The NATO that welcomes Sweden is bigger and more determined

BERLIN – Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago was a huge shock to Europeans. Accustomed to the thirty years of post-Cold War peace, they had imagined that European security would be built alongside a more democratic Russia, not reconstructed against a revisionist imperial war machine.

There was no greater shock than in Finland, with its long border and historic tensions with Russia, and in Sweden, which had dismantled 90 percent of its army and 70 percent of its air force and navy in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union . .

Following Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to attempt to destroy a sovereign neighbor, both Finland and Sweden quickly decided to apply to join the NATO alliance, the only clear guarantee of collective defense against a new aggressive and reckless Russia.

With Finland After I became a member last year, and the Hungarian parliament that finally approved the Swedish application on Monday, Mr Putin now faces an expanded and motivated NATO, a country that no longer dreams of permanent peace.

While NATO countries look with some trepidation at the possibility that the unpredictable Donald J. Trump, not a fan of the alliance, will become US president again, European members are taking measures to ensure their own defense anyway.

Critics say their actions are too slow and too small, but NATO is spending more money on defense, making more tanks, artillery shells, drones and fighter jets, putting more troops on Russia’s borders and approving more serious military plans for any possible war – while there billions of dollars are being funneled into Ukraine’s efforts to weaken Russia’s ambitions.

The reason is pure deterrence. Some member states are already suggesting that if Mr Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will test NATO’s collective will over the next three to five years.

If Mr. Trump is elected and casts serious doubt on the United States’ commitment to defending NATO allies, “it could tip the balance for Putin to test NATO’s resolve,” Robert says Dalsjo, study director at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

Even now, Mr. Dalsjo said, Mr. Trump or not, Europe must prepare for at least a generation of increased European containment and deterrence from a Russia that is becoming militarized, and where Mr. Putin clearly has “significant public support for his aggressive revanchism. ”

But with Hungary finally voting in favor of Sweden’s accession to NATO, the pieces are finally falling into place for a sharply strengthened NATO deterrent in the Baltic and North Seas, with greater protection for the frontline states of Finland, Norway and the Baltic states, which border Russia.

Once Hungary submits a letter confirming parliamentary approval to the US State Department, Sweden will become NATO’s 32nd member and all Baltic Sea countries, except Russia, will be part of the alliance.

“Sweden provides predictability and removes any uncertainty about how we would act in a crisis or war,” Mr Dalsjo said. Given Sweden’s geographic location, including Gotland, the island that helps control access to the Baltic Sea, membership “will make defense and deterrence much easier to achieve,” he said.

It was Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine two years ago that prompted Finland to decide to join NATO, and Helsinki attracted a more reluctant Sweden to also apply to join.

Finland, with its long border with Russia, saw the most immediate danger; the Swedes did so too, but were also convinced, especially on the political left, by a sense of moral outrage that Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, would try to destroy a peaceful, sovereign neighbor.

“Overall the feeling is that we will be safer,” said Anna Wieslander, a Swede who is director of northern Europe for the Atlantic Council.

History also mattered, Mr. Dalsjo said. “If Finland were to join, we had to – we could not be one more time a wall between Finland and its helpers in the West,” as neutral Sweden had been during Finland’s brave but losing “Winter War” against the Soviet Union in 1939, when Finland had to cede about 11 percent of its territory to Moscow.

Now that Sweden and Finland are together in NATO, it will be much easier to bottle up Russia’s surface fleet in the Baltic and keep an eye on the Far North. Russia still has two-thirds of its nuclear weapons there for the second strike, on the Kola Peninsula.

So the new members will help improve monitoring of a crucial part of the Russian military, said Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at the Defense Research Agency.

The Russian fleet in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, is just 200 miles away, as are the nuclear-capable Iskander missiles. NATO planners have long worried about how to support the Baltic countries if Russia seizes the 65-kilometer “Suwalki Gap” between Kaliningrad and Belarus, but Sweden’s position on either side of both the North as the Baltic Sea would make it much easier to send NATO reinforcements.

Russia will still keep its land-based missiles, of course, but its nuclear-armed submarines may find it more difficult to maneuver into the open sea without detection.

Sweden, with its own advanced high-tech defense industry, makes its own excellent fighter planes, naval corvettes and submarines, designed to operate in the difficult environment of the Baltic Sea. The country has already started developing and building a new class of modern submarines and larger corvettes for coastal and air defense.

With NATO membership it will now be easier to coordinate with Finland and Denmark, which also have important islands in the Baltic Sea, and with Norway.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stockholm decided that war was a thing of the past. It removed almost all its troops from Gotland and reduced the national army by about 90 percent and the navy and air force by about 70 percent.

The armed forces are slowly being restored and spending on the military, which was almost 3 percent of gross domestic product during the Cold War but had fallen to about 1 percent, will reach 2 percent this year, the current NATO standard. “These investments will take time, and we must act faster,” Mr Granholm said.

Sweden could also join NATO’s multinational reinforced forward brigade in Latvia, which aims to deploy allied forces in all alliance countries bordering Russia.

Sweden’s main tasks, Ms. Wieslander said, will be to help monitor the Baltic Sea and the airspace above Kaliningrad; ensuring the security of Gothenburg, which is crucial for supplies and reinforcements; and to serve as a staging area for U.S. and NATO forces, with agreements for pre-positioning equipment, ammunition, supplies and field hospitals.

For both Finland and Sweden, membership marks the end of a long 30-year process of what Mr Dalsjo called ‘our long farewell to neutrality’. First came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decision to join the European Union, which meant abandoning neutrality for what both countries called “military non-alignment.”

Sweden, which received silent defense guarantees from the United States, gradually became more explicitly Atlanticist and increasingly integrated with NATO, he said. “And now we are taking the final step.”

Sweden will have to adapt its strategic culture to working within an alliance, Ms. Wieslander said. “It will make a big difference for us, and allies will expect Sweden to show some leadership.”

Like Finland, Sweden will need to integrate its armed forces into NATO and develop new collective defense capabilities rather than focusing solely on homeland defense.

“It’s a steep learning curve,” Mr. Granholm said. “We do not yet have a complete picture of NATO’s regional plans,” but we will now do so as a full member. “Then we have to sink our teeth into what NATO wants us to do, and what we want to do. After all, we do this to protect ourselves.”