Sweden finds itself in an extraordinarily turbulent geopolitical location. Europe sees a number of domestic and foreign policy threats and our part of the continent is once again a focal point. Globally, institutions, regulations and norms challenged and the beginnings of a tug-of-war between the U.S. and China making itself felt in more and more areas.
There must be a tangible capacity to implement selected policies. Consistency must prevail between the state’s various lines of business for maximum effect. Finally, you are like operator depends on the environment in which politics is conducted is as conducive as possible for our agency – let us call it our strategic context.
These elements – capacity, coherence and context, however, can not exist or be handled independently of each other, if an operator should be able to operate with full effect. The capacity must be in relation to what the different parts coherent to drive for the policy, and both the capacity that the coherence must be shaped by and address the context you want to operate in. In practice, this means that the state has a significant and continuous need for knowledge to link together aktörskapets different components.
USA:s national security council have been influential in american security policy since it was founded after the second world war, while countries such as the Uk and Japan recently established the corresponding functions.
The knowledge in the form of self-knowledge and business intelligence that is relevant to security decision-making can be found in a number of different segments of society – within the intelligence services, academia, the media, the general public and among practitioners, to give a few examples. However, it is of the highest importance that sufficient knowledge and processes for generating knowledge also is where policies are formulated, in the case of Sweden the government offices. The internal kunskapsorganisationen can then function as a transmission between the incoming information and outgoing policies.
in Short it can be said that the närtidsorienterade been given priority at the expense of the more forward-thinking and long-term. After the Tsunami disaster have information retrieval and the news coverage has been strengthened on a much-needed ways, for example in the form of the office of crisis management at the ministry of justice. The more long-term analyses on the other hand has been more the elephant in the room with a reduced and runtflyttad function for strategic analysis and distinct bets, as a framtidsminister without obvious connection to the real influence.
There is much that would need to be done to strengthen up the government offices as a knowledge organization. Three proposals are particularly relevant to Europe, foreign and security policy.
the Current design is based on the deliberative opinion – counsels and collects, where appropriate, relevant ministers for consultations. It needed to be contributed is skills linked to the advisory function.
Sweden needs, in other words, a centrally located – reasonably within the prime minister’s office – analytical and advisory function that can provide decision-makers with the knowledge. This is particularly the case in complex matters of cross-sectoral nature such as the security implications of artificial intelligence and gråskaleproblematik. The solution may be a standing organization or staff seconded from relevant ministries and government departments, but the function must be constant and to contain a critical mass of skills to be able to run the work.
Secondly, to be able to bottom out in the today’s complex threats and developments, but also to marked with to order, and – just as important – be able to receive and translate knowledge from the outside.
These resources should be seen as long-term investments in understanding and thus influence. An overview should be done partly by the ministry’s own status as kunskapsorganisationer and both of their respective external knowledge environment – the authorities, the institute and kunskapsproducenter available to them, and what relevance have these regarding Swedish agency?
today, at the ministry of defense, a smaller unit for the coordination of försvarsunderrättelsefrågor. However, it is primarily a function of the control of the försvarsunderrättelsemyndigheterna.
given the underrättelseresurser Sweden, it is worth to consider whether or not a larger and more analytically oriented coordination function was set up where security issues – in particular, cross-border and ”new” – could get a broad and common lighting. Such an expansion of today’s smaller unit would be a given component of a new security council and serve as a node between the intelligence services and The government office staff.
. By strengthening the government offices as a security professional association, the country’s capacity and desirable coherence can be linked to the context in which policy is conducted. It is essential for an effective security agency.