User:Svenor.1966/Ola Tunander



Ola Tunander (born in Stockholm, Sweden 1948) is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He is the son of the Museum Director Ingemar Tunander and his first wife Gunvor (born Lilja). Ola Tunander is married with the Chinese scholar Yao Xiaoling. He has written or edited 12 books and a number of articles on security politics, naval strategy, submarine operations, geopolitics, dual state, psychological operations (PSYOP) and Cold War history. He has initiated east-west dialogue conferences.

Early scholarly career
After a Master in Economic History (with Human Geography and History of Science and Ideas) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) 1981, Tunander wrote for philosophical magazines and in 1985 he published two Swedish book volumes. In 1987, he wrote a volume on US Maritime Strategy for the Swedish Defence Research Establishment. In 1989, he defended his doctoral dissertation at Department for Technology and Social Change, Linköping University. While finalizing his doctoral thesis Cold Water Politics (1989) on US Maritime Strategy, technology and the geopolitics of the North, he received a research position at PRIO in Oslo. In 1989, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow and was given tenure. He lectured at the U.S. Center for Naval Analysis and U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. In 1995, he became the head of PRIO’s Foreign and Security Policy Program. In 2000, he was appointed Research Professor.

Dialogue projects and writings on region-building, security and identity
From early 1990s, Tunander wrote on military strategy, confidence-building measures, region-building  and US remaking of world order. He headed a Nordic study group, “A new Europe” from mid-1980s with Prof Ole Wæver, the founder of the concept of “securitization” and the Copenhagen School of International Relations; Prof Iver B. Neumann, Research Director Norwegian Institute of International Affairs; Sverre Jervell, the architect behind the Barents Euro-Arctic Region launched by Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev in 1993; and Espen Barth Eide, later Norwegian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Defense. Prof. Robert Bathurst (PRIO and U.S. Naval Postgraduate School) and Tunander initiated Norwegian-Russian dialogue seminars. In 1994, he co-edited a volume on the post-Cold War regional cooperation in Arctic Europe, The Barents Region, with chapters by the foreign ministers (Kozyrev and Holst) and foreword by former foreign minister Stoltenberg. Tunander wrote contributions about Northern Europe, Nordic Cooperation and Scandinavism published by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Olof Palme International Center. He contributed to Russian journal International Affairs with the Norwegian and Russian ambassadors, Norwegian Prime Minister Jagland and Foreign Minister Godal and his Russian counterpart Yevgeny Primakov. Tunander wrote and edited two Swedish books on power, identity and territory and co-edited Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe (1997). Some of these books were on the reading lists for universities and military colleges in Europe and the United States. After 2000, he organized Nordic-Chinese dialogue conferences with the CIIS (Chinese Institute of International Studies) and the Nordic peace research and international affairs institutes. He also participated in a Washington dialogue. His new focus on China might be explained by his marriage with Dr Yao Xiaoling, who wrote a doctoral thesis on the Chinese reform policy.

Contributions about Geopolitics, Dual State and Terrorism
Tunander emphasized that the state’s traditional Friend-Foe divide had been supplemented by a Cosmos-Chaos divide that made European states seek centrality rather than territory and in some cases cut off less developed nationalist territories (i.e. the Czech case in 1993). He wrote articles on geopolitics for Security Dialogue, Review of International Studies, Cooperation and Conflict, and Geopolitics as well as for the Italian journal Limes. He argued in articles for above journals, for the European Commission, and for a book volume Government of the Shadows (2009)  that U.S. hegemonic power divided the single Western state into a “dual state”: a regular democratic hierarchy versus a security hierarchy linked to the U.S. With reference to Schmitt,  Morgenthau and Fraenkel,  he developed the concept of “dual state” as composed by a regular democratic state “public state” (Peter Dale Scott) that acts according to the rule of law, and by a covert “deep state” or “security state” able to veto the decisions of the former (Morgenthau)  and to “securitize” regular politics by making certain activities an issue of life and death (Wæver). Cold War military coups or coup attempts (i.e. Turkey, Greece, Italy and Spain) were understood in terms of the “veto power” of the “deep state”, which “securitized” regular democratic activities by the use of terrorism. Tunander quotes his conversation with former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who spoke about a Swedish “dual state”: the neutral “Political Sweden” versus the “Military Sweden” that, according to Schlesinger, was “planning to get the USA involved as soon as possible”. Tunander quotes U.S. secretaries of defense, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, as saying: when it came to the most sensitive issues, as the Swedish-U.S. military ties, there was only one rule: “Nothing on paper”.

Submarines and PSYOPs
Tunander’s study of covert political structures goes back to his experience of high profile submarine activities in Swedish archipelagoes and naval bases in the 1980s. His books from the 1980s accepted the official view. In 1983, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme protested against the “Soviet intrusions”. He was forced to cancel his policy and deep-freeze Sweden’s diplomatic relations to Moscow. In 1980, 8 % of the Swedes viewed the Soviet Union as a direct threat and 33 % considered the Soviets as hostile. After a stranded Soviet submarine in 1981 and primarily after a dramatic anti-submarine operation in 1982 with midget subs inside Swedish naval bases, these figures changed to 42 % and 83 % respectively, which forced Sweden to deep-freeze its Soviet ties. However, in the 1990s, Tunander was told by U.S. and British officials that these operations were run by the U.S. and the U.K. In 2000 former U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former U.K. Navy minister Keith Speed stated on Swedish TV that their subs had operated regularly and frequently in Swedish waters to test Swedish defenses after navy-to-navy consultations. Chairman of NATO Military Committee Vigleik Eide, and NATO Secretary General George Robertson added that these were not NATO operations but operations under national command (U.S. and U.K.). This led to a Swedish Government inquiry under Sweden’s former Washington Ambassador Rolf Ekéus with Ambassador Mathias Mossberg as Secretary and with Tunander as a civilian expert. Tunander wrote a Swedish book Hårsfjärden (2001), articles for the journal of the Royal Swedish Society of Naval Sciences, the Swedish Journal of War Sciences, the Zürich-based Parallel History Project, and an English volume The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (2004), which emphasized the submarines role to change Swedish public opinion and foreign policy. Tunander argued that these operations were PSYOPs decided by a U.S. “deception operation committee” chaired by CIA Director William Casey, and some of them were run by a CIA-Navy liaison office, National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, headed by Secretary of Navy John Lehman.

