Journal on Baltic Security

The development of capabilities for national defence among land forces in the Baltic region underscores the need for mission command as a guiding principle of leadership and command. However, the practice of mission command in the contemporary military context is far from straightforward. This article presents the results of a survey conducted with Swedish Army officers, examining their perspectives on positive as well as negative influences on their ability to utilize mission in their contemporary working environment. While mission command is envisioned to become increasingly important in the future, several obstacles are identified to its utilization and development.

As early as 1994, scholars, analysts and policymakers began to wonder the extent to which the

While potential threats from Russia and NATO collective defence commitments are similar for Latvia and Estonia, both countries have adopted different approaches in the balancing exercise between territorial defence and military solidarity. Notwithstanding their differences, both are by their nature fully non-aggressive – without room for pre-emptive initiatives, extra territoriality or asymmetrical tools. Given that in a case of a hypothetical large-scale conventional attack both countries would almost entirely have to rest on the allies, external military solidarity is essential. Until the Ukraine crisis, both offered more military solidarity towards their NATO allies than the latter offered to them. As the result of the Ukrainian crisis, allies became more military-solidary with the Baltic nations, especially having established the Enhanced Forward Presence, while Estonian and especially Latvian contributions to international missions and operations dropped. Therefore, it is suggested that both countries increase their efforts to the allied international endeavours.

In this paper we analyse emerging discourses of fear