Speech by Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin at the Folk och Försvar National Conference 2026

Your Majesty,

Your Royal Highness,

Colleagues in total defence, 

Someone once said, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” Outside the kitchen window at home, the Dal river continues to flow just as it did last year and the year before that. There the future is well-concealed. Just as it is for most people in their everyday lives. But at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, in the cyber domain and in certain places in the physical world, another future is already here with us. In geopolitics, the future has already chipped away at the veneer of the past almost beyond the point of recognition, and in the new mosaic emerging in its place a multipolar world is taking shape. By definition, the future has always been unpredictable. But during the Cold War – another era from which we often draw parallels for comparison with the prevailing high tensions – there was also a relatively predictable balance of power. The seismic shifts taking place in today’s geopolitics do not give us this predictability, rather even greater uncertainty than before.

How should a relatively sparsely populated and vast country negotiate such an environment? First, we must remind ourselves about that which may have been forgotten during the era of perpetual peace. Namely, that Sweden is something more than a generic geographical area of the planet. It is our home, a nation that is unique, shaped by the hard work of generations into what we are today. And Sweden is one-of-a-kind. Defending this is not something that we can delegate or disavow ourselves of. The answer, therefore, is that we must continue to look after our own home. To once again become a country that understands that so much of that which we take for granted comes at a price. To once again become a country that understands that our own success and prosperity depend on us and demand a great deal of us. This does not mean disregarding the value of being an Ally and having strong ties to other countries. On the contrary, but we must never abandon the ultimate responsibility for this task. Call it the price of freedom if you will – the price of self-determination, the price of territorial integrity, but also the price of a community of values. We must all pay the price in various ways, as tax payers and as citizens.

No one would have been happier than me if the scenarios touched upon on this very stage two years ago had failed to materialise. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The realities of discord have crept closer. The speech I delivered at the time was about trying to make the future more evenly shared, about reaching beyond a rather small consensus at a mountain hotel about the state of affairs, and into public activities, board rooms and, perhaps most importantly, into people’s homes, around the kitchen table, where international events often feel remote. It was about getting more people to understand the urgency of doing what’s necessary. Because total defence can only become what it has to be if everyone understands what’s at stake.

You may think it presumptuous of a politician to stress urgency when politicians are normally the ones who wait the longest to give new marching orders. Maybe someone objected that the marching orders already came in 2015 when the Riksdag decided to reintroduce total defence. This is true in a sense, but it is equally true that for the first seven of the ten or so years that have passed since then, almost nothing happened as regards civil defence, primarily for two reasons: one, there was no money, and two, there was no clear governance. Now we have gone from SEK 2.7 billion three years ago to SEK 13 billion this year, and almost SEK 20 billion annually to civil defence just two years. 

Of course, real money is what really distinguishes the civil defence of a few years ago that existed only in rhetorical figures and PowerPoints from the civil defence that is now growing strong in the physical reality. The difference also lies in culture, approach and prioritising the work.

When we took over the Ministry of Defence, I was told that Sweden wouldn’t be able to start training civil defence conscripts before 2027. Here we are at the beginning of 2026 and we have already managed to train almost 1 300 civil defence conscripts in two accelerated tracks as part of the various war organisations of the rescue services and the Swedish National Grid. Several sectors will follow suit and those who muster this year will also undergo long-term civilian service training in the rescue services. With the stubbornness of a fool, I have persisted in reiterating the importance of getting started and identifying shortcuts, and that there is danger in delay. God knows that the Government Offices isn’t always the world’s most agile organisation, but it is a machinery that has, together with subordinate government agencies, reorganised to start delivering high capability throughout Sweden’s civil defence. Last year’s capability assessment identified twice as many capability-increasing measures in 2024 as in 2023. Today, I can tell you that this year’s preliminary assessment from the Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency shows that we continue to make strides in capability growth in our civil defence. This has required new approaches, such as breaking down problems into manageable chunks to achieve swifter progress. The civil defence built on PowerPoints is now relegated to the past.

Let me give a few examples. As we are sitting here, grain stores are being procured in northern Sweden. During the past year, central government ensured the capability and resourcefulness to be able to produce antibiotics within our national borders. Now there are stockpiles of medical products for care that cannot wait. We have increased stockpiles of primary goods for the purification of drinking water and begun reinforcing preparedness wells. We are now starting to support the municipalities by building up meal supply operations for crisis and war. We are initiating decentralised stockpiling under the Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency, which will support the municipalities in meeting the demands of war. We are building up national reinforcement resources at the National Board of Health and Welfare, which includes new field hospitals. Several agreements have been signed between civil defence authorities and volunteer defence organisations on duties arising in the event of war. Mobile communications trailers to reinforce the mobile network have now been produced in series. The new national cybersecurity centre is now operational and will expand over the course of the coming year. The Swedish Food Agency has established a new depot for the national water disaster group. The banks have been required to draft contingency plans for processing cash. 12 000 protective shelter inspections were carried out in 2025, to mention just a few measures. 

This has been a government priority, and our civil defence is continuously acquiring new capabilities. Let me also mention that as we start this new year, we are ensuring domestic production capability of protective masks for the civilian population. In an initial phase, central government ordered 20 000 protective masks for staff in critical sectors, while the Swedish Civil Defence and Resilience Agency has been tasked with identifying the overall need for protective masks in civil defence.

Taken together, this tells the story of a country that has gone from words to deeds in uncertain times. The capability that we are now adding will contribute to the credibility of our deterrence by virtue of a society that is made more resistant and resilient. But it is also a country that by virtue of those same efforts has reason to believe a little more in itself. During the early 2000s, faith in Swedish capability or the lack thereof was characterised almost by defeatism, one of the many consequences of the bloodletting and discontinuation of Sweden’s old total defence. Now, as we take the journey once more, there is reason to feel hopeful about what we are and what we can be.

Let us remind ourselves that we were once the country in the north that could develop and build things that only great powers were ordinarily capable of. To some extent engaged, we engaged an entire country in the major tasks of building resilience for Sweden’s defence. We achieved this out by pulling together to do our duty, and now we’re on our way back.

We should not seek out a future based in nostalgia, but let us remember the primordial force that lies behind the three crowns when we as a country decide to pay the price of freedom.