NORWAY: Military Shrinks to Worrying Levels

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tarjei Kidd Olsen

OSLO, Dec 8 2006 (IPS) - Norway’s defence forces are changing to reflect challenges of terrorism, uncertainty, international interventions and increased expenses following the Cold War. Meaner and leaner militaries are a feature of most of today’s western world.

This summer debate raged in Norway over a planned contribution of 170 army personnel to the possible UN intervention in Darfur. The tiny contribution highlighted just how small Norway’s army and overall defence forces have become.

Norway’s overall defence forces, including the army, air force and navy, number about 30,000. In war a total of 130,000 can be mobilised, including home defence forces of about 65,000. This represents a significant reduction.

For instance, in 1990 the army numbered about 150,000 soldiers upon mobilisation. Today’s standing army is made up of 3,900 soldiers serving their compulsory military service, and 1,700 voluntary recruits and officers.

Two events account for this dramatic trend.

While Norway’s defence budget has increased at a constant rate since the end of the Cold War, expenses associated with maintaining Norway’s military organisation have skyrocketed. Large maintenance costs and investments in expensive high-tech solutions have necessitated cutbacks, and further measures are in the ropes.

The international picture has also changed considerably in the last 16 years. During the Cold War the main concern was a large-scale invasion by the Soviet Union requiring a large-scale defence effort. Today concerns tend to be focused more on terrorism, international interventions and small-scale conflicts.

“The large-scale mobilisation concept has been abandoned. Today the defence forces are organised so that the soldiers are more or less at the ready all the time. They can react in days instead of weeks or months. The condition for achieving this has been a substantial reduction in the size of the forces,” Iver Johansen, researcher at Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) told IPS.

But due to the rising maintenance and upgrade costs, Norway’s defence forces would probably have had trouble maintaining its Cold War dimensions today even if the Cold War threat scenario had not changed.

“The army is as big as it can be considering the defence budget. The budget threat was there even before 1990 as Norway’s military organisation was built largely on weapons donated by the U.S. in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They were becoming outdated by the 1980’s, so Norway was already having trouble financing its defences,” Johansen said.

“The disappearance of the old threats merely strengthened a trend that was already visible,” he added.

This is a feature of all western countries that built large military structures following World War II. Sweden’s defence budget was twice as big as that of Norway; today it exceeds Norway’s by only 20 percent.

“Most countries were experiencing larger budgetary problems than Norway,” according to Johansen.

Hand in hand with such developments are the changes made due to the new threat scenarios.

While Norway is training more and increasingly specialised forces than earlier, including elite units, it still relies heavily on the system of compulsory military service. After serving for one year, some soldiers sign temporary contracts that allow for international deployments and other tasks.

In contrast Britain traditionally has professional military forces, relying exclusively on voluntarily drafted recruits with long-term contracts. This is largely true also of the U.S.

“The old threat of a large-scale invasion won’t happen in the visible future, but limited military operations are not out of the question. In Norway this is particularly true of the northern regions,” Johansen said.

“Russia has the capacity to be a military threat to Norway, and so far it is not properly integrated within western security arrangements,” he said.

Large stretches of the sea bed in the Barents Sea north of Norway is claimed by both countries. So-called ‘cannon boat diplomacy’ by Russia, including the threatening or provocative use of boats and airplanes, is a real possibility that defence planners will have to consider.

International terrorism is another concern. “This is of course an ever present threat, the extent of which may be difficult to measure. These days the threat may be exaggerated, but it cannot be discounted,” Johansen said.

International peacekeeping and military interventions have also become more common.

In recent years Norway has been involved in conflicts in the Balkans and the Middle East. Currently 550 soldiers are stationed in Afghanistan. Another 170 Norwegians are patrolling the Lebanese coast as part of a naval force.

Norway’s secretive elite forces have been active in Afghanistan as part of the U.S.’s ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.

In addition an engineering and transport unit with 170 army specialists has been promised for the elusive intervention force the UN wants to send to Sudan.

But with capacity already stretched, many are now worried that the defence forces are simply too tiny to defend Norway itself at home quite apart from deployment to distant regions.

“I do not think that our international contributions, particularly if we send soldiers to Sudan, can be sustained in the long term. After a few months soldiers need to be exchanged with fresh soldiers so that they can rest and recover, but those replacements just aren’t available,” Johansen told IPS.

On Nov. 30 Jan Reksten, joint commander of Norway’s forces, publicly stated in Norway’s largest broadsheet Aftenposten that the defence forces are nearing a critical minimum in terms of staffing and equipment. The navy is said to be in the worst condition, with little offensive capability left.

This comes after Robert Mood, Norway’s army chief of staff, suggested that the staffing issue could be alleviated by increasing compulsory military service from one to two years.

The west’s militaries have probably changed irreversibly, but the future of Norway’s shrunk defence forces is likely to remain a contentious issue.