Nordic-Baltic total defence: easier said than done

Finland and Sweden are known for their so-called “total defence” approach to security, in which national defence is not only a task for the military but for the whole of society. The security concept was primarily developed for three reasons: their history outside of NATO, geographical proximity to the Soviet/Russian threat, and large territories with small populations.

Given that Finland and Sweden have not enjoyed NATO’s collective security guarantee for most of the Alliance’s history, they had to develop credible national defence systems during the Cold War. The ability to defend a large territory with little manpower meant that a conscription-based reserve system was a must to secure the necessary number of troops. But beyond that, civil defence and civil-military cooperation were also imperative. Civilian life needed to continue functioning even under wartime conditions, while it also could fulfil support tasks for the armed forces. Today, defending Finland and Sweden is still a nation-wide effort. Every citizen has a responsibility to contribute to their country’s security. This approach differs significantly from countries with a strategic culture where the military is a separate profession that does not necessarily rely on, or substantially interact with, the civilian population.

Finland and Sweden: security providers in NATO

Finland and Sweden both contribute capable armed forces to NATO and significantly improve the Alliance’s military capability in the Nordic-Baltic region. Both have capable – and by European standards, fairly large – air forces. Importantly, Finland and Sweden have a decades-long and close bilateral defence cooperation partnership, known as FISE cooperation. The Finnish and Swedish air forces’ dispersed basing strategy reflects the challenge of defending a large but sparsely populated territory. For example, both air forces regularly use highways for landing and maintenance in the remote areas of their countries. 

Finland and Sweden’s navies also have a longstanding and close cooperation agreement with each other. They possess amphibious and littoral warfare expertise relating to the specific conditions of the Baltic Sea’s shallow waters and archipelagos. In addition, the Swedish navy has submarines, a fairly rare capability in the Alliance, and the Finnish navy is expert in mine warfare, which is a widely forgotten naval capability in NATO. Sweden’s defence industry, with its own fighter jets, the above-mentioned submarines, and many more Swedish-made systems, brings significant industrial capacity into NATO. Finland, in turn, is one of the very few European countries with significant force generation ability, with wartime readiness encompassing 280,000 troops and a total reserve up to 870,000.

But what makes the two new allies particularly interesting for NATO is their way of integrating a civilian component with military defence. In Finland, the duty of all citizens to contribute to national defence is enshrined in the constitution, meaning mandatory military service for male citizens (with the option of a civilian service instead) and other potential wartime duties for female citizens who opt out of voluntary military service. 

Finland’s comprehensive security system was consistently maintained even after the Cold War. Sweden, by contrast, discontinued its total defence approach and is now rebuilding civil defence almost from the ground up. A selective gender-neutral military conscription system was reactivated in phases following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but as late as 2022, the Swedish National Audit Office found that the country’s civil defence lacked the basic prerequisites to meet the deteriorating security climate Only since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have sufficient investments in civil defence been made, with a number of institutional and structural reforms undertaken, that match what the security situation demands. Finland, thanks to its unbroken tradition, counts as the gold standard when it comes to whole-of-society preparedness. But Sweden’s current process of rebuilding its civil defence for the 21st century offers some learning opportunities for other countries as well. 

Finland’s pragmatic pessimism

Among NATO countries, Finland is an odd one out in many ways. The country, with a 1340-kilometre-long border with Russia, never changed its threat assessment that Moscow is the most likely threat to the country’s security, and that this threat is of a territorial nature. This was in stark contrast with NATO’s prevalent post-Cold War doctrine of expeditionary warfare and crisis management operations far away from Allied territory. In the first post-Cold War decades, Finland’s large conscription-based army looked hopelessly outdated compared to the small and mobile professional forces developed by nearly all NATO allies. One of the reasons why it was not in Finland’s interest to join NATO 20 years earlier than it did was that the Alliance’s doctrine and threat assessment were very different from those of Helsinki. Even in the optimistic early 2000s, the possibility of an armed attack against Finland’s territory never disappeared from government reports on foreign, security and defence policy. The main task of the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) has therefore remained the defence of the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, however, the defence forces are also tasked with assisting other authorities, which is considered their social responsibility.

