We are taught by the media to see war as the place where it is proved which of two or more competing methods of destruction is superior, the winner being coldly and analytically adopted by all sides inveitably or else they end up facing defeat.

War sort of works like this under certain conditions, but in many other instances war is hopelessly political and the movement of human bodies towards obliteration or success is determined by suffocating doctrine that attempts to project the idea of a higher up general who does not understand the battlefield onto an incongruous reality where the grunts suffer the consequences and are mindlessly ground to pieces.

Look at russia, they have evolved massively in many ways and yet they have not in other critical ways that existentially undermine their entire war effort. You cannot underestimate this tendency in nations, especially those that have not been forced to fight as underdogs, to behave in war in ways that have no relation to the actual realities of war. This is one of the oldest and most doggedly followed ideologies of war and is one of the reasons war proliferates like a contagion.

In general though with Ukraine and Sweden, we are talking about a military that has come fresh off the battlefield having had to learn the rhythms of modern combat… fighting a “tactically green” military coming from a historical context. There is always going to be an initial tactical mismatch until the awareness and skill of basic tactical counters spreads. What matters here is that these exercises are being held proactively and that this dialog is happening so that if the worst case scenario does arise Sweden won’t have to start from zero learning how it is to actually fight in the context of the cutting edge technology and tactics of that particular moment, which is inevitably a rough transition for any state lucky enough to experience durations of peace and stability.