The reception of the PSYOPs analysis
The Danish Government Inquiry on the Cold War (2005) and the Finnish Cold War History (2006)  based their analysis on Tunander’s works, which provoked a debate. Tunander wrote another volume Spelet under ytan [The Game beneath the Surface] for the Swedish Cold War history project. A German TV-documentary In feindlichen Tiefen (by Arte and ZDF, 2005) was largely based on Tunander’s work and aired all over Europe. In 2007-2008, Swedish TV aired documentaries based on Tunander’s work. This provoked a controversy. Sweden’s Royal Society of Naval Sciences and the Royal Academy of War Sciences organized seminars. Sweden’s former chief of defense and former chief of staff wrote articles against Tunander. Tunander was supported by Ambassador Mossberg, the Submarine Inquiry Secretary, who wrote a book I mörka vatten: Hur det svenska folket fördes bakom ljuset i ubåtsfrågan [In Dark Waters: How the Submarines were used to Deceive the Swedish People] (Stockholm, 2009) with a cover text by Ambassador Ekéus. Mossberg similar to the Danish Government Inquiry and the German TV documentary stressed Tunander’s argument that some operations were very likely U.S. and U.K. PSYOPs. Tunander received similar support from Finnish President Mauno Koivisto, who recalled Soviet leader Yuri Andropov telling him that the Swedes should sink every intruding submarine, so they could see themselves what turned up. Prime Minister Palme never pointed to the Soviets after his conversation with President Koivisto in August 1983. Tunander was supported by French Naval historian Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix and former U.S. attaché to Moscow Captain Peter Huchthausen. The Swedish controversy, however, is still ongoing with a volume written by Sweden’s former Chief of Defence General Bengt Gustafsson 2010.

Books in English
Cold Water Politics: The Maritime Strategy and Geopolitics of the Northern Front (London: Sage, 1989). ISBN-10: 0803982194; ISBN-13: 978-0803982192.

The Barents Region: Regional Cooperation in Arctic Europe, with Olav Schram Stokke eds. (London: Sage, 1994). ISBN-10: 0803978979; ISBN-13: 978-0803978973.

Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory and Identity, with Pavel Baev and Victoria Einagel eds. (London: Sage, 1997). ISBN-10: 0761955496; ISBN-13: 978-0761955498.

European Security Identities: Contested understandings of EU and NATO, with Peter Burgess, eds. (Oslo: PRIO, 2000). ISBN: 82-7288-210-8.

The Secret War against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception in the 1980s (London & New York: Frank Cass & Routledge, 2004). ISBN-10: 0714653225; ISBN-13: 978-0714653228.

Books in Swedish
Den Svarta Duvan – Essäer om makt, teknik och historia [The Black Dove – Essays on Power, Technology and History] (Lund: Symposion, 1985). ISBN 91-85040-010.

På Autobahn mot sekelskiftet [On Autobahn towards the Turn of the Century] (Lund: Symposion, 1985). ISBN: 91-7868-016-6.

Norden och USAs maritima strategi – En studie av Nordens förändrade strategiska läge [The Nordic Countries and the US Maritime Strategy – A Study of the Changed Strategic Position of the Nordic Area]. ’Försvarets Forskningsanstalt [Swedish Defense Research Establishment], Stockholm: FOA Rapport C 10295-1.4, 1987. ISSN 0281-0247.

Murar – Essäer om makt, identitet och territorialitet [Walls – Essays on Power, Identity and Territoriality] (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-72-6; ISBN 82-7198-025-4; ISBN 91-88484-10-6; ISBN 9979-837-10-1.

Europa och Muren – Om ‘den andre’, gränslandet och historiens återkomst i 90-talets Europa [Europe and the Wall – On ‘the Other’, the Borderland and the Return of History in Europe of the 1990s], ed. (Ålborg: Nordic Summer University, 1995). ISBN 87-87564-69-6; ISBN 9979 -837-07-1; ISBN 82-7198-023-8; ISBN 91-88484-08-4.

Hårsfjärden – Det hemliga ubåtskriget mot Sverige [Hårsfjärden – The Secret Submarine War against Sweden] (Stockholm: Norstedts Förlag, 2001). ISBN 91-1-301038-7.

Spelet under ytan – Teknisk bevisning i nationalitesfrågan för ubåtsoperationen mot Sverige 1982, published by the Swedish research program: ’Sverige under kalla kriget’ [Sweden during the Cold War], no. 16 (Gothenburg Univ. & Stockholm Univ., 2007). ISSN 1402 -5507 (A revised edition was published on the PRIO website in 2009). http://www.prio.no/upload/people/ola_tunander/Spelet%20under%20ytan.pdf