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Representing the Need for Intelligence Reform: The Intelligence Inquiry and Sweden’s New Foreign Intelligence Agency Cover

Representing the Need for Intelligence Reform: The Intelligence Inquiry and Sweden’s New Foreign Intelligence Agency

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

Volume 9 (2026): Issue 1

By: Johan Matz

Open Access

|Sep 2026

Abstract

On 13 June 2025, a governmental inquiry into the Swedish intelligence and security services, headed by the former Prime and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, presented its report A Reformed Intelligence Service (SOU 2025:78). Among its several proposals, the Inquiry advised that a new foreign intelligence agency should be established, inter alia, with reference to a failed warning process with the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Agency (Must) in the run-up to the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War in February 2022. This article critically reviews the Inquiry’s take on MUST’s role in this purported intelligence failure and concludes that its next-to exclusive focus on the bureaucratic level leaves several crucial questions about the political level unaddressed.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.31374/sjms.558 | Journal eISSN: 2596-3856

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Language: English

Page range: 574 - 588

Submitted on: Jan 23, 2026

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Accepted on: Aug 20, 2026

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Published on: Sep 16, 2026

Published by: Scandinavian Military Studies

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

government inquiry,

intelligence failure

© 2026 Johan Matz, published by Scandinavian Military Studies
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 9 (2026): Issue 1

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