Finland’s defence structure is based on the concept of comprehensive security, which is enshrined in the Security Strategy for Society. It has two main principles: preparedness and foresight. Well acquainted with Russia’s way of warfare that targets civilians in wartime and utilizes various sub-threshold and hybrid methods in peacetime, Finland emphasizes overall societal resilience. Preparedness measures therefore include contingency planning, continuity management, advance preparations, and training. The intention is to enable well-exercised and proactive measures that will in the best case anticipate a crisis, instead of reactive responses once the crisis has already hit.

Finland is known for its encompassing civil shelter structure that can protect up to 4.8 million of its 5.5 million population. Finland also maintains emergency reserves of critical supplies managed in public-private cooperation by a specialist authority, the National Emergency Supplies Agency (NESA). The agency states that "the focus of security of supply operations is being increasingly shifted towards ensuring the operating capability of critical infrastructure." Beyond the whole-of-society approach, Finland also applies the whole-of-government method. A Security Committee consisting of members and experts from various branches of government, other institutions, and the private sector assists the government in a coordinating role to keep up with the requirements of comprehensive security.

The Finnish experience has shown that the ability to act in a crisis requires well-established networks of relevant actors. A further core element of the Finnish total defence system are therefore the national and regional-level defence courses the FDF offer for people in relevant positions in society. The national-level courses were established in 1961 and take place four times per year. The participants engage with different crisis scenarios and learn about their individual and institutional roles alongside coordination mechanisms. The courses are an important way to socialize elites into the threat environment and tasks related to national defence. Most importantly, they also build a network of central security actors for times of crisis, consisting of business leaders, government officials, local administration, civil society organizations, media and cultural representatives, and providers of critical infrastructure. Defence courses are also offered to ordinary citizens. The courses’ popularity surged after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – especially among women who are exempt from conscription. There are also 14 regional voluntary defence associations and more than 300 local reservist associations.

A concrete example of civil-military cooperation in Finland is the strategic partnerships the FDF have with a number of civilian companies. The FDF enables partner companies to maintain extra production capacity that would be activated in wartime and directed towards the military’s needs. 

Sweden’s (re-)emerging civil defence

As Finland’s example shows, even if consistently maintained, total defence is not so much an end goal but a continuous process. In Sweden, rebuilding civil defence capacity and capabilities is therefore not simply a matter of bringing back what the country once had during the Cold War. Certain aspects can be re-activated, but substantial basic (re)training of total defence duties is required. Civil conscription, reactivated in 2024, is one such example. All residents between the ages of 16-70, even non-citizens, with skills deemed vital for continued societal function (e.g. emergency services and healthcare) can be called up during crisis or wartime to conduct total defence duties. cOther civil defence aspects, like telecommunications and critical infrastructure which were once state-owned and could quickly be repurposed for military use, are now in private hands and must be incorporated into Sweden’s civil defence in completely new ways. 

Investing in resilience and buying into public-private partnerships is thus a major challenge, but also an opportunity.. For example, Sweden is directly implementing lessons from Ukraine, such as cell broadcast warning systems. Another urgent issue that all the countries in the Baltic Sea region have to address is how to better protect critical underwater infrastructure from Russian hybrid warfare – a capability now being strengthened by six Swedish government agencies. 

As of 2025, Sweden’s civil defence has four main objectives: 

1. Safeguarding the most essential public services;
2. Contributing to the military defence’s capability within the framework of NATO’s collective defence and other duties;
3. Protecting the civilian population; and
4. Maintaining Sweden’s will to defend itself and society’s resilience to external pressure.

Sweden’s civil defence is made up of 21 regional governments and 60 government agencies across ten so-called preparedness sectors. The overarching responsible agency for coordinating this vast civil defence sector – spanning energy, critical infrastructure, electronic communications, healthcare and agriculture – is the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB). This body will change its name to the Swedish Civil Defence Agency on January 1st 2026. This name change reflects the shifting focus of Sweden’s civil defence since Russia’s full-scale invasion: from responding to peace time crises (such as forest fires and floods) to acting in a wartime environment and supporting military operations, particularly NATO Host Nation Support (HNS). The agency is the publisher of the internationally well-known brochure “If Crisis or War Comes.”

The shift is as much institutional as it is cultural. Much like the Swedish population has awoken to a new reality where an armed attack cannot be ruled out, so too are civil defence agencies adapting to the new demands of NATO membership and the deteriorated security environment. The civilian sector is demonstrating a high willingness to contribute to the defence of Sweden, but lines of responsibility amongst agencies contributing to crisis and wartime responses remain unclear. 

