Oslo Cathedral School, and graduated from the University of Oslo with the cand.polit. degree in 1993...
, later Norwegian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Defense. Prof. Robert Bathurst (PRIO and U.S. Naval Postgraduate School) and Tunander initiated Norwegian-Russian dialogue seminars in the early 1990s. In 1994, he co-edited a volume on the post-Cold War regional cooperation in Arctic Europe, The Barents Region, with chapters by the foreign ministers (Kozyrev and Holst
Johan Jørgen Holst
Johan Jørgen Holst was a Norwegian politician representing Labour, best known for his involvement with the Oslo Accords....
) and foreword by former foreign minister Stoltenberg. Tunander wrote contributions about Northern Europe, Nordic Cooperation and Scandinavism
Scandinavism
Scandinavism and Nordism are literary and political movements that support various degrees of cooperation between the Scandinavian or Nordic countries...
published by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Olof Palme International Center. He contributed to Russian journal International Affairs with the Norwegian and Russian ambassadors, Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland
Thorbjørn Jagland
is a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party, currently serving as the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe...
and Foreign Minister Bjørn Tore Godal
Bjørn Tore Godal
Bjørn Tore Godal is a Norwegian politician for the Labour Party. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs 1991-1994, as well as acting Minister of Foreign Affairs 1993-1994. He was then Minister of Foreign Affairs 1994-1996 and 1996-1997, and Minister of Defense 2000-2001 in the first cabinet Stoltenberg...
and his Russian counterpart Yevgeny Primakov
Yevgeny Primakov
Yevgeny Maksimovich Primakov is a Russian politician and diplomat. During his long career, he served as the Russian Foreign Minister, Prime Minister of Russia, Speaker of the Soviet of the Union of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, and chief of intelligence service...
. Tunander wrote and edited two Swedish books on power, identity and territory and co-edited Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe (1997). Some of these books were on the reading lists for universities and military colleges in Europe and the United States, and a number of these projects were carried out for the Norwegian ministries of defence and foreign affairs. After 2000, he organized Nordic-Chinese dialogue conferences with the CIIS (Chinese Institute of International Studies) and the Nordic peace research and international affairs institutes. He also participated in a Washington dialogue. His new focus on China might be explained by his marriage with Dr Yao Xiaoling, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the Chinese reform policy.
Contributions about Geopolitics, Dual State and Terrorism
In his Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe, Tunander emphasized that the state’s traditional Friend-Foe divide had been supplemented by a Cosmos-Chaos divide that made European states seek centrality rather than territory and in some cases cut off less developed nationalist territories (i.e. the CzechCzech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
case in 1993). He wrote articles on geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
, "amputation of territories" and the geopolitical scholar Rudolf Kjellén
Rudolf Kjellén
Johan Rudolf Kjellén was a Swedish political scientist and politician who first coined the term "geopolitics". His work was influenced by Friedrich Ratzel...
for Security Dialogue, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, and Geopolitics as well as for the Italian journal Limes. He argued in articles for above journals, for the European Commission, and for a book volume Government of the Shadows (2009) that U.S. hegemonic power divided the single Western state into a “dual state”: a regular democratic hierarchy versus a security hierarchy linked to the U.S. With reference to Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, philosopher, political theorist, and professor of law.Schmitt published several essays, influential in the 20th century and beyond, on the mentalities that surround the effective wielding of political power...
, Morgenthau
Hans Morgenthau
Hans Joachim Morgenthau was one of the leading twentieth-century figures in the study of international politics...
and Fraenkel
Ernst Fraenkel (political scientist)
Ernst Fraenkel was a German political scientist. He was one of the founding fathers of German political science after World War II....
, he developed the concept of “dual state” as composed by a regular democratic state or “public state” (Peter Dale Scott) that acts according to the rule of law, and by a covert "deep state
Deep state
The Deep state is alleged to be a group of influential anti-democratic coalitions within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services , Turkish military, security, judiciary, and mafia. The notion of deep state is similar to that of a "state within...
