Milley visits Sweden to show his support for NATO’s offer
The two countries have long cooperated with the US military but opposed applying to join NATO until last month out of concern that it would irritate Moscow. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, it changed with significant changes in public opinion in favor of joining the military alliance in both countries.
The new dynamic was evident when the 843-foot-long amphibious warship USS Kearsarge sat in a narrow waterway that ran through Stockholm while it was crammed with attack helicopters and other aircraft and more than 2,000 US Marines and sailors.
The United States has never moved such a large warship to this capital with almost 1 million people, Milley said. Doing so created a spectacle for tourists who took pictures and challenges for American troops and Swedish personnel who squeezed the ship into the city.
“It was a great development for us to pull in,” said Tera Geoffrey, a lieutenant junior assigned to the ship. “Our depth under the keel was sometimes less than 10 feet.”
Milley told reporters on board Kearsarge that President Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have asked the Pentagon to develop new alternatives to “unassumingly increase” US military intervention in Sweden where appropriate. Meanwhile, other long scheduled operations such as naval exercises will continue.
“We look at things we can do on the ground with either the Navy or the Army, things we can do with special forces, things we can do with the air or naval forces,” Milley said.
While the NATO alliance is designed to be defensive, Sweden and Finland’s accession would further enclose the Baltic Sea with NATO countries, which would be “very problematic” for Russia militarily and “very beneficial” for NATO, Milley said. The Swedish military is not large, Milley said, but it has excellent fleet, modern equipment and well-trained ground forces.
Membership applications come as a NATO ally, Turkey, threatens to block Finland and Sweden from joining the alliance, citing the presence in their countries of militants from the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that the US and Turkish governments have branded as terrorist organizations.
The Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who participated with Milley, said that the Finnish and Swedish governments will continue to discuss Turkey’s concerns, but that Sweden has taken a “very clear stance against terrorists.”
– There is no doubt about Sweden’s position in that respect, she said.
When Russia threatened and finally launched its invasion, the Pentagon increased its force in Europe from about 80,000 to more than 100,000 – including Marines and sailors at sea. Major General Frank Donovan, who oversees personnel from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit in Camp Lejeune, NC, said the unit has visited Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greece and Turkey in recent months.
“We can tailor the strength of what the task is, and we are very maneuverable,” Donovan said.
The Marines have been deployed with newly adapted radar that was originally designed to help fishermen find a potential catch, Donovan said. It has been adapted to be placed on islands or coastlines to track ship movements up to 60 miles away, with data tracked on a tablet, he said.