You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks.

In this episode, I sat down with General Michael Clawson, who is the Chief of Defense Staff of Sweden,

a post that he took last fall. Hope you enjoy the conversation. I sure did. What made you

join the military? It's a long story. It started with my own interest for history. I started to read

books on history at a very early age, eight, nine years old. And history coincides a lot with

military business. So that sort of sparked off the interest. And we have in Sweden also a kind

of a voluntary youth organization for military activities, life firing with rifles and so on and so

forth. So that got me also to increase and expand my interest for a military career.

Did you have any heroes or role models maybe in your family that had a military background?

No. They were all civilians.

But as soon as I entered into those organizations and got to meet officers, career officers working with us, youngsters. Of course,

I got a few role models emerging from that. What did your family think, had they react when

you first told them that you were joining? I would say generally positive, not very knowledgeable.

Of course, my dad has done his mandatory military service, but other than that, no one had really

a clue about

what it means to become a career officer.

Before you became a general officer, what was your favorite job in uniform?

I have to say that the deployment to Afghanistan, the environment was very nice in that regard,

but in terms of being committed to a unit, being with the unit, the pre-deployment training,

the interaction with the men and women in my organization, it was a battalion-sized battle group

in northern Afghanistan.

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