Momentum is based on Sweden joining NATO
Momentum is building in Sweden so that the country can apply for NATO membership after its best-selling newspaper supported the measure and an opinion poll showed that a record number of Swedes supported the idea.
The debate on membership in the Western military alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been slower in Sweden than in neighboring Finland, where an application is expected in the coming weeks.
The main obstacle to Swedish membership has been the ruling Social Democratic Party, which has long been an ideological opponent of NATO and married to Sweden’s 200 years of neutrality.
Analysts said that it was therefore very important that Aftonbladet, a tabloid that is partly owned by the trade union movement and seen as the Social Democrats’ house newspaper, published an editorial on Wednesday that recommends Sweden to join NATO.
Anders Lindberg, political editor of the newspaper, said that it had “slightly reluctantly” changed its mind.
“I do not really see how Sweden and Finland will be able to guarantee our security outside NATO when Russia in 2022 is ready to start a full-scale war against a neighboring country completely unprovoked,” he wrote in the editorial staff.
An opinion poll, which was also published in Aftonbladet on Wednesday, showed that 57 percent of Swedes were in favor of NATO membership and only 21 percent opposed. Strikingly, for the first time, it found a number of Social Democrats who supported membership, with 41 percent in favor and 25 percent against.
The Finnish parliament will start debating its security arrangements on Wednesday, and all indications are that the Nordic country, which has a 1,340 km border with Russia, will submit an application to join NATO in the coming weeks ahead of the military alliance summit in June.
If Finland moves on, there will be a narrow majority in the Swedish parliament for membership because the nationalist Sweden Democrats have said that they will support the move if Helsinki acts first. But without the support of the Social Democrats, who came first in every Swedish election for more than a century, a NATO bid has long been seen as unthinkable.
The party has launched an internal debate on joining the military alliance and is expected to make a decision by the end of May. Local media have quoted sources as saying that Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson is anxious for the party to back its membership, something she refused to deny last week.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a non-NATO member and neighbor, has rapidly changed the security situation in northern Europe, where Finland in particular had aimed for cordial relations with Moscow.
NATO countries are likely to support Finnish and Swedish membership as a way of tightening security in the Baltic Sea and contributing to the defense of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But officials in Helsinki and Stockholm are anxiously watching French elections this weekend where right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has promised to take France out of NATO’s military structures.
Sweden has praised its ability to stay out of armed conflict for more than two centuries. But in Aftonbladet on Wednesday, Lindberg wrote: “I do not see how it is enough to be militarily non-aligned if Russia acts as it does today against an equally non-aligned Ukraine. I do not think Russia intends to stop there, so the Russian rhetoric must be taken seriously. “