This is what happened when Sweden said yes to NATO

As recently as 16 February this year, Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) declared in the Riksdag that freedom of alliance serves us well. She then added that the government does not intend to apply for NATO membership.

By that time, there had already been many warnings that Russia was preparing for an invasion of Ukraine. The fact that Russia did not withdraw to attack neighboring countries was also not new. Georgia was attacked in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.

In addition, in December, the Putin regime had once again challenged the European security order and, among other things, demanded that NATO close its doors to new members.

The new Russian attack on Ukraine came on 24 February. This led the bourgeois parties to loudly demand that Sweden join NATO. Something they have wanted for many years.

But from the Social Democrats and the Social Democrat government, there were still few signs at the time that a turnaround was on the way.

Would destabilize

Just over two weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson (S) stated at a press conference that a NATO application would further destabilize this part of Europe.

When the government and the parliamentary parties on March 17 began work on a new security policy analysis for Sweden, the NATO issue was toned down. Ann Linde stated that the analysis should not be seen as a sign that S was about to turn around NATO.

But then everything went fast.

In SVT on March 30, the Prime Minister opened for a NATO membership.

– I do not think you should exclude anything in this situation. We will make the decision that is best for Sweden’s security, Andersson said.

The rationale was that the security situation in Europe had completely changed.

Hultqvist guaranteed

The Social Democrats announced on April 11 that the party would start an internal “security policy dialogue”.

The Social Democrats’ non-aligned line had been reaffirmed as recently as at the party congress in November last year.

At that congress, Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist (S) stated that there will be no applications for NATO membership as long as Sweden has a Social Democratic government.

– I will definitely never, as long as I am Minister of Defense, participate in such a process. I can guarantee that to everyone, he said.

Hultqvist now states that he changed his mind about NATO on the morning of 11 April. At the time, he and some employees had a review of various security policy action alternatives.

Hultqvist then assumed that Finland would join NATO. There, the process had begun immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Political parties swung, as did public opinion.

The conclusion drawn at Hultqvist’s meeting was that Nordic defense co-operation, on which he had invested heavily, would be weakened for the Swedish part. The same thing would happen with other bilateral defense cooperation, was the assessment.

– We had reached the end of the road, says Hultqvist to TT.

No options

Information has come from Finland that the Swedish Minister of Defense before 11 April has proposed a defense alliance with Finland, backed by the United States.

According to Hultqvist, it was about “trying” different alternatives in a new situation.

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in an interview with the Financial Times on March 20 that Finland is looking at “something other than continuing as we have”.

According to Niinistö, the main alternative to joining NATO was an in-depth defense cooperation with the United States and Sweden.

But when the Finnish government presented a new security policy analysis on 13 April, a month before Sweden’s, the content was that no other co-operation could provide the same security guarantees as a NATO membership.

The same message was shown by Sweden’s security policy analysis when Hultqvist and Linde presented it together with the parliamentary parties on 13 May:

Sweden needs security guarantees from other countries and only a NATO membership can provide that.

The NATO conviction has emerged

The new security policy analysis also states that Sweden’s bilateral defense cooperation with the United States does not include any security guarantees.

Two days after the analysis was presented, on May 15, the Social Democrats’ party board said yes to NATO.

The Social Democrat leader, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, can not point to when she decided on NATO. That conviction has emerged in a dialogue within the party, between parties and with other countries, according to her.

– It is a process, she says.

The S decision means that a broad majority in Sweden’s Riksdag now agrees to join NATO. The Sweden Democrats’ leadership put down its NATO resistance on 11 April.