For Swedish civil defence agencies, supporting NATO operations through HNS is an entirely new dimension. Sweden’s geography lends itself to being a natural staging and transit area for NATO troops – both in the High North and the Baltic Sea region. This means that Sweden must make available what NATO requires to support its operations, including accommodation, healthcare, food and water, and fuel. Much of this infrastructure is in civilian and private hands, such as ports and railways to receive and transport Allied armies. Not prepared for war since the end of the Cold War, the responsible civilian agencies have lost institutional knowledge of civil-military cooperation over the past few decades, and have little experience in a NATO context. 

Cultural and operational gaps between the civilian sector and military is not unique to Sweden, and building Allied resilience through strengthening capacities in the civilian sector is a growing priority for NATO. This is being done in order to meet today’s full spectrum of threats and to uphold Article 3, which demands that each nation must have the capability to withstand and recover from a major disaster, crisis or armed attack. On resilience, relative to other NATO Allies, Sweden is a leading nation, exceeding and sharing best practices on NATO’s seven baseline requirements agreed to at the 2016 Warsaw Summit. To facilitate better civil-military cooperation, Sweden has also appointed an MSB director with a military background and is conducting NATO training and exercises that include civilian agencies. Though it is widely acknowledged rebuilding is going too slowly, Sweden is making historic investments in its civil defence to build a robust total defence and live up to NATO’s Article 3.

Nordic examples of regional civil defence cooperation

Finland’s comprehensive security and Sweden’s total defence models have similar logics born out the necessity of their non-aligned, demographic, and geographic circumstances. And while this Nordic model may viewed as more or less the same internationally, the differing chains of command, areas of responsibilities, operating procedures, legal bases, culture, and pure number of public and private actors involved makes cross-border civil defence cooperation arguably more complex than regional military cooperation.

Even for purely domestic crisis responses, there remains a lack of clarity with regard to responsibilities between local, regional and national authorities, as well as gaps in cooperation, proactivity and leadership. This was a conclusion MSB reached when analysing responses to three peacetime crises between 2023-24: “Joint crisis management capability has been hampered by the fact that, in some cases there has been a lack of consensus on roles and responsibilities, not a fully comprehensive situation picture, and a lack of joint direction and coordination of efforts and resources … there have been instances of shortcomings in proactivity or decisiveness.” The picture becomes even more complex when international cooperation is required. 

While cooperation often works well on a lower level, national governments may lag behind. A good case in point is the cooperation between local communities in Norway, Sweden and Finland in the northernmost parts of the countries, called the Cap of the North. Due to the shared challenges all communities are facing in this sparsely populated but large area, marked by scarcity of infrastructure and a harsh climate, cooperation has been a more urgent necessity than in the southern capital areas ofthe countries. Cooperation on search and rescue, as well as security of supply, are relevant beyond the everyday peacetime needs of the region.

The Haga Agreements have been the most important civil preparedness cooperation format for all five Nordic countries. Traditionally focused on peacetime emergencies, Haga III, signed in November 2024, builds upon previous agreements by taking into account Russia’s war of aggression and evolving hybrid treats. This seeks to strengthen Nordic cooperation through joint planning and exercises alongside information sharing. The agreement also helps to facilitate Nordic civil-military cooperation within NORDEFCO (Nordic Defence Cooperation) and involvement in NATO’s Host Nation Support (HNS).

The successes and shortcomings in regional cooperation between the Nordic countries offer valuable lessons when trying to scale up total defence to a wider regional level, encompassing the whole Nordic-Baltic region. At the same time, the focus in specific measures should be on local needs. What works in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway may not be relevant in mainland Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Generally, joint civil defence efforts in the region should include at least the most important areas for civilian life that would profit from multilateral cooperation under wartime conditions, such as security of supply, medical care capacity, evacuation measures, and critical infrastructure protection. Coordination and cooperation measures in these areas have to be established, exercised and streamlined during peacetime, so that all parties know their role and responsibilities in crisis and wartime. 

As the Nordic-Baltic region (re)builds and exercises its total defence model to meet today’s security challenges and hybrid threats, the best practices and lessons learned can serve as a blueprint for all NATO allies. 

The views and opinions in this text do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.