Sputnik
New Year's speeches by Finland's president and prime minister, which both emphasised the opportunity to join NATO, fuelled the perennial NATO debate in both Finland and Sweden, which have been non-aligned for decades, yet been inching closer to the alliance through joint drills, military acquisitions and overseas missions.
Russia's actions “threaten Europe”, Sweden's defence minister has claimed at the national Nation and Defence conference.
Citing Russia's massing of troops within its own borders, which he called “military escalation with Ukraine”, and Moscow's recent set of proposals to NATO and the US that include non-expansion and the non-placement of materiel and troops in a designated area, Hultqvist claimed that Russia “challenges international law when it questions other countries' right to self-determination”.
According to Hultqvist, Sweden will need to cooperate more with NATO, which, he ventured, alongside the EU was the Nordic country's most important security policy platform.
“Our strategy is to build security together with others. Today we are a respected partner that helps to deliver security. What we do is our own choice and is based on decisions in the Swedish Parliament. That's how it should remain. At that point, there is no room for compromise,” Hultqvist said.
“Our strategy is to build security together with others. Today we are a respected partner that helps to deliver security. What we do is our own choice and is based on decisions in the Swedish Parliament. That's how it should remain. At that point, there is no room for compromise,” Hultqvist said.
Last week, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, also a member of Hultqvist's Social Democrat party, argued that she wanted to “deepen” the partnership between Sweden and NATO.
By contrast, the opposition Christian Democrats demanded that Sweden abandons its age-old non-alignment policy and joins the US-led military alliance as a member.
"We can not firmly handle our security ourselves in a situation where our borders and interests are threatened by a military attack”, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch and defence policy spokesman Mikael Oscarsson wrote in an opinion piece called “NATO membership is required to deter Russia”, in which the alliance was dubbed “the main guarantor of peace, security and military capability in our part of the world”. “A Swedish membership would mean that we can fully plan, synchronise and practice together with our neighbours. Only then can we create the ability required to deter a military attack,” the duo wrote further.
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