Friends in war: Sweden between solidarity and self-help, 1939–1945
| Author | Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou,Felix Berenskötter |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720904389 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720904389
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(1) 83 –100
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720904389
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Friends in war: Sweden
between solidarity and
self-help, 1939–1945
Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou
and Felix Berenskötter
Abstract
This article scrutinizes the assumption that friends support each other in times of war. Picking
up the notion that solidarity, or ‘other-help’, is a key feature of friendship between states, the
article explores how states behave when a friend is attacked by an overwhelming enemy. It
directs attention to the trade-off between solidarity and self-help that governments face in such
a situation and makes the novel argument that the decision about whether and how to support
the friend is significantly influenced by assessments of the distribution of material capabilities and
the relationship the state has with the aggressor. This proposition is supported empirically in an
examination of Sweden’s response to its Nordic friends’ need for help during the Second World
War – to Finland during the 1939–1940 ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union, and to Norway
following the invasion of Germany from 1940 to 1945.
Keywords
Friendship, self-help, solidarity, Sweden, Second World War
Introduction
‘Friend’ and ‘friendship’ are commonly used terms in the study of international relations
(IR), and scholars increasingly recognize and examine friendship as a distinct type of
relationship in world politics. This literature often describes friends as bound together by
a collective identity based on shared cultural parameters and expressed by cooperative
practices. One key behavioural feature of friendship is solidarity, broadly understood as
standing by someone’s side and lending support in times of need. Unsurprisingly, the
practice of solidarity comes to the fore most clearly during war. As Alexander Wendt
(1999: 299; see also Wolfers, 1962: 29) puts it, friends ‘fight as a team if the security of
any one is threatened by a third party’.
Corresponding author:
Arash Heydarian Pashakhanlou, Swedish Defence University, Drottning Kristinas väg 37, Box 27805, 115 93
Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: arash.h.pashakhanlou@gmail.com
904389CAC0010.1177/0010836720904389Cooperation and ConflictPashakhanlou and Berenskötter
research-article2020
Article
84 Cooperation and Conflict 56(1)
As intuitive as this sounds, it is a rather sweeping claim that has to be examined more
carefully. Wendt does not do this, and neither does existing IR literature on international
friendship. Some studies have looked at tensions among friends over military operations
in far-away places, exploring their ‘verbal fighting’ of international order (Mattern,
2005), their ability to overcome crises (Eznack, 2011) and how persistent disagreement
over the norms guiding military operations can lead to estrangement (Berenskoetter and
Giegerich, 2010). Yet an empirical and conceptual gap exists over how a state behaves
when the friend faces an overwhelming external aggressor.1 The present article attempts
to fill this gap. This is an important task, as it probes the fundamental assumption that
friends fight as a team. More precisely, the scenario forces analysts to confront questions
about the factors influencing the nature and scope of solidarity, and how extreme situa-
tions affect the ability and willingness to support the friend. As such, it requires attention
to why and how practices of ‘other-help’ (Wendt, 1999), as expressions of care, may be
compromised by egoistic behaviour, or ‘self-help’ emphasized by realists.
To explore these questions, the article looks at how Sweden reacted when its Nordic
friends were under military attack by a powerful external aggressor during the Second
World War. Specifically, we focus on the cases of Sweden and Finland during the
1939–1940 ‘Winter War’ with the Soviet Union as the attacker, and of Sweden and
Norway during the invasion and occupation of the latter by Nazi Germany from 1940
to 1945.2 In both cases, the Swedish government decided not to formally side with and
officially fight alongside its Nordic friends. Exploring the factors underpinning this
decision, the article shows, however, that the decision was not taken lightly and that
Sweden still supported its neighbours in a number of ways, even if this support was
limited. Thus, rather than reading Swedish behaviour as evidence for the non-existence
of friendship, we suggest that it reveals the need to pay more attention to egoism, or
practices of self-help, in international friendship and to refine our understanding of the
conditions under which friends are willing and able to support each other. Specifically,
it shows that solidarity is a political choice, and that to understand this choice analysts
need to consider that governments face a (perceived) trade-off between practices of
solidarity and of self-help. In this vein, we argue that decisions over the scope and
nature of solidarity are significantly influenced by ‘rational’ assessments of the distri-
bution of material capabilities and how the state relates to the friend’s enemy.
Thus, in addition to presenting empirical cases that, to our knowledge, have not been
discussed in the IR literature, the article advances scholarship on international friendship
in two ways. First, it shows the benefit of including rationalist actors and realist factors
for explaining how friends perform in war, presenting a challenge to a literature largely
grounded in constructivist thinking. Second, it reminds that analysts need to look beyond
joint military action (‘fighting side by side’) to see different kinds of support across soci-
ety, and to take into account issues of timing. As such, the article reminds that broad and
perhaps overly romantic claims about the rules of friendship must be treated with caution
and supplemented by a more nuanced understanding of both the variations and limits of
practices of solidarity.
The discussion proceeds in five sections. The first part focuses on the issue of solidar-
ity in friendship and outlines the contours of a framework for assessing the trade-off
between solidarity and self-help among friends. The ensuing three sections explore these
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