ONE WOULD ASSUME that a politician who built his career on a furious chase after foreign submarines that eventually turned out to be genuine Swedish minks, and who also bears primary responsibility for the worst economic catastrophe in his country's history, would be forced to content himself thereafter with an appropriately modest role.

But not Carl Bildt. The leader of the Conservative ("Moderat") Party has never enjoyed broader support. Just now, he is surfing on a wave of popularity as a result of his energetic efforts as peace co-ordinator in former Yugoslavia-- an assignment he received due in larger measure to the enlightened foreign policy which he, himself, has always opposed and continues to dismiss even today.

Just this-- the linking of Bildt to Palme-- is the weirdest aspect of the former's current popularity. There seems to be a general perception that Bildt's two years in Bosnia can somehow be equated with Palme's life-long efforts on behalf of peace and social justice. It also appears that Bildt's political standing is to be strengthened with a little nostalgic nudge from the murdered man whose politics he still cannot refrain from criticising.

Further, the Swedish people and the world at large are apparently to be lulled into the notion that Carl Bildt represents continuity in the Swedish foreign policy of peace and solidarity that has long been admired by so many around the world. But considering everything that the Conservative Party leader has said and done in the past, that is a proposition which bears inspection, to put it mildly. There is much at stake, including Sweden's place on earth during the 21st century.

At least as significant as those prominent figures have been the contributions by tens of thousands of Swedish diplomats, foreign aid workers, solidarity activists, U.N. peace-keeping forces, etc. As U.N. General-Secretary Perez de Cuellar noted at Palme's funeral: "Throughout the world today, the name of Sweden is synonymous with peaceful stability and human compassion."

But that Carl Bildt, of all people, should be chosen to become peace co-ordinator in Bosnia-- that was definitely a joke on history. For, no one has more consistently opposed the peaceful tradition represented by Olof Palme. Time after time and in every possible context, he and his party comrades have depicted Palme's foreign policy as hopelessly naive, misdirected, injurious to Sweden's real interests and, in some respects, bordering on treason (see "Worlds Apart", below). Bildt has demonstrated a much greater interest in war and its instruments than in peace-related issues-- and solidarity has been regarded by him and the Conservative Party as an expression of distasteful and/or ludicrous socialist hypocrisy.

The contrast with Palme was striking for, among others, Pär Fagerström, a former Palme associate and currently a newspaper executive in southern Sweden: "What did Sweden do to put an end to the war? Essentially nothing. It is extremely unlikely that Palme would have quietly stood by and observed the disaster without intervening." (To some extent, the same criticism can be applied to the Social Democratic government of Ingvar Carlsson; but that is another story, which is briefly touched upon below.)

"When Bildt was elected Prime Minister, he was seen by George Bush, John Major and others as a kindred spirit whose intent was to radically alter the direction of Sweden's socio-economic and foreign policies. Among other things, it was felt that, given the chance, Bildt would lead his country into NATO, and was to be supported and promoted in every way possible. It was therefore hardly surprising that Bildt was chosen by EU/NATO decision-makers for the assignment in Bosnia-- especially given the peace-making reputation that Sweden had previously built up under the leadership of people like Olof Palme."

Carl Bildt has said that he was not at all inclined to accept the difficult challenge, but felt that he was forced to do so, "as my duty to Europe". Perhaps. But in a purely political perspective, the offer could not have come at a better time. In the spring of 1995, Bildt's expectations were not especially great: His "only way" to economic success had led Sweden into its worst economic crisis within living memory; and fear of foreign submarines, in which Bildt had heedlessly invested for thirteen unhappy years, turned out in the end to be as poorly substantiated as Olof Palme had warned (see "The Great Submarine Chase").

In short, the Conservative Party leader has led the charge for the two greatest fiascos in Sweden's recent history-- the one in domestic and the other in foreign policy. In both cases, the economic and human costs have been enormous.

