When Hungary’s National Assembly voted to ratify Sweden’s bid to join NATO on February 26, 2024, it ushered in a new era for European security and dealt another setback to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bid to forestall expansion of the Alliance.
Sweden takes its place at the table as the Alliance’s 32nd member, following Finland, which became a member in April 2023. The Nordic neighbors applied for membership together in May 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, Sweden’s accession was delayed until some members’ concerns could be resolved. NATO accession requires unanimous consent.
NATO gets stronger
Sweden is not coming to the table empty-handed, and is set to contribute to the Alliance in many ways. Perhaps the most important is geopolitically. As Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson pointed out in a January 2023 speech at the Folk och Försvar national defense and security conference, Sweden has 1,600-kilometer-long airspace, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Arctic Circle, and the longest coastline on the Baltic and North seas. Together with Finland and long-standing members Denmark and Norway, Sweden’s accession will consolidate the Nordic bloc under the NATO umbrella and strengthen the Alliance’s northern flank, and it essentially turns the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. This bolsters the defense of NATO’s Baltic members — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — providing alternative access for reinforcements and supplies in a potential conflict with Russia. As NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg told CNN on February 26, “It makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer and all of us more secure.”
In addition, Sweden has a relatively small, but highly competent, well-equipped and modern military supported by a technologically advanced and proficient military industrial base. As Andrew Dorfman explains in a February 27, 2024, commentary for the Chatham House think tank: “[U]nlike many countries who have joined NATO since the end of the Cold War, Sweden has maintained highly capable military forces with a good deal of cutting-edge technology, including fourth generation Gripen fighter aircraft equipped with Meteor air-to-air missiles, Leopard 2 main battle tanks and Gotland-class attack submarines powered by an air-independent propulsion system.” Sweden is also investing more in defense. Its 2024 defense budget is nearly twice what it was in 2020 and Kristerrson has promised that spending will reach NATO’s 2%-of-GDP target by 2026.
Finally, despite its long-time status as a neutral country, Sweden has been forced by geography to develop extensive experience in countering aggression from its large eastern neighbor — first as the Soviet Union, now as Russia. Ian Brzezinski, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense now with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, wrote on February 26 for the think tank’s New Atlanticist blog: “Sweden brings to NATO decision making an acute, historically rooted understanding and concern about Russian aggression and an unquestioned commitment to transatlanticism.” This experience will give the Swedes a valuable leadership role in strategic planning.
New Ally, longtime partner
Sweden has a long history of productive partnership with the Alliance. It has been a member of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) since 1994, and in 1997 joined the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, which NATO describes as a “multilateral forum for dialogue and consultation on political and security-related issues” that provides the political framework and facilitates cooperation between NATO and PfP countries.
Since then, the Swedish Armed Forces have worked closely with NATO and participated in many NATO-led operations, from peacekeeping in the Balkans to war in Afghanistan. In addition to Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, Sweden has supported NATO military operations in Iraq and Libya. Along the way, the Swedish military has trained regularly with NATO forces, even hosting and leading training exercises and courses, developing extensive interoperability and adapting to NATO standards. For example, in February the Swedish Air Force hosted a joint training exercise with U.S. Air Force bombers at Luleå-Kallax Air Base. In March, Sweden also joined Finland and 12 other NATO countries in the Nordic Response exercise held in Norway, part of the Europe-wide Steadfast Defender 24 exercises, the largest NATO military exercise since the Cold War.
Some, including Chatham House’s Dorfman, have questioned the message that Sweden’s and Finland’s accelerated membership invitations — and in Finland’s case, accession — sends to other potential or aspiring NATO members, such as Georgia and Ukraine. As Brzezinski points out, now-NATO stalwart Poland’s membership took more than seven years. However, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Poland and all of the other post-Cold War NATO applicants — most former Warsaw Pact members or Soviet republics — were undergoing transformations from authoritarian communist rule to liberal, market democracies in addition to the military reforms required for NATO membership. Some even fought wars on their paths to independence. It was unnecessary for Sweden and Finland, both long-time members of the European Union and other Western institutions, to undergo such dramatic and time-consuming reforms. And both countries, through their long partnerships with NATO, had already largely adopted NATO military standards.
Putin misses — again
Among the reasons Russian president Vladimir Putin presented to justify his brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine — a list filled with post-Soviet revanchism, ahistorical fantasies, distortions and mindboggling lies (Ukraine being ruled by Nazis) — was his desire to push back against NATO expansion. On November 28, 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Peter Dickenson wrote on the think tank’s website: “According to the Kremlin dictator, years of NATO expansion posed an escalating security threat to Russia that eventually left the country with no choice but to defend itself.” While that argument apparently has been persuasive among Putin apologists in the West and elsewhere, the result has been the opposite of what Putin intended. Instead of pushing NATO away from Russia’s borders, Putin’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine prompted Sweden and Finland to abandon their long-held policies of neutrality specifically to improve their defensive prospects against potential future Russian aggression.
Sweden and Finland’s reaction to Russian aggression should not have come as a surprise to Putin and underscores the depth of his strategic miscalculation. Indeed, as Dickenson explains, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe “clamored to join NATO following the fall of the USSR precisely because they sought protection against what was widely seen as the inevitable revival of Russian aggression.” Putin’s attack on Ukraine has confirmed those countries’ fears and more than justified their membership in the NATO alliance.
Moving forward
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine produced the opposite of his stated justification of preventing NATO expansion closer to his borders. Instead, it brought Sweden and Finland into the Alliance, with Helsinki’s membership adding 1,340 kilometers to NATO’s boundaries with Russia — more than doubling the previous length. By that measure alone, the invasion has been a strategic failure. As Joslyn Brodfuehrer, also with the Atlantic Council, wrote: “[Putin’s] actions have resulted in a NATO that is larger, more united, and better equipped than before. NATO remains the team of choice.”
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