His visions knew no national boundaries". Those were the words of Javier Perez de Cuellar, the UN Secretary General at that time, at the funeral of Olof Palme in Stockholm on the 15th of March 1986. On this cold, silent day, hundreds of thousands of people followed the Swedish Prime Minister's last journey through the streets of Stockholm. Statesmen, politicians and personalities from all over the world had assembled. His murder aroused sorrow and wrath far beyond the boundaries of Sweden.
Both outside and inside Sweden, it was Palme's international interest and commitment that made him known and esteemed. Through him the Swedish Social Democatic Party formed very strong ties with other democratic socialist parties around the world, and Palme hade many personal friends among their leaders, such as Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Julius Nyerere, and Felipe Gonzales. He supported the resistance against dictatorships in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Chile. His abhorrence of the Apartheid system in South Africa was expressed in his speeches over and over again.
He was often accused of lacking an interest in Europe, especially by the well-to-do leaders of the economy, and industrial executives who wanted Sweden to join the EEC (later on EU). In the beginning of the 1960's the EEC had separated it self from NATO, and the issue of applying for membership was discussed. But when it became apparent that it would require a common foreign policy as well as a common economy, he feared that Sweden would loose its freedom to act in solidarity with ill-fated groups at home as well as abroad. A membership, he thought, would weaken Sweden's sovereignty, and in 1971 Sweden said no to membership in the EEC.
This was in line with Palme's continued fight for the independence of small countries, and it also manifested itself in his outspoken criticism of the American involvement in Vietnam.
He was one of the first political leaders to oppose the war. His violent condemnation of the bombing of Hanoi (in December 1972), pronounced in a famous statement on national television, eventually resulted in the recalling of the US ambassador from Sweden for several years. For many years diplomatic relations between Sweden and the United States were very cold, which put Olof Palme under great pressure. He had many enemies both in Sweden and abroad, but he stood fast. Too much was at stake: international law, small countries' right to sovereignty, the importance of not giving in to a super power. He was also quite conscious of the strong opposition against the war among the Swedish people.
In spite of all this, however, the United States supported his appointment by the UN as mediator in the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. His deep respect for the history, culture and religion of the area, made him trusted by both parties.
At the beginning of the sixties the issue of Sweden acquiring atomic weapons was a very controversial one in the country, since the memory of Hiroshima was still very much alive. Olof Palme managed to postpone the decision until public opinion against had grown extremely strong. Later he became one of the most fervent opponents to nuclear weapons, and one of the leading figures in the fight for nuclear disarmament and the banning of nuclear weapons. Among other things he headed the so called Palme Commission, and was prominent in the Six Nations Initiative.
It was not an easy task to advocate dialogue and detente at the beginning of the eighties, when the world lived on the razor's edge of a nuclear terror balance, with 50,000 atomic weapons spread over the globe, and nuclear tests being carried out almost on a weekly basis. At that time there was only one doctrine: that of mutual deterrence by terror.
After two years of intense work, however, the Commission managed to formulate a program based on the concept of common security. The basic idea can be summarized in the following sentence: "International security must rest on a commitment to joint survival rather than on a threat of mutual destruction" (from the Palme Commission Report "Common Security" 1982).
At the first summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbatjof in November 1985 in Geneva, the two leaders pronounced themselves in favour of common security and nuclear disarmament in terms that could have been taken almost word for word from the Palme Commission report.
The concept of the sovereignty of small states and of international solidarity runs like a red thread through Olof Palme's entire political career. A large part of the work of the Palme Commission involved focusing on the development of the third world. This was a follow-up of the so-called Brandt Commission (headed by the former German Chancellor Willy Brandt) which had recommended that some of the enormous sums spent on the arms race should be used for the development of the poorest countries in the Third World.
International tension and the threat of a nuclear war loomed over the world well into the eighties. The Six Nations Initiative was an attempt to stop the accelerating arms race. The same day that he died, Olof Palme signed The Six Nations Initiative, which was a message to the super powers asking them to accept a mutual moratorium on nuclear tests.
Olof Palme was a man of unusual luminosity. Many Swedes, however, never understood his importance on the international arena in general, and in the Third World in particular, where he was looked upon as a brave politician who dared to speak out for them.
2005.09.10
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