" or “security state” able to veto the decisions of the former (Morgenthau) and to “securitize” regular politics by making certain activities an issue of life and death (Wæver). Cold War military coups or coup attempts (i.e. Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
) were understood in terms of the “veto power” of the “deep state”, which “securitized” regular democratic activities by the use of terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
or what in Italy has been called the "strategy of tension
Strategy of tension
The strategy of tension is a theory that describes how to divide, manipulate, and control public opinion using fear, propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, agents provocateurs, and false flag terrorist actions....
". Tunander quotes his conversation with former CIA Director and former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger
James R. Schlesinger
Dr. James Rodney Schlesinger is an American politician. He is best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...
, who spoke about a Swedish “dual state”: the neutral “Political Sweden” versus the “Military Sweden” that, according to Schlesinger, was “planning to get the USA involved as soon as possible”. Tunander quotes U.S. secretaries of defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense who advise the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President on military matters...
and U.S. Chief of Naval Operations
Chief of Naval Operations
The Chief of Naval Operations is a statutory office held by a four-star admiral in the United States Navy, and is the most senior uniformed officer assigned to serve in the Department of the Navy. The office is a military adviser and deputy to the Secretary of the Navy...
, as saying: when it came to the most sensitive issues, as the Swedish-U.S. military ties, there was only one rule: “Nothing on paper”.
Submarines and PSYOPs
Tunander’s study of covert political structures goes back to his experience of high profile submarineSubmarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
activities in Swedish archipelagoes and naval bases in the 1980s. His books from the 1980s accepted the official view. In 1983, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
Olof Palme
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician. A long-time protegé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 to his assassination, and was a two-term Prime Minister of Sweden, heading a Privy Council Government from 1969 to 1976 and a cabinet...
protested against the “Soviet intrusions”. He was forced to cancel his policy and deep-freeze Sweden’s diplomatic relations to Moscow. In 1980, 8 % of the Swedes viewed the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
as a direct threat and 33 % considered the Soviets as hostile. After a stranded Soviet submarine in 1981 and primarily after a dramatic anti-submarine operation in 1982 with midget submarine
Midget submarine
A midget submarine is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 8, with little or no on-board living accommodation...
s inside Swedish naval bases, these figures changed to 42 % and 83 % respectively, which forced Sweden to deep-freeze its Soviet ties. However, in the 1990s, Tunander was told by U.S. and British officials that these operations were run by the U.S. and the U.K. In 2000 former U.S. Secretary of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger , was an American politician, vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Corporation, and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 21, 1981, until November 23, 1987, making him the third longest-serving defense secretary to date, after...
and former U.K. Navy minister Keith Speed
Keith Speed
Sir Herbert "Keith" Speed, RD, DL is a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom and former Member of Parliament. He is a descendant of cartographer and historian John Speed....
stated on Swedish TV that their subs had operated "regularly" and "frequently" in Swedish waters to test Swedish defenses after navy-to-navy consultations. This information was confirmed by British Chief of Defence Intelligence Air Marshal
Air Marshal
Air marshal is a three-star air-officer rank which originated in and continues to be used by the Royal Air Force...
Sir John Walker. Chairman of the NATO Military Committee
Chairman of the NATO Military Committee
The Chairman of the NATO Military Committee's authority stems from the NATO Military Committee, to which he is responsible in the performance of his duties. He chairs all meetings of the Military Committee and acts in an international capacity. In his absence, the Deputy Chairman of the Military...
Vigleik Eide
Vigleik Eide
Vigleik Eide was a Norwegian diplomat and military officer, a General in the Norwegian Army who served two years as Chief of Defence of Norway, and four years as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.-Personal life:...
, and NATO Secretary General
Secretary General of NATO
The Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is the chairman of the North Atlantic Council, the supreme decision-making organisation of the defence alliance. The Secretary-General also serves as the leader of the organisation's staff and as its chief spokesman...
