The Swedish Armed Forces have undergone a significant change where we have gone from recruitment through duty and replaced it with a voluntary based defence. Across Europe, countries that have undergone the same type of change demonstrate change in the quality of those recruited. The focus in this paper is how recruitment quality looks in Sweden after three years of volunteer based defence and if officers at P7 can see a change in quality on those recruited. This work aims to investigate whether soldier quality has changed from conscription recruited to voluntary recruited soldiers. The question that the work tries to answer is whether one can see a change in quality in soldiers and in that case how.The result can be summarized as one begins to see a change in recruiting quality but it is not something that is visible at the regiments.

This study takes its starting point in ongoing changes and differences in the global power dynamics. The liberal rules-based world order that has been acknowledged for governing the world with the US as the hegemon of power has been strongly challenged during the last decades. Russia?s invasion of Ukraine can be seen as an example of ongoing changes in the world order, with Russia as a challenger to the US as the hegemon of power. The changes and instability that this has led to for Sweden's national security situation can be seen as a concrete example of how ongoing changes in the world order affect Sweden?s foreign policy.