Speech by Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin at the Folk och Försvar National Conference 2025

Your majesty,

Dear colleagues in total defence 

It is said that one can never step into the same river twice. The kitchen window of my house has overlooked the Dal River for 225 years. I often think about the people I don’t know who sat here before me with the same view from the kitchen table, who saw the world changing – often slowly and gradually, but at times disruptively and radically fast.

For around a hundred of those years, the river was a waterway for transporting timber. A constant presence right up until log-driving stopped. A lot of things seem unwavering until they come to an end. We are now precisely halfway through the 2020s, and we are witnessing how geopolitics can tear down much of what we had previously considered eternal. Everything is subject to change and even what appears permanent can be challenged right down to its foundations.

Sometimes there is a tendency to regard our future as equally predestined as the logs met in the river basin. That things are what they are and that there is no point in trying to change them. But Sweden is not a log in the maelstroms of the world whose path and fate is predetermined. We are a country whose future is determined by human decisions, our own and others’. Swedish political decision-making and crisis management can no longer be characterised by the maxim “wait and see,” as has sometimes been the case historically.

When we describe the security situation as being more serious than any time since the end of the Second World War, it is an expression of the fact that we have to change things we can influence and come to terms with those we have less influence over. A year ago, I stood on this stage and said to you that now is the time to act.

Many of you had already started. And many more are beginning to understand the need for urgency. In my role, I have had the benefit of meeting so many of you working every day building up our civil defence and also highlight why it is necessary. It fills me with great confidence to meet municipalities that are leading the way, government agencies taking their preparedness mandate more seriously than at any time since the end of the Cold War and companies making plans to meet war requirements.

HOWEVER, too often it is a case of depending on the right person being in the right place. Building up the civil part of our defence is not an optional activity, or a job that can be handed over to a few driven individuals.

Before Christmas, the Government unveiled its strategic objectives for our civil defence. They are uniquely clear, mandatory and must be enforced. Implementing these objectives is a core responsibility of all leading decision-makers in agencies with a specific responsibility for civil preparedness and their work will be evaluated.

When this Government took office, SEK 2.7 billion per year was allocated for civil defence. In just a few years, that figure will be SEK 15 billion per year. That is a five-fold increase in funds, and it underlines that we will get the civil defence that has been talked about for 10 years but whose allocation has often only led to more discussions on what may be on the way. SEK 15 billion is a limited sum that will require strict prioritisation and a maximisation of our capabilities. It is not a question of everything for everyone and certainly not a free pass to carry on just talking our way back to resurrecting our civil defence. 

Substantial investments will be made in areas that build up our robustness and capability, back-up power, islanding and supply preparedness for vital societal functions. Now it is a matter of implementing these measures and to delay doing so could be critical.

A year ago, I talked about the possibility of introducing a fast-track civil conscription via short supplementary training with the rescue services. Since then, not only has it been put in place, but we have already managed to train 300 people, and in just a few years we will have trained nearly 3 000. Alongside this, we have proceeded to do roughly the same regarding the electricity supply. Today, I can announce that we have launched another fast-track mission to create civil conscription, with a long basic training course within the emergency services and that is recruited from the conscription base. At the same time, work has begun to be able to start training civil service personnel to staff the civil protection. Step by step, we are rebuilding Sweden’s capability. 

These practical measures only form part of the changes that must take place. There is also a need for a new perspective and approach. Allow me to consider the bigger picture, because: 

“Freedom Is Not Free.” This message is engraved in one of the white marble benches at the Restare veterans’ memorial monument in Stockholm. The notion that freedom is not free is long-established among those who have served abroad in any capacity, whether civilian or military, in any of the conflict zones with a Swedish presence during this recent period of detente. Men and women have fought side by side, paying the price of peace, and some have paid the ultimate price. 

But for many of us living here in Sweden, freedom has essentially been given to us free for the last 30 years. Many of us need to understand that regardless of our background, the future may have completely different demands on us. 

I am part of the generation of everlasting peace. History ended when I turned four years old, and views differ as to when it resumed. Shakespeare turned out to be right in that the past is prologue. Out of the ashes of a murderous regime rose another one. Once more, war is raging on the European continent, one that is more brutal and unpredictable than for a very long time.

My generation’s recollection of total defence, if any, is of banners being folded away, disbanded units and an army surplus that turned from selling shovels and military tents to dandruff shampoo in bulk. 

Society has become more effective, productive and prosperous, but that’s not the whole picture. Nostalgia is not the answer to the deteriorating geopolitical situation, but we nevertheless need to understand that the assets accumulated during the everlasting peace are but one side of the balance sheet. The other side holds accrued debt, a withdrawal that can not wait until another day. 

As a country, we took the Cold War seriously and I believe that I am justified in saying that my generation and its decision-makers took the everlasting peace seriously as well. 

It is high time that we take the current situation very seriously. Whether our time will be remembered as the pre-war era is yet to be determined. This is subject to our influence and efforts to build deterrence at all levels of threat to ensure that it will not. Different generations with different experiences must now work together to build a modern total defence. We are not preparing for a previous war, but nor can we disregard certain constants in relation to the toll and suffering that armed attacks inflict on a society. 

Let me be just as clear as I was last year when I said that war could also come to our doorstep. The age of extreme individualism is over. The future will demand greater unity. Protecting Sweden’s interests is a greater task than our own self-realisation. Those who have still not yet dealt with the question ‘what can I do for my country,’ should do so. Sweden is, in a deeper sense, about all those who went before us, those who we don’t know who looked out of our kitchen windows before we did. It’s about all of us who are here now. And it’s about those who come after us. And ultimately, it is about a joint commitment to the defence of our society, democracy and values. The essence of total defence is that the defence of our country is not a task for a few, but a task for all of us.