George Robertson
George Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen
George Islay MacNeill Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, is a British Labour Party politician who was the tenth Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, between October 1999 and early January 2004; he succeeded Javier Solana in that position...
added that these were not NATO operations but operations under national command (U.S. and U.K.). This led to a Swedish Government inquiry under Sweden’s former Washington Ambassador Rolf Ekéus
Rolf Ekéus
Carl Rolf Ekéus is a Swedish diplomat. From 1978 to 1983, he was a representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and he has worked on various other disarmament committees and commissions....
with Ambassador Mathias Mossberg as Secretary and with Tunander as a civilian expert. Tunander wrote a Swedish book Hårsfjärden (2001), articles for the journal of the Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, the Swedish Journal of War Sciences, the Zürich-based Parallel History Project
Parallel History Project
The Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security is an open source website reference compilation, research project, and analysis nexus sparked by the progressive increase in the declassification of NATO and Soviet bloc documents related to Cold War activities, as viewed by both sides...
, and an English volume for the Frank Cass Naval History Series The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (2004), which emphasized the submarines role to change Swedish public opinion and foreign policy. Tunander argued that Soviet submarines might very well have entered Swedish waters, but the more visible operations were most likely PSYOPs decided by a U.S. “deception operation committee” chaired by CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
Director William Casey
William J. Casey
William Joseph Casey was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency ....
, and some of them were run by a CIA-Navy liaison office, National Underwater Reconnaissance Office
National Underwater Reconnaissance Office
The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office is the “hidden younger brother” of the National Reconnaissance Office . NRO was initiated in 1960 and developed as a common office for United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency to manage satellite reconnaissance...
(NURO), headed by Secretary of Navy
United States Secretary of the Navy
The Secretary of the Navy of the United States of America is the head of the Department of the Navy, a component organization of the Department of Defense...
John Lehman
John Lehman
John F. Lehman, Jr. is an American investment banker and writer who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration and in 2003–04 was a member of the 9/11 Commission....
.
The reception of the PSYOPs analysis
The Danish Government Inquiry on the Cold War (2005) and the Finnish Cold War History (2006) based their analysis on Tunander’s works, which provoked a debate. The author of the Danish inquiry and the authors of the Finnish and Norwegian Cold War histories wrote forewords to Tunander’s volume Spelet under ytan [The Game beneath the Surface] for the Swedish Cold War history project (2007). A French-German TV-documentaryIn feindlichen Tiefen (by ArteArte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
and ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
, 2005) was largely based on Tunander’s work and aired all over Europe. In 2007-2008, Swedish TV aired documentaries based on Tunander’s work and The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
in Britain presented his work. This provoked a controversy. Sweden’s Royal Society of Naval Sciences
Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences
The Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences or Kungl. Örlogsmannasällskapet, founded in 1771 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden. The Society is an independent organization and a forum for navy and defence issues. Fellowship is limited to 120 chairs under the age of 60.-...
and the Royal Academy of War Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences or Kungl. Krigsvetenskapsakademin, founded in 1739 by King Frederick I, is one of the Royal Academies in Sweden. The Academy is an independent organization and a forum for military and defense issues. Membership is limited to 160 chairs under the age of...
organized seminars. Sweden’s former chief of defense and former chief of staff wrote articles against Tunander. Tunander was supported by Ambassador Mossberg, the Submarine Inquiry Secretary, who wrote a book I mörka vatten: Hur det svenska folket fördes bakom ljuset i ubåtsfrågan [In Dark Waters: How the Submarines were used to Deceive the Swedish People] (Stockholm, 2009) with a cover text by Ambassador Ekéus. Mossberg similar to the Danish Government Inquiry and the German TV documentary stressed Tunander’s argument that some operations were very likely U.S. and U.K. PSYOPs. Tunander received similar support from Finnish President Mauno Koivisto
Mauno Koivisto
Mauno Henrik Koivisto is a Finnish politician who served as the ninth President of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as Prime Minister 1968–1970 and 1979–1982...
