Clarification: The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society and NATO
In January The Journal of Strategic Studies published the article "Russia's strategy for influence through public diplomacy and active measures: the Swedish case", authored by myself and my colleague Sebastian Åsberg.
In this article, we present an empirical argument about how the Soviet Union and later Russia are trying to influence Swedish opinion and political decision making in the area of Swedish security policy by both legitimate and deceptive means.
There is a section in the article which leaves open to an interpretation that we connect The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) with Russian desinformation campaigns. We want to clarify that we under no circumstance support any such interpretation. The discussion SPAS conducts on security policy is important. There are many legitimate arguments with different perspectives in the Swedish security policy discussions. It is unfortunate that in our article, SPAS legitimate discussions can appear mixed up with the questions of Russian action. Our article also does not take a stand regarding Sweden's relationship to NATO.
In addition, we want to emphasize that this clarification also refers to other persons mentioned by name in the article, such as Valter Mutt, Pierre Schori and Maj-Britt Theorin.
The section in our article will be clarified in consultation with editors of The Journal of Strategic Studies.
Martin Kragh, Head of Russia and Eurasia programme at UI