The comical aspects of all this have not gone unnoticed. In response to Carl Bildt's entreaties not to doubt the existence of the presumptively Russian u-boats-- because, "We do the nation a disservice if we act dumber than we are"-- Commodore Karl Andersson observed: "Alas, that disservice is already a fact. Internationally, we have made ourselves an object of ridicule."

The commodore might well have had in mind the televised reactions of an experienced Russian-submarine hunter in the Norwegian Navy who, chuckling in astonishment, listened to a tape recording of the mink-generated noises which Bildt and his allies have eagerly accepted as proof of large enemy warships prowling the waters of the Stockholm archipelago.

There have also been a number of indirect costs that can be attributed to u-boat hysteria, including that portion of Sweden's defense budget which would not otherwise have been approved. When all that is added to the constantly accumulating billions which the Bildt government's "only way" has cost the country, the question inevitably arises: Can Sweden afford Carl Bildt?

The u-boat hysteria was at its most intense during a critical phase of the Cold War, and it was zealously employed as the heaviest weapon in a general attack on Palme's peace and disarmament policy. His failure to share Bildt's "inner rage over the impudent violations" was loudly interpreted as a frightening indifference toward a serious threat.

The consequences for the principal target were easy for anyone to work out: With his repeated intimations of treason, Bildt backed viewpoints that do not appear to have been supported by anyone outside the intimate circle of Palmephobics, whose hatred reached such violent intensity that in certain circles it has even survived Palme's death.

It was, in short, a protracted demonstration of the Cold War's evil spirit and demagogic arts, as one might well expect of Carl Bildt and his party. For, even though they have until recently sworn their devotion to Sweden's long-standing policy of neutrality, they have in fact served as the U.S. empire's loyal supporters in Sweden for quite some time. In their eyes, anti-Americanism is among the worst sins that a Swedish politician can commit-- especially if it is soiled with "Third World romanticism", as global solidarity is called in Conservative-speak.

Clearly, Bildt was at that time already eager to assume responsibility for the nation's security, but was less inclined to wait until the voters should entrust him with that task. There are no historical precedents. But as a thought experiment, one might speculate how Bildt would have reacted if, for example, Gudrun Schyman (leader of Sweden's Left, formerly Communist, Party) had intruded herself into Bosnia's various conflicts in the midst of Bildt's efforts to resolve them.

Included on the agenda was a visit to a war museum with photos of the horrors endured by the Vietnamese during a quarter-century of French-American democracy. "These pictures are familiar," observed the prime minister from Sweden, "although it seems a bit odd to see only one side presented after so much time has passed."

It was, in its own way, an interesting proposal for appropriate balance in war exhibitions which Bildt has apparently not yet proposed to his U.S. friends. It would mean, for example, that the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington-- so often movingly portrayed by western mass media, with its 58,000 plus names engraved in a 180-meter wall-- ought properly to be complemented with another wall of an estimated 13 kilometres' length in order to accommodate all the no-longer-current Vietnamese names on a proportional basis.

These facts are well-known to everyone familiar with Vietnam's recent history, no doubt including Carl Bildt. That he nonetheless feels compelled to pretend that there exists some kind of equality between the U.S. and Vietnam in matters of suffering and responsibility is an index of how much violence must be done to known facts, and how much indifference to other peoples' suffering is required, in order to justify the Conservatives' foreign policy.

In point of fact, there are few CIA operations that have been more exhaustively documented than that against the democratically-elected government of Chile. The details have been thoroughly exposed by, among others, former CIA agents and numerous witnesses at a comprehensive hearing in the mid-1970s under the leadership of congressmen Pike and Church. It was then that Henry Kissinger explained that, "The issues in Chile are too important to be left to the voters." All this, several years before Carl Bildt's solemn defense of his allies in the United States.

Swedish Conservatives' support for the United States has even extended to environmental issues. Among those who criticised Bildt's complicity in the Bush government's obstructionist tactics at the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development was his own Minister of the Environment, Centre Party leader Olof Johansson.