Sweden and Finland are negotiating bilateral agreements with Washington to facilitate US military operations throughout the Nordic region
Sweden and Finland are moving forward with negotiations to finalize a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with the US in what amounts to a further escalating step in the US/NATO war with Russia. The agreements, which would allow US troops to operate unimpeded on the territories of both countries, and store weapons and other equipment at advanced bases, would strengthen Washington’s ability to open up a northern front in its quest to subject Russia to the status of a semi-colony and take control of its natural resources.
Sweden’s right-wing coalition government led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson explained in its announcement of bilateral talks with Washington that the DCA would enable Stockholm to “get more effective and faster support from the United States in crisis or war situations.” Defense Minister Pål Jonson tells the newspaper Today’s news that the deal will allow the US to store weapons at bases in Sweden during peacetime and deploy more quickly in a crisis, adding, “We’re going from being close partners to allies.”
A similar process is underway in Finland, where Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told Iltalehti on 8 January that talks on the bilateral agreement are at a preliminary stage. Haavisto’s ministry said in a statement that the agreement would “create conditions for closer cooperation if the security situation requires it.” Washington is “the most important external actor in northern Europe,” the statement continued, before adding that Washington “is committed to the security of Finland and Europe.”
Finland and Sweden’s joint application to join NATO last May marked a sharp escalation of the US-led military confrontation with Russia in northern Europe. While Finland shares a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, Sweden is strategically located northwest of the Baltic Sea, placing forces based there within striking distance of St. Petersburg and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which lies just 300 kilometers southeast of the Baltic Sea. The Swedish island of Gotland.
While the vast majority of NATO members, including the European imperialist powers, are determined to integrate Sweden and Finland into NATO as quickly as possible, Turkey has refused to approve the applications, citing Sweden’s alleged protection of Kurdish nationalists linked to the PKK. Unanimous consent of all NATO members is required to approve a new member.
DCAs are critical to facilitating the deployment of U.S. military personnel on foreign soil. They regulate the extent to which US soldiers will be subject to local laws, give Washington overall authority to move troops as it sees fit, and allow the US military to create forward supply bases for weapons and military equipment. The US currently has 17 DCAs with EU members and six with non-EU states.
Last June, Washington and Oslo announced the completion of a DCA to facilitate the expansion of US military activity, particularly in Norway’s Arctic, where it shares a 196-kilometer border with Russia. It included four “agreed areas,” zones to which U.S. forces have unfettered access. In and around these “agreed areas”, US forces can exercise authority over Norwegian citizens, including by taking a “proportionate” response to any perceived security threat. The sites include Ramsund Naval Base and Evenes Air Base in the Arctic.
In a submission to the Norwegian parliament, the country’s attorney general, Sigrid Redse Johansen, noted, “The ability to exercise authority (and power) lies with each troop member, and authority can be exercised over anyone who comes into contact with the agreed area or who, in extraordinary cases, gets in the way for a U.S. operation … Force may thus be exercised by any U.S. troop member against Norwegian civilians to restore order or protect the force.”
Johansen also addressed the lack of checks in place for Norwegian authorities to challenge US decisions or actions, writing in somewhat understated language, “Genuine Norwegian control over the terms of US exercise of power does not appear prominent.”
The agreement also gives US authorities the first right to prosecute soldiers who commit off-duty crimes, defining what is considered an act of duty. In other words, US forces can act with virtual impunity while in the country.
The agreements Washington is negotiating with Finland and Sweden appear to contain similar sweeping provisions guaranteeing US military operations and legal immunity. As Teemu Tanner, Finland’s ambassador to Norway, put it in an interview with High North News“I think we can learn a lot from how Norway is building its NATO operations.”
In November, Finland, Sweden and Norway announced the upgrade of a trilateral defense agreement to enable joint military activities in the Arctic regions of all three countries. The agreement enables joint exercises, military planning and the implementation of joint military operations in a crisis situation. It followed the participation of Finnish and Swedish troops in a joint brigade under Norwegian command in NATO’s Cold Response exercise last August.
Also in November, Sweden’s new right-wing government announced a plan to massively increase military spending to meet NATO’s goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. The coalition, led by the conservative Moderates but relying on parliamentary support from the fascist Sweden Democrats to gain a majority, intends to increase military spending by 64 percent by 2028. Just days after this announcement, the government presented a military aid package to Ukraine worth 3 billion kroner (around 270 million euros). It included an air defense system and light armored vehicles and totaled SEK 1 billion more than all of Sweden’s previous aid packages to Ukraine combined.
Earlier this month, the government unveiled a plan to reintroduce civilian conscription. Young people are to be trained in disaster relief and other rescue services at the municipal level in a move that the government explicitly linked to the need to strengthen Sweden’s defense capabilities in the event of war. Military conscription was already reintroduced by the Social Democratic government in 2017. The latest plan commits to doubling the annual military conscription to 10,000.
A major factor driving the intensifying conflicts over the Arctic is the vast amounts of oil, gas and rare earths in the region, which are becoming easier to access due to the effects of capitalist-induced climate change. Territorial claims involving Arctic states, which include Canada, Denmark, Russia and the United States, are also driven by the opening of new trade routes as the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover shrinks. The United States, Canada and the European imperial powers are determined to strengthen their respective positions in the region, realizing that this could mean access to the resources necessary to play a major role in the future’s clean energy economy, control the flow of world trade, and gain a military strategic advantage over its rivals.
Underscoring the major economic interests at stake in the region, Swedish iron ore miner LKAB last week revealed the discovery of a huge deposit of more than 1 million tonnes of rare earth oxides in Kiruna in the Swedish Arctic. Although the site represents less than 1 percent of global rare earths, according to US Geological Survey estimates, it is the largest find in Europe. LKAB declared that the deposits were sufficient to meet a “substantial part of Europe’s needs” for electric vehicle production as part of the so-called “clean energy transition”.
Far from being motivated by the desire to stop climate change, the main concern of the European powers is to reduce their dependence on Russia and China for critical economic supplies so that the European imperialist powers can act more aggressively on the world stage, not only against Russia and China, but in ultimately where the US is needed. As Ebba Busch, Sweden’s energy and industry minister and leader of the right-wing Christian Democrats, put it: “electrification, EU self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China begin in the mine.”