UK Should Consider Sweden-Style National Service: Former MI6 Chief

File photo dated 27/02/2017 of Members of the 4th Battalion The Rifles march in the rain at Normandy Barracks, in Aldershot, England, on Feb. 27, 2017. Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

The former head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has said Britain should consider a Sweden-style “reserve force” that can be called up during states of defence emergency.

“I don’t think this is about blanket conscription,” Sir Alex Younger told BBC journalist Nick Robinson on the Today Podcast on Thursday.

“It is about thinking about ways in which the broader country would participate and contribute to security in a time of an emergency, which you know, is no longer impossible to imagine,” he said.

“Ultimately, in extremis, I think we'd be looking at something like the model as I understand exists in places like Sweden, where the government theoretically has the power to compel people to give their service one way or another but doesn’t exercise it, except in areas where it’s really needed,” he said.

“You will notice on that list is not everyone being called up going to the drafting station. I think that’s extremely unlikely,” the former MI6 chief added.

Sweden, NATO’s newest member, operates what it calls a “Total Defence Service,” which includes civilian or military service. Men and women aged 18 have to complete an enlistment form, but not all are called up to military service. General compulsory national service can be activated in times of a heightened state of alert.

‘We’ve Been Infantilised’

Sir Alex made the remarks as part of a wider discussion on what he believes is Western Europe’s—including the UK’s— post-Cold War detachment from its own defence, and the erroneous belief militarism and military threats from adversaries are things of the past.

This week, Grant Shapps said Europe is in a “pre-war” state and the continent should take its own defence more seriously. Sir Alex told Mr. Robinson that the term “pre-war” was not particularly helpful, because in reality, “we’re always in a pre-war world to some extent.”

“I come from the covert world where states behave according to their real interests, not their professed ones,” the former MI6 chief said.

He warned that Western Europe had been “infantilised” since the end of the Cold War—protected by the quality of the U.S. security guarantee—into “somehow thinking that we’ve moved on, and that we’re in some post-historical phase.”

“This particular hubris in Europe, in which I include the UK, is that somehow we’ve moved on from the ideological war and therefore military rivalry of the past,” he said.

Democracy Not ‘Intrinsically Secure’

He continued that the assumption we live in an “intrinsically safer world where democracy is intrinsically secure” is “rubbish.”

“And I know it’s rubbish because our adversaries in the covert world didn’t get the memo on that one, I can assure you,” the former MI6 chief said.

He added that the UK has had the “luxury” of “outsourcing defence to professional armies with whom they have increasingly detached relationships.”

Sir Alex said that there needs to be a change in culture in the way Britain thinks about security, which he said was “not sustainable.”

Alex Younger, Chief of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, gives a speech at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland on Dec. 3, 2018. Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty Images

“I think the United States have been extraordinarily generous providers of security. That is going to modify one way or the other in the future. So we are going to own our security anyway. So this is a timely conversation,” he said.

Preparing for War

Sir Alex said that Western Europe should look more to Eastern Europe and states bordering Russia for guidance on how to think about future security, because they have a better grasp on the immediate threats that face them.

“We seem to have convinced ourselves somehow that the advantages we have and the values that are shot through our country are kind of natural and don’t need defending and I think we’re in for a rude shock. And by contrast, if we do decide we want to defend them, the need to do so probably goes down, ” he said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a joint press conference with the Swedish prime minister in Stockholm on March 7, 2023. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

Other senior figures in defence and intelligence have been stating that Europe is either already in a state of war or should be preparing itself for conflict.

Former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove had said in February that “Europe is at war“ on a psychological level and ”we should be thinking in those terms.”

NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and chairman of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer had also told Europe to prepare for war, specifically in a conflict with Russia.