Higher Seminar in Statecraft and Strategic Communication | Martin Neuding Skoog & Pontus Rudberg
Martin Neuding Skoog
Pontus Rudberg
Abstract: The project Statecraft and Secrecy: The Early Modern Roots of Swedish Intelligence examines the long history of intelligence in Sweden. It explores the long-term significance of espionage and intelligence gathering as strategic instruments in political decision-making. In political history, the close relationship between statecraft and espionage has been evident at least since the Renaissance. The study challenges the prevailing view that organised intelligence is a product of modernity. Although intelligence activities underwent technological transformation during the twentieth century, they actually emerged much earlier. The project demonstrates that intelligence has been a persistent feature of Swedish statecraft and that the modern intelligence organisation evolved out of long-established practices.
The purpose of the study is to develop a new, coherent, and overarching perspective on Swedish intelligence and its utility to the state over time. Through six chronological case studies drawn from the early modern and modern periods, c. 1600–1900, the project investigates continuity and change in the Swedish intelligence apparatus from the era of Axel Oxenstierna to that of Oscar II. It examines the methods employed to plan, collect, analyse, and utilise intelligence in strategic decision-making during different phases of this extended period.
The study analyses organisational structures, early steps towards institutionalisation, key actors and agents, operational practices, and the geographical scope of foreign intelligence activities. It also examines the content of intelligence and shifting priorities over time, as well as surveillance and counterintelligence practices, information security, and the interaction between intelligence and the emerging diplomatic organisation. Furthermore, it explores whether intelligence collection was primarily reactive to external developments or pursued proactively. The chronological case studies are subsequently compared in order to identify long-term trends and patterns. This comparative analysis demonstrates how intelligence was integrated into strategic decision-making over time and how intelligence activities were adapted in response to geopolitical, constitutional, and technological change.
Over the long term, the intelligence organisations of many European states appear to have followed a cyclical rather than a linear trajectory from rudimentary to increasingly sophisticated forms. The dynamic development of the Swedish state—from great power to neutral small state, and across changing constitutional systems—provides particularly favourable conditions for examining this process within a broader comparative international perspective.
Bio: Martin Neuding Skoog is Senior Lecturer in Military History at the Swedish Defence University. Pontus Rudberg is Associate Professor of History and Research Affiliate at the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication at the Stockholm School of Economics.