This well-researched book focuses on British policy toward Scandinavia during the early cold war period. Juhana Aunesluoma's central thesis is that the search for a modus vivendi with neutral Sweden started first in Britain, creating an atmosphere that forced the United States and the Soviet Union to modify their policies to the issue of cold war neutrality in Europe. Making excellent use of the available literature and British, American, and Swedish primary sources, Aunesluoma takes the historical argument further than most scholars in his field by examining the evidence up to 1954. It is a useful cutoff point as the mid-1950s was a period that witnessed a diminished economic and defensive role for the British in Scandinavia, the relaxation of Soviet tension toward the region, and a concurrent marked increase in U.S. political interest.

Up until the past ten years, there had always been a reluctance in Sweden to challenge the cold war policy of neutrality, but evidence now suggests that there were more links to the West than many Swedes liked to admit. Aunesluoma's work certainly adds more weight to this perception. With the unspoken blessing of political leaders in both countries, British and Swedish military officials exchanged information, maintained close consultation, and tacitly coordinated defense plans. As early postwar tensions with the Soviet Union heightened, Robin Hankey, head of the Foreign Office's Northern Department, wrote in late 1946, “Sweden is now in the front line along the great arc which divides the Soviet from the outside world and it has diplomatic importance which it has not had before in peacetime for a great many years” (11). The British considered Scandinavia strategically important and that its defense, potentially under Swedish leadership, was in the interest of the West and should be encouraged. This remained British policy until the progression toward the Atlantic alliance acquired momentum in the spring and summer of 1948.

The British adopted a far more liberal attitude toward Sweden than the United States and did not deem neutrality a bar to cooperation. This placed Britain in an important middle position between Sweden and its Scandinavian partners, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. But as Aunesluoma points out the British did not adopt a completely uncritical line toward Sweden. In early 1949, Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, told the Swedish ambassador that a planned neutral Scandinavian defense pact “did not meet the requirements of the moment” and that neutrality was not an adequate response in the current world situation (77). When, in March 1949, Norway and Denmark intimated their intention to join an Atlantic Alliance, the British were content to leave the Swedes “alone in the hope that the hard facts of the situation and a growing understanding of the advantages to be derived from cooperation with the West will gradually induce a change in their present attitude” (83). However, despite the covert exchanges of information and the convergence of defense plans in Sweden and the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Aunesluoma found no evidence that Sweden joined NATO as a secret member, confirming the conclusions of the Neutrality Policy Commission published in 1994. But in stark contrast to the commission's findings, Aunesluoma argues that a definite pledge or agreement to the West was not needed “as long as Sweden's participation alongside NATO forces in a future war was considered more likely than its neutrality” (158).

A much greater success for Britain's cold war policy in Scandinavia was securing the participation of Sweden in the European Recovery Programme and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation. By building up these “organic ties,” as Bevin called them, the British were establishing a link between militarily nonaligned Sweden and an increasingly cohesive West (42). It also provided the British with a useful ally in questions of Western European economic cooperation and integration. But the United Kingdom did not achieve the full integration of Scandinavia into its economy and failed to keep the region closely attached to the sterling area. By the mid-1950s, the United States had developed its strategic and political ties in the area, and Swedish markets for industrial goods were lost to the Germans. Still, as the United States stepped up its military contacts with the Swedes, the Anglo-American powers finally found themselves in step on the issue of policy toward Sweden. London, as well as Aunesluoma, considered this outcome a major victory for British diplomacy, justifying Britain's early cold war policy of laying down the foundations of closer contacts with Swedes. As Aunesluoma explains, British policy had “increased flexibility for Sweden” by creating opportunities for the Swedes to maintain close relations with the West (160).

Thus despite its policy of neutrality, Sweden was increasingly integrated into the Western group of nations. Neutrality led to neither international isolation nor serious political problems and was assisted by the fact that by 1954 both the United States and the Soviet Union had recognized it as a political reality and took no active measures to alter it. And although Aunesluoma rightly concludes, “the problem of Sweden's ‘real’ position between the cold war blocs can never be fully answered, as it is counterfactual,” the prospect of Sweden remaining neutral in a future all-out East-West war was considered unlikely (150).