Among the several earthquakes resulting from the War in Ukraine, one of the most politically sensitive hits Scandinavia, where Sweden and Finland are discussing abandoning historic military neutrality and joining NATO, the alliance led by the United States.
Although they look like a unit and, in the end, the decision of one will influence the other, the game is quite different for Stockholm and Helsinki in the debate. It seems that both will end up in NATO, much to Vladimir Putin’s chagrin, but the Swedish decision-making process is more intricate.
The Social Democratic Party, dominant in Swedish politics for decades, is in consultations on the issue, as well as Parliament – which will release its study on the issue next Friday (13). “It will be more like pros and cons, not a decision,” says security analyst Mikael Holmström of the daily Dagens Nyheter.
The demon of NATO entry, says Holmström, is tamed in the Swedish elite. “Ordinary citizens hardly think about it, because public debate has been discouraged by Social Democrats, historically opposed to membership,” he says.
THE Sheet he spoke with another Mikael, this one surnamed Andersson, a systems analyst from Stockholm who might fit the definition of an ordinary citizen given by his namesake. “War is terrible and I think we should join NATO to protect ourselves. But I think that on the same day we will be targeted by Russia,” he says.
Moscow is attentive to this line of reasoning, and the Kremlin has already made public that a Nordic entry into NATO will lead to the deployment of nuclear weapons close to its territory. That is, in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Lithuania and Poland, or perhaps in Belarus of the dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko.
It is rhetorical, given that such weapons may already be in Kaliningrad, as attested by the Federation of American Scientists, a reference entity on the subject. But it has its effect.
In any case, Holmström believes that everything points to the end of 200 years of formal neutrality in Sweden, which came after the former expansionist kingdom lost what is now Finland to the Russians, whose land had been invaded and taken by Stockholm in the 19th century. 18.
It’s a natural process. In recent years, the Swedish government has increased its military spending targets precisely in order to contain the Russian threat. Since 1994, its cooperation with NATO has grown exponentially, although its armed force has dropped from 850,000 to 30,000 men (including volunteers and paramilitaries) and its military expenditure, from 2.5% of GDP to 1%. “Still, Russia has known since the 1950s which side we are on,” says the analyst.
The situation is somewhat different in neighboring Finland. In the winter of 1939 to 1940, the country was the scene of a Soviet invasion not too distant in the speech in Moscow today — Helsinki ended up fighting until 1944 on the side of Nazi Germany against the communists, but in the end it came to terms with the Allies, warred against Berlin and paid 10% of its territory as a fine.
The policy resulting from this trauma was the strict non-alignment during the Cold War, replaced by a progressive integration with Europe after 1991, but always avoiding the expletive in Russian ears: joining NATO, one of the reasons given by Putin for the attack on the neighbor. .
Now, with the invasion of Ukraine, the climate in the country has changed and the policy review will be announced on the 12th by President Sauli Niinistö. With high popular support, above 60%, membership is taken for granted. Not least because there are differences in the defensive posture in relation to the more powerful Sweden.
Stockholm has fewer soldiers than Helsinki, but a highly sophisticated arms industry that sells fighter jets to Brazil and produces submarines for the NLAW, the anti-tank weapon that terrorizes Putin’s forces in Ukraine. A remnant of its haughty stance in the Cold War, the country’s militarization surprises visitors who expect a peaceful and pacifist Nordic land.
Finland, on the other hand, is more exposed, not least because it shares 1,300 km of land borders, albeit cold and inhospitable, with Russia. “The Finns have always stood on two legs, the US and the good relationship with Russia. Now they have seen that Putin cannot be trusted,” says Holmström. “The same day the invasion of Ukraine started, Helsinki went after NATO.”
Its adherence may have the power to make the Swedish decision a fait accompli. “There is a lot of military cooperation between the two countries, and if Sweden stays out of NATO, it will be isolated in northern Europe. It will be an easy target for Russian provocations”, says the analyst.
In fact, since the war began, there have been at least two episodes in which Swedish airspace has been violated by Russian planes — in one of them, the Nordic country’s press says that there were nuclear weapons aboard Su-24 bombers escorted by Su-24 fighter jets. 27.
Despite all the buzz, there is one fact that often goes unnoticed in the analysis of the end of Nordic neutrality: in fact, it was already something that was discarded when Sweden and Finland joined the EU (European Union) together in 1995.
“If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States must have an obligation to help and assist by all the means at their disposal”, says Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union.
The text even says that, if they are NATO members, states must follow “the foundations of their collective defense and the forum for their implementation”, but objectively what is said to be the Swedes and Finns already enjoy certain prerogatives of protection being EU members.
Of course, things change with Article 5 of the NATO charter, which provides for mutual defense of members under attack merely because they put the United States, the greatest military power in history, into the equation.
Finally, there are considerations about the impact of the likely accession of the countries, which even affect Brazil. Will the Swedish arms industry benefit or be swallowed up by NATO? “I see advantages, as the delivery of NLAWs by the thousands to Ukraine shows,” says Holström.
But what about the Gripen fighters, adopted in their new generation by Brazil and Sweden, and whose maintenance in the coming decades would be favored by more external customers, what would they look like? After all, the American F-35 has already overthrown the Swede in two recent important competitions, in Finland itself (64 planes) and in Canada (88).
“I believe that whoever buys the F-35 wants a close relationship with the US, and that will not change,” said the analyst, not without reason. Even Germany, proponent of European military independence, announced the purchase of the model after the crisis in Ukraine.
The outcome of the Nordic soap opera will be indicated, but perhaps not resolved, this week. The Swedish debate is expected to continue until the 24th, when the Social Democrats will release their position, with an eye on the NATO summit at the end of June.
Both countries want the alliance to provide security guarantees during the accession process, which takes anywhere from eight months to two years, fearing that the Russians will mess up during the review. NATO has already said that such measures can be combined, which will not remove the interregnum between one position and another from the high tension.
