Introduction

From: Frank Blackaby, 'How SIPRI began', SIPRI Continuity and Change 1966-1996', Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1996, ISBN 0-19-82960-0

 

1. Introduction

 

I. Sweden’s 150 years of peace

The proposal to establish SIPRI was made, in 1964, to celebrate the fact that Sweden had had 150 years of peace. That period–from 1814 to 1964–did not begin with any traumatic war experience leading to ‘war aversion’. On the contrary, in 1814 Sweden had conducted a successful military campaign which, with very little loss of life, had extended Sweden’s power. It had established sovereignty over another country, Norway, and had had the settlement endorsed in an international treaty. No one at that time could have forecast that this use of military force would be followed by 150 years of peace.

There were indeed times when that peace was threatened. With a different twist of circumstances Sweden could have been at war. When the Crimean War broke out in 1854, there were Swedish politicians who were looking to see whether they could take advantage of Russia’s weakness. A joint French—British naval expedition destroyed some Russian fortifications on Åland.¹ King Oscar I of Sweden signed a pact with France and Britain for military assistance if Sweden was attacked by Russia. No attack came, and in the 1856 peace treaty Russia undertook not to fortify the island.

Some years later, in 1863, when Denmark was threatened by Austria and Prussia, the Swedish King, Karl XV, offered Denmark the assistance of 20 000 Swedish troops. However, his ministers in Stockholm refused to approve this offer, and when Jutland² was invaded in January 1864 Denmark was left to be beaten alone.

Sweden, again, might have gone to war in 1905, when the Norwegian Storting unilaterally withdrew from the Union with Sweden which Crown Prince Karl Johan (Jean Baptiste Bernadotte) had forced on them in 1814. There was a fairly strong war party in Sweden in favour of teaching the Norwegians a lesson. But there was also, by then, a well-established anti-war movement.

Already in 1864 there had been celebrations to mark 50 years of peace. Thanksgiving services for peace were held in most churches on a weekday evening in the autumn of that year. In 1869 Jonas Jonasson, of the Agrarian Party, laid the first ‘peace’ motion before the Riksdag; among other clauses, it deplored ‘the enormous sums spent to obtain and maintain material to mutilate fellowmen and for mass destruction’. In 1883 the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS³) was founded by a group of Riksdag members; it was initially a parliamentary political pressure group and later became a more general peace movement. (SPAS is now the world’s oldest existing peace organization.) This was part of a liberal intellectual anti-war movement which was then fairly general throughout Europe. In Paris in 1867 the Ligue Internationale de la Paix was founded by the French economist Frédéric Passy; there was also the Ligue de la Paix et de la Liberté, supported among others by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Hugo. In Britain, William Gladstone in 1870 said: ‘Certain it is that a new law of nations is gradually taking hold of the mind, and coming to sway the practice, of the world; a law which recognizes independence, which frowns on aggression, which favours the pacific, not the bloody settlement of disputes . . . ; above all, which recognizes, as a tribunal of paramount authority, the general judgement of civilised mankind’. This was the period when, in 1872, the Alabama dispute between the United States and Britain was settled by arbitration. The first Hague Conference was convened, on Russia’s initiative, in 1899; it set up the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. However, this anti-war sentiment did not have deep roots. It was only a few years later that the men of military age in France, Britain and Germany marched willingly to war.

By 1900 Sweden was a state which no longer looked for further imperialist expansion. Linked with the establishment of peace organizations, an array of new ideas came into the discussion of peace, war and security. There were prolonged debates about the concept of neutrality and discussions of ‘defensive defence’ (although that term was not then used). If the army was simply needed for defence, perhaps a citizens’ militia, trained by conscription, was the right approach. This was also the period when revisionist Swedish historical studies began to appear, questioning the glorification of Sweden’s imperial past.

When, therefore, the Norwegian Storting began to challenge the idea of the Union, the Swedish peace organizations were ready. In 1892 Norway demanded its own consular service. It also put up a few frontier posts, and the Swedish general staff made plans for a possible war. As the tension built up to Norway’s unilateral decision to dissolve the Union, there were those on the Swedish side who demanded military action–‘An armed stroll across the border to talk Swedish to the Norwegians’.

The Swedish Navy was moved up from the south of Sweden to the west coast and preparations were made for an attack on Kristiania, as Oslo was then called. War seemed to be approaching; but it never came. The Riksdag was opposed: they preferred negotiations, as did the public in general. With the Hague Convention and the early use of international arbitration, the idea of settling disputes between states by methods other than the use of military force was beginning to take hold.