, who called the operations "provocations" and recalled Soviet leader Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
telling him that the Swedes should sink every intruding submarine, so they could see themselves what turned up. Prime Minister Palme never pointed to the Soviets after his conversation with President Koivisto in August 1983. Tunander was supported by French Naval historian Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix
-Family, Early Life, and Education:The son of an American father and a French mother, Alexandre Sheldon Duplaix has dual American and French citizenships...
and former U.S. attaché to Moscow Captain Peter Huchthausen
Peter Huchthausen
Peter A. Huchthausen was a Captain in the United States Navy and the author of several maritime books.-Naval career:The son of the late Chaplain and Mrs. Walther A...
. The Swedish controversy, however, is still ongoing with a volume written by Sweden’s former Chief of Defence General Bengt Gustafsson 2010. and with a public debate between general Gustafsson and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on the one hand and Tunander, Ambassador Mossberg and Ambassador Ekéus on the other.
Books in English
Cold Water Politics: The Maritime Strategy and Geopolitics of the Northern Front (London: Sage, 1989). ISBN 0-8039-8219-4; ISBN 978-0-8039-8219-2.The Barents Region: Regional Cooperation in Arctic Europe, with Olav Schram Stokke eds. (London: Sage, 1994). ISBN 0-8039-7897-9; ISBN 978-0-8039-7897-3.
Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory and Identity, with Pavel Baev
Pavel Baev
Pavel Kimovich Baev , is a Norwegian political scientist and security scholar. He is currently a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo ....
and Victoria Einagel eds. (London: Sage, 1997). ISBN 0-7619-5549-6; ISBN 978-0-7619-5549-8.
European Security Identities: Contested understandings of EU and NATO, with Peter Burgess, eds. (Oslo: PRIO, 2000). ISBN 82-7288-210-8.
The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (London & New York: Frank Cass & Routledge, 2004). ISBN 0-7146-5322-5; ISBN 978-0-7146-5322-8.
Books in Swedish
Den Svarta Duvan – Essäer om makt, teknik och historia [The Black Dove – Essays on Power, Technology and History] (Lund: Symposion, 1985). ISBN 91-85040-01-0.På Autobahn mot sekelskiftet [On Autobahn towards the Turn of the Century] (Lund: Symposion, 1985). ISBN 91-7868-016-6.
Norden och USAs maritima strategi – En studie av Nordens förändrade strategiska läge [The Nordic Countries and the US Maritime Strategy – A Study of the Changed Strategic Position of the Nordic Area]. ’Försvarets Forskningsanstalt [Swedish Defense Research Establishment], Stockholm: FOA Rapport C 10295-1.4, 1987. ISSN 0281-0247.
Murar – Essäer om makt, identitet och territorialitet [Walls – Essays on Power, Identity and Territoriality] (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-72-6; ISBN 82-7198-025-4; ISBN 91-88484-10-6; ISBN 9979-837-10-1.
Europa och Muren – Om ‘den andre’, gränslandet och historiens återkomst i 90-talets Europa [Europe and the Wall – On ‘the Other’, the Borderland and the Return of History in Europe of the 1990s], ed. (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-69-6; ISBN 9979 -837-07-1; ISBN 82-7198-023-8; ISBN 91-88484-08-4.
Hårsfjärden – Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot Sverige [Hårsfjärden – The Secret Submarine War against Sweden] (Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag, 2001). ISBN 91-1-301038-7.
Spelet under ytan – Teknisk bevisning i nationalitesfrågan för ubåtsoperationen mot Sverige 1982, published by the Swedish research program: ’Sverige under kalla kriget’ [Sweden during the Cold War], no. 16 (Gothenburg Univ. & Stockholm Univ., 2007). ISSN 1402 -5507 (A revised edition was published on the PRIO website in 2009). http://www.prio.no/upload/people/ola_tunander/Spelet%20under%20ytan.pdf