Sweden to end 200 years of military neutrality with bid to join Nato
▶ Russian President Vladimir Putin says move, prompted by invasion of Ukraine, will ‘certainly provoke response’
Sweden said yesterday that it will apply to join Nato, setting up a joint application with neighbouring Finland that would extend the alliance’s border with Russia.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said Sweden and Finland would formally request membership of Nato within days.
The decision ends 200 years of Swedish military neutrality and comes despite threats of retaliation from Moscow.
The Swedish government said joining the military alliance was the best way to protect the Nordic country in what was a “fundamentally changed security environment”.
“We are leaving one era and beginning another,” Ms Andersson said. But she said Sweden did not want nuclear weapons or permanent Nato bases on its territory if its application is approved.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the possible expansion of Nato’s military infrastructure into Sweden and Finland would “certainly provoke our response”.
But Swedish opposition leader Ulf Kristersson said Mr Putin made a “spectacular miscalculation” by causing an expansion of Nato – something he sought to avoid.
Public opinion in Finland and Sweden has shifted in favour of Nato membership, which comes with a guarantee of mutual protection if any member state is attacked.
Most Swedish parties supported the Nato membership bid in a parliamentary debate yesterday. Ms Andersson’s Social Democrats had a day earlier dropped their opposition. Denmark, Norway and Iceland said they would seek a swift accession process for Finland and Sweden.
Ms Andersson said Sweden would be vulnerable to “attempts to scare and divide us” in the interim period before its application is ratified.
Sweden announced yesterday that it will apply for membership of Nato, joining its neighbour Finland in giving up decades of neutrality in a move prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The decision, announced by Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, was made despite threats of retaliation from the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that the expansion of Nato, which Moscow has sought to prevent, will “certainly provoke a response”.
Sweden and Finland plan to formally submit their applications together in the coming days, Ms Andersson said.
A brief official statement said Nato membership was the best way to protect Sweden “in light of the fundamentally changed security environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”.
“Sweden needs formal security guarantees that come with Nato membership,” said Ms Andersson, who had opposed joining the alliance as recently as her inaugural address in November last year.
“We are leaving one era and beginning another.”
However, she said Sweden did not want permanent Nato military bases or nuclear weapons on its territory if its membership was approved.
The announcement came a day after Ms Andersson’s ruling Social Democrats dropped their long-standing opposition to joining Nato.
A debate among the eight parties in Sweden’s parliament yesterday showed broad support for moving under Nato’s umbrella, with only two small left-wing parties expressing opposition.
Finland’s leaders backed a Nato membership application on Friday.
Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and powers including the US, Britain and Germany, have said they will welcome the applicants.
However, Turkey, a Nato member since 1952, presented a possible obstacle by saying it had reservations about the two applications.
Sweden has taken a relatively friendly stance towards Kurdish separatist groups. Turkey insists that some Kurdish groups, notably the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, are terrorist organisations.
The Nato application process should not take more than a year, Ms Andersson said.
Sweden and Finland already co-operate militarily and diplomatically with Nato. Their forces took part in recent drills in Europe’s far north.
Germany described the counties as “members already, just without membership cards”.
Full membership means Sweden and Finland would be covered by Nato’s Article 5 security guarantee, meaning western powers would promise to use their military to protect them from invasion.
The two Nordic countries chose to stay out of any such confrontation by remaining militarily neutral, but events in Ukraine have prompted a change of heart.
Russia regards Nato expansion as a threat and tried to stop enlargement in the standoff over Ukraine, which culminated in the invasion.
“Russia’s decision to start this war against Ukraine will not only go down in history for the massive suffering, but will also be remembered as a spectacular miscalculation,” said Swedish opposition leader Ulf Kristersson, head of the Moderate Party.
Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, whose country is not part of Nato, said at a meeting of European diplomats yesterday that Mr Putin’s strategy had “blown back into his face”.
Finland’s accession would double the length of Nato’s frontier with Russia.
Sweden has no land border with Russia, but officials said the country’s security environment had deteriorated since the invasion of Ukraine.
A report by Sweden’s government this month said the war in Ukraine showed that friendly countries outside Nato could not expect military intervention on their behalf. It said it was “not politically, financially or militarily realistic” to secure alternative guarantees.
Sweden last fought a war in 1814 and pursued a policy of neutrality during the two World Wars.
It joined the EU in 1995, along with fellow neutral states Finland and Austria.
Sweden needs security guarantees that come with Nato membership. We are leaving one era and beginning another
MAGDELENA ANDERSSON Prime Minister of Sweden
The increased security concerns of Russia’s neighbours in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine came to a head late last week when Finland and Sweden, following weeks of talks with US and European leaders, signalled that they would soon move to join Nato.