A condition set by Sweden before entering into negotiations was that a referendum be held in Norway. This was promptly carried out and resulted in 382 211 votes for severance and 184 against–perhaps the most overwhelming majority in any referendum held in a democratic country. In October 1905 agreement was reached in the Swedish town of Karlstad and on 27 October the Swedish King formally relinquished the throne of Norway. A demilitarized zone was established on both sides of the boundary and all matters of dispute were to be settled in a court of arbitration. The Union, which had been forced on Norway by military action 90 years earlier, was peacefully dissolved.

It was not long after the peaceful dissolution that the question arose in Sweden of an appropriate way to celebrate 100 years of peace. Since the last use of military power had been to force Norway to accept Union, it seemed highly appropriate to link the celebration with the peaceful border between the two states. SPAS took the lead in devising a suitable form of commemoration; at its annual conference in 1911 it was proposed that a monument should be erected on the Swedish/Norwegian border, at Eda,⁴ to be inaugurated on the 100th anniversary of peace in 1914.

The idea was also taken up in Norway, by the Norwegian Peace League. Indeed there was more widespread enthusiasm for the idea in Norway than in Sweden. Funds for the project were raised more easily in Norway, with contributions from a number of wealthy Norwegians, and a contribution of 2000 crowns from the Norwegian Government. This contribution was approved without the need for a parliamentary vote. In Sweden most of the money raised came from small contributions of less than one crown. The wealthy contributed rather to a fund for the construction of a battleship for which the Government had not appropriated funds. The Swedish Government grant of 2000 crowns came only after the monument had been inaugurated, and in the Riksdag there was some strong opposition to this grant–194 Members of Parliament voted for the contribution and 156 against.

The opposition in Sweden came from those who had argued that Sweden should have used force to maintain the Swedish—Norwegian Union. The famous Swedish explorer Sven Hedin published a pamphlet in which he argued that Sweden now stood vulnerable to a combined attack from Norway in the west and Russia in the east. He called the idea of a monument a ‘badge of dishonour over a hundred years of indolence’. The Swedish Government only reluctantly and belatedly approved the construction of the monument, after the peace societies in Norway and Sweden had collected enough money to buy the land around the site. The Swedish architect who designed the monument (without charging a fee) lost his previous job, designing barracks.

The monument represents two men rising from a common foundation, shaking hands over a sheaf of corn. There are two inscriptions on the base. One, in the words of the Swedish King Oscar I, reads: ‘War between Scandinavian brothers is henceforth impossible’. The other reads: ‘Norwegian and Swedish friends of peace raised this monument in 1914 in thanks for 100 years of peace’.

The monument was inaugurated on 16 August 1914. At the celebration dinner there were greetings from the Norwegian King and Cabinet, but there were no such greetings from the Swedish side. The Swedish Prime Minister stated that, in consultation with his colleagues, he had decided that it was ‘inappropriate to participate in the inauguration’.

This, then, was a celebration of peace in one small corner of Europe–a small outbreak of sanity, with one of the two governments concerned distinctly cool to the whole idea. In the rest of Europe, a fortnight before the inauguration, the massive insanity of World War I had begun.

II. The 1964 celebration, and peace and conflict research

The 150th anniversary of peace, in 1964, was different. This time the Swedish Government was a full participant; Eda was the obvious place for the celebration; and the main speeches were given by the Swedish Prime Minister, Tage Erlander, and by the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Halvard Lange. Clearly the form of commemoration could hardly be another monument. Erlander announced that the Swedish Government would set up a committee to consider establishing in Sweden an international institute for peace and conflict research. ‘The time should now be ripe to consider seriously whether it would be possible for us to make a more important effort in this field.’ The Committee on an International Institute for Peace and Conflict Research in Sweden was established in December 1964, under the chairmanship of Ambassador Alva Myrdal (see chapter 2).

It is rarely possible to establish unambiguously the route by which an idea works through until it becomes a part of government policy. First of all, in the late 1950s and early 1960s peace research was beginning to establish itself as a separate and respectable discipline, with the first journals appearing in 1957 and 1959. Various peace organizations were active, particularly the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).⁵ The International Peace Research Association (IPRA) was established in 1963.

