New Threats for the European Union and their Effects on Sweden’s and Austria’s Basic Officer Education : a comparative Approach

Sammanfattning: During the Cold War, the largest threat against the countries of Europe was an enemy attack or invasion. After the end of the Cold War, the strategic environment changed drastically. The impending threat of a large-scale war was gone and the countries of Europe approached each other in the hope of cooperation with mutual benefits. As the old threat faded away, new threats which were significantly more dynamic and complex emerged. Threats such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, organised crime over the boarders and state failure became more apparent, both, in Europe and in its proximity. Irregular conflicts as in Kosovo and Afghanistan showed an assortment of the various threats. This complexity poses as a big challenge for the officers of today and tomorrow. It is of vital importance that both current and future military commanders are well educated in the complexities of their line of work. The first step to achieve this is ensuring that adequate education in the subject is given. In this thesis, the author researches to what extent the Swedish National Defence College and the Theresan Military Academy choose to educate their officer cadets regarding the new threats. The purpose of researching more than one country is to enable a discussion on eventual areas of improvement in the two countries’ curricula, within the context of the common threats. The author chose Austria because of its many similarities to Sweden. The methodological approach of the thesis is mainly of a quantitative nature. The author researches whether the different threats are found in both national and military strategies as well as in the curricula of the two academies’ Basic Officer Education. The study shows that more education is needed regarding certain threats. More training is needed regarding cyber security as a result of the growing dependence on IT systems and digital information. In addition, an international collaboration could yield potential benefits for both officer cadets’ problem solving skills and their knowledge of the ESS.