External threats The aim of this study is to create a theoretical understanding of the Swedish national security perspectives which contributed to the variety of initiatives that have taken place in the Swedish military defense bills of 2004/05:5 and 2014/15:109. Our purpose is to do a qualitative text analysis whereby we create ideal types based upon the international relation theories liberalism and realism, which we then apply onto our selected propositions to analyze whether our ideal types can be traced- to discover if there have been any ideological changes. In our final discussion of the analysis we can see that the Swedish security objectives have changed due to changed threats in the world, which have resulted in both an increased need for international cooperation and also an expanded Swedish military defense in 2014. We can also see a theoretical shift in these propositions since some countries which previously had a more liberalistic character are now adopting a more realistic act.