Game changer? : Sveriges och Storbritanniens bilaterala försvarssamarbete efter Brexit

Sammanfattning: We have in our thesis focused on the bilateral defence and security cooperation between Sweden and Great Britain and investigated if Brexit have led to any consequenses on the cooperation between the two countries. We have also investigated possible consequenses on the bilateral cooperation in regards to Great Britain’s global ambitions. The defence cooperation is viewed from a Swedish perspective. Great Britain is a major security actor with global ambitions. Although, the EU has been a platform for cooperation in different political fields, including defence and security. With Great Britain leaving the EU, Sweden and Great Britain will lose this common platform. This change needs to be considered, especially due to the fact that Sweden has declared the ambition to deepen the defence and security cooperation with Great Britain. In this qualitative study we have turned to experts within the defence and security field with knowledge on the bilateral cooperation between Sweden and Great Britain. We have concluded that the bilateral defence and security cooperation have not been negatively influenced due to the British decision to leave the EU, nor it’s global ambition Global Britain. Although, Great Britain have announced it’s global ambitions after Brexit, we have concluded both that they have an interest in Sweden's vicinity and also that the cooperation have instead deepened during the last couple of years. We can also conclude that there are conditions in favour of a continued and deepened defence cooperation between Sweden and Great Britain. This thesis is written from a Swedish perspective. One of our recommendations for future research is recommending to explore the bilateral Swedish British defence cooperation from a British perspective. Finally, we have concluded that Brexit and Global Britain are not the ”Game Changer” as the title of the thesis imply. This was an assumption we made in the beginning of the work. But as the empirical studies have shown, this is not the case.