In the early 1960s peace research also became a live issue among the Swedish peace organizations. Throughout 1963 the monthly journal Freden, published by SPAS, ran a series of articles on peace research. The articles gave an airing to many of the issues discussed later in the Myrdal Committee–the need for independence from government, the problem of making the work international and the need for the research to keep its distance from campaigning peace organizations. There were already the differences between those who wanted ‘basic’ research into the nature of violence, and those who wanted work done on immediate political and military issues. There was, however, general agreement that there ought to be more peace research in Sweden.

Throughout the early 1960s the various peace bodies made representations to the Swedish Government on this matter. The Swedish branch of WILPF wrote to the Minister of Education in March 1963. After their annual congress in the same year, SPAS also made representations to the Minister. In December 1963 the Social Democratic Students’ Society of Lund University tabled a motion for the Party Congress: ‘That the Party Congress stresses to the Government the desirability of investigating the conditions for the establishment of a politically independent institute for conflict and peace research’. Also in December that year the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Linus Pauling at the Nobel ceremony in Oslo; SPAS invited him to Stockholm, and the Linus Pauling Fund for Swedish Peace Research was set up. In early 1964 an attempt was made to put a motion on peace research before the Riksdag, but it got watered down to recommending a readership in international relations at Stockholm University, together with permission to invite a guest professor in peace and conflict research. (This illustrates, incidentally, the view of a number of academics–that peace research should be considered simply as part of the study of international relations.) In general, up to the time of Erlander’s speech at Eda, the official response to these various proposals was, in effect, that all that it was sensible to do was already being done. Thus the Party leadership’s reply to the Lund students’ proposal reads as follows:

On the initiative of the Minister of Defence, several groups studying security—political questions have been established within the Swedish Institute for International Affairs. The research is conducted in close cooperation with the University of Stockholm, the Defence Research Establishment, along with other scientific institutions and bodies. This can be said to be a nascent form of peace and conflict research. The party leadership therefore considers that the purpose of the Lund students’ motion has already been met.

So Erlander’s statement on peace research at Eda–in which he specifically referred to the Lund students’ proposal–came as something of a surprise: not because the idea of a peace research institute was a strange idea–far from it. After all, a number of serious scholars had discussed such an institute, in Freden and elsewhere. It was rather because the Government’s previous stonewalling replies were suddenly replaced by enthusiastic endorsement. Erlander’s proposal was indeed more ambitious than most of the previous proponents had in mind. The Freden editorial after Erlander’s announcement reads: ‘That Mr. Erlander chose just this occasion to announce this important news is all the more gladdening since it shows a respect and understanding for the aims of the peace movement . . . Peace research has long been on the peace movement’s programme, but up to now all initiatives in this direction have been met by stony resistance from the authorities.’

How did this change of government view come about? A good part of the answer must be–Alva Myrdal. She had returned to Sweden from her post as Ambassador to India in 1960; she was elected to the Riksdag in 1962, and in the same year she became the Swedish representative at the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) at Geneva.

During an official visit to Sweden in June 1957, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India on a boat tour in Stockholm with Prime Minister Tage Erlander. Ambassado Alva Myrdal is pictured in the centre.

In a part of his speech at Eda, Erlander said: ‘It is obvious that we should help in attempts to investigate how anything as idiotic as war can be regarded as a reasonable way to resolve conflict . . . We should also try to interest researchers and scientists who could increase our knowledge . . . Alva Myrdal has told me how important it is that institutions are created which can study these matters objectively . . .’.

So, 150 years after Bernadotte led his forces into Norway, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI–initially called the Institute for Peace and Conflict Research–was born. It is true that the committee which was set up in November 1964 (after an election confirming that the Social Democrats would remain in power) could in theory have decided that a new institute was not a good idea. Since this committee was chaired by Alva Myrdal, this was unlikely.

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1) The Åland (Aaland) Islands are situated in the northern Baltic Sea, at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. They then belonged to Russia through the Grand Duchy of Finland.

2) Jutland, or Jylland, is the peninsula between the North and Baltic seas of which the main, northern portion is now part of Denmark and the southern portion part of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

3) The Swedish name of the organization is Svenska Freds- och Skiljedomsföreningen

4) Eda is a small town in the Swedish province of Värmland, with a population today of less than 10 000.

5) The Swedish name of this organization is Internationella Kvinnoförbundet för Fred och Frihet (IKFF). At their 1962 congress they passed a resolution on peace research; one of the clauses in that resolution reads: ‘It is important that the various institutes and organisations working in this field in different countries should be kept in contact and should be informed about each other’s activities and findings’.