The Swedish, Norwegian and Danish Armed Forces are quite similar in structure, which should facilitate cooperation, but Denmark, for political reasons, has held back. What NORDEFCO offers is an opportunity to get better value from the Nordic defence budgets by doing more joint research, acquisitions, education, training and deployments. There is, however, no shared Nordic view on ‘hard security’ issues in the Nordic region itself, which suggests that a joint security and defence regime aiming at something close to a Nordic alliance may find it hard to succeed. Collaboration on military matters could proceed more readily within such a group than would be possible with larger and more heterogeneous organisations. Given similarities in terms of size, culture and geographical proximity, the Nordic countries are well placed to form a so-called cluster-group of NATO/EU countries. The main driver was economic: the Nordic Armed Forces were facing static or shrinking budgets, rising costs, and a demand to take part in new post-Cold War international missions.
In the late 2000s there was another surge in Nordic military cooperation which culminated in the organisation Nordic Defence Cooperation (NORDEFCO). Following the events of 1989–91 Nordic defence cooperation intensified, and new institutions were established to facilitate joint deployments, acquisitions, research and development.
During the Cold War the different alignment choices of the Nordic states meant that military cooperation among them was highly circumscribed, and security issues were taboo in the Nordic Council.
0 kommentar(er)