Then on Sunday, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said their applications, which are expected this week, would be fast-tracked by the alliance. That is assuming Turkey doesn’t stand in the way. “Scandinavian countries are like guesthouses for terrorist organisations,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said last Friday. “At this point, it’s impossible for us to be in favour.”
Nato expansion must be unanimous, so with its dissenting vote Ankara, which maintains the bloc’s second-largest army, could essentially cast a veto. This would be a sizeable gift for Moscow, which has vowed to retaliate should Sweden and Finland become members. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly pointed to Nato’s eastward expansion in the late 1990s and early 2000s – adding 10 countries, mainly from the Baltic and Balkans – as the impetus for his Ukraine invasion.
Even as Russia’s military aggression looks set to spur further Nato enlargement, Moscow’s stance remains that the bloc’s encroachment on its borders poses an existential threat and that taking control of Ukraine, or part of it, is needed to ensure its security.
On the weekend, soon after Ukraine’s military forced a Russian retreat from the city of Kharkiv, Russia halted electricity exports to Finland, with which it shares an almost 1,400-kilometre border, and warned of a “military-technical” response still to come.
Over the past few months, Turkey’s longtime leader has endeavoured to support Kyiv militarily and maintain friendly ties with his Russian counterpart. It seems unlikely Turkey would now take this a step further and stand in direct opposition to all of its fellow Nato members – though it would not be the first time. Ever the opportunist, Mr Erdogan is possibly looking to leverage his position to gain concessions.
In his remarks he referred to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast for decades and is labelled a terror group by the US and EU, as well as Turkey. Sweden is supportive of its Kurdish immigrants and its government backs the US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Turkey views as an offshoot of the PKK. In November, Kurdish communities in three Swedish cities held events marking 43 years since the birth of the PKK. The gatherings were organised by the KCK, a Kurdish solidarity group that adheres to the ideology of PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan.
Sweden’s relatively friendly stance toward Kurdish separatists is in part an attempt to make up for a past blunder. After then prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated in 1986, authorities quickly blamed the PKK and proceeded to harass, detain and persecute Kurdish groups within Sweden and beyond. Turkey encouraged these efforts with semi-regular leaks in support of the PKK assassination theory, as in 1998 when a captured PKK leader reportedly blamed Ocalan for the killing.
But over the years Swedish prosecutors found the PKK theory less and less likely, and in mid-2020 they essentially cleared the PKK of involvement in Palme’s killing and pointed to a lone, middle-aged graphic designer as the likely assassin.
Soon after, a high-level Swedish delegation visited the SDF leadership in north-eastern Syria, much to Turkey’s chagrin. Then last year, Swedish Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist held a video call with SDF leader Mazloum Abdi and expressed his country’s long-term support of the group, which played a key role in the defeat of ISIS. In addition, five Swedish parliamentarians are of Kurdish origin.
Sweden is also known to harbour prominent followers of Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup. The Stockholm Centre for Freedom and the Nordic Research Monitoring Network – two well-known, Sweden-based outlets that mostly report on Ankara’s alleged rights abuses – are run by presumed Gulenists.
The follow-up comments of top government adviser Ibrahim Kalin on the weekend suggest Mr Erdogan is indeed doing a bit of arm-twisting in the hopes that Sweden ends its open support of PKK allies. On Monday, Sweden said it would send a delegation to Turkey for Nato-related talks. Even so, Mr Erdogan might also be looking for a more enticing offer. One possibility is that Ankara is hoping for military concessions from the US, such as re-entry into Washington’s F-35 fighter jet production process or F-16 sales, or a major financial commitment from Europe.
As I detailed last week, Turkey is awash in anti-refugee anger this spring, as millions of Turks struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills.
The €6 billion ($6.25bn) the EU gave Ankara to take care of its 4 million Syrian refugees as part of their 2016 deal has now been spent, and Europe has expressed its willingness to renew. Ankara has begun building housing for 1 million Syrians in Turkish-controlled areas just across the border, but last week Mr Erdogan vowed that he would never forcibly send refugees back to their homeland. This suggests that, despite the ground the opposition has gained in recent months by vowing to send refugees home, the ruling AKP may stick with its open-door, “champion of suffering Muslims everywhere” policy as election campaigns kick into gear.
Such a stance is likely to go down better with Turkish voters if the EU were to hand Ankara, say, $8bn in refugee funding, in exchange for Turkey accepting the Nato entry of “terrorist-supporting” Sweden and Finland. Unlikely, perhaps, but it’s within the realm of possibility.
The real question, however, might be whether Moscow would let that happen. Driven by self-interest and self-preservation, Turkey has smartly walked a geopolitical tightrope for years. But the moment it is finally forced to pick a side may be nigh.
Erdogan’s assertion that Sweden is ‘supporting terrorists’ could be a way for Ankara to extract certain concessions