By Jonathan Michael Feldman, April 2, 2022
On April 1, 2022, Dagens Nyheter published this editorial: “The arguments of NATO opponents do not stand up to reality.” The editorial points out that “Sweden has not been alliance-free for a long time. Non-aligned countries do not allow US troops to practice on their territory, nor do they deepen cooperation with military alliances during war.” Let’s analyze this statement. The statement basically argues that what is desirable can be defined by what is. That seems to be the logical principle. In other words, if Sweden were not acting as if it were in an alliance, it should not be in an alliance. Yet, because Sweden acts as if it is in alliance, then it is in an alliance. In other words, before any major sustained debate about NATO, mass public deliberations about NATO, or anything similar, the actions of military planners create the reality of Sweden being in NATO without any deliberations or votes. In contrast, we know that democracy is based on critical deliberation plus voting, yet we have had neither according to one of Dagens Nyheter‘s lead media reporters, Johan Croneman who–in commenting on a recent program on SVT’s Agenda–described systematic bias in a discussion that had not a single NATO opponent.
Basically, the pro-NATO logic of some in the media seems to amount to what is called in English, “railroading.” The website Stack Exchange explains this term: “The term ‘railroaded’ in the sense of having something forced through, either unjustly or without proper regard for those affected, clearly has its origins in analogy to the way early railroads were build, often running straight through private lands and geographic features.”
The editorial continues, “if Finland joins NATO, Sweden must do the same, everything else would be deeply irresponsible.” Yet, the article does not say why this is so. We have been told over and over and over (wrongly in my view) that Ukraine’s decisions are simply their own, they have a right to join NATO without consideration for what any other state thinks or says. Yet, Swedes somehow lack the rights which the liberal media would give to Ukraine. The liberal media cannot have it both ways, i.e. either Ukraine is part of a system of nations where their security is tied to the security concerns of neighboring states (e.g. Russia), or states can simply decide on their own, autonomously, without regards to what their neighbors think. There is a clear failure of consistent logic here.
The editorial questions whether Sweden can even be described “as non-aligned even on paper.” Then there is reference to “the EU’s defense clause, which obliges the member states to defend each other in the event of an armed attack.” What the editorial does not mention, however, is the following information conveyed by Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post: “The E.U. clause lacks the force of NATO’s Article 5 — which provides for the alliance’s defense umbrella. For one, the E.U. treaty does not apply to some of the most important NATO armies — including the United States, Britain and Turkey. And given the European Union’s fundamental stance that NATO still forms the backbone of the continent’s defenses, a test of the Lisbon Treaty’s military pledge might end up dangerously disappointing nonaligned countries.” Therefore, the E.U. clause is not necessarily the stepping stone to NATO that Dagens Nyheter‘s editorial implies that it is. One also wonders if this defense clause is widely known or was even debated in any significant way among the public or in the media.
If Sweden is aligned was that a decision made by politicians without any significant public debate? It seems that the policy of military planners and some politicians has been to (slowly and incrementally) push Sweden into its cooperation with NATO while denying the country was in NATO or even aligned until that was no longer true. For example, in one incident Sweden cooperated with Nordic nations but claimed that it had nothing to do with NATO. This kind of trick is how the policy was advanced. In other cases, the incremental push to NATO was more formal. Failoa writes that Sweden and Finland “strengthened NATO ties in 2014, signing a deal that granted the defense alliance more room to operate on their territory during conflict and other emergency situations.” In addition, “NATO has already agreed to share intelligence on the Ukraine war with both countries.”
Military planners and politicians used such means to produce a logic that we can’t deny, yet the logic seems to be nothing but the tracings or outline of a power move made by elites. Then the public and democratic deliberation is supposed to be subsumed to a previously made series of power moves. This reminds me very much of how those in the Stockholm region Bromma who protested against having their neighborhood being subsumed by City Planning Office building plans that would rip up and destroy green spaces were lambasted as being anti-democratic. In other words, democracy is defined by some as a system to ratify what elites want. The idea of a public autonomous from what experts claim, military planners argue, or politicians push for is trivialized by various media commentators.
The editorial says the Prime Minister says that “we see ourselves as bound to militarily help other EU countries in an attack, Sweden’s position can no longer be described as militarily non-aligned,” according to Björn Fägersten, senior researcher and head of the European Program at Utrikespolitiska institutet. It is unclear why Fägersten makes this argument or chooses this tipping point. Sweden has exported weapons to many different countries and one can argue that any country Sweden exports weapons to aligns Sweden to that country. Sweden’s fighter jets have used U.S. made jet engines, aligning Sweden to the U.S. In the Iraq case, “Swedish military intelligence provided the United States with information about potential bombing targets in Bagdad ahead [of] a 2003 attack on the Iraqi capital, despite the Swedish government’s opposition to the US invasion” according to US military documents. Hundreds of Swedish weapons were used in the Iraq War, including the AT4 weapon which Sweden later sent to Ukraine.” So, if anything the Iraq decision is more significant than the Ukraine decision. I must honestly conclude that the demarcation point of the Ukraine arms transfer is totally arbitrary, unless one argues that Ukraine being in Europe is the magical tipping point. But Sweden was cooperation with NATO military exercises near the Russian border way before the arms transfers to Ukraine. I sense magical thinking at work here.
The editorial continues that the idea of Sweden’s “supposed freedom of alliance” doing Europe a favor is “not only out of touch with reality,” but “is directly presumptuous.” Sweden is now described as the “weakest link on a continent where the majority of countries are members of NATO.” Sweden wants Europe’s help if it is attacked, but the rest of Europe might be annoyed with Sweden for wanting that but not being in NATO, the editorial argues. So now Sweden is now declared aligned for what I have shown (using the Iraq case) is completely an arbitrary declaration by a single expert but also seems to be part of a railroading operation that apparently cannot be stopped. The clear counterfactual is that maybe Europe needs some “bad cops” in NATO and some “good cops” focusing on diplomacy who are out of NATO. The editorial would have none of that, however. Why? Because the latitude of Sweden being free from an alliance is a “fantasy.” Sweden was a mediator before between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s and Yemen in 2018 the editorial explains. But, then the editorial points out that this role could continue even if Sweden were in NATO. Why?
The editorial offers several reasons, but not a single one makes any sense. The first reason offered is because of the Oslo process between Israel and Palestine which began in Norway. This argument makes no sense, however, because that process (circa 1993) has not addressed the Palestinian problem in a sufficiently systematic way. You can’t claim Norway’s role as a great mediator when the mediation does not really work and some criticize the mediation as making matters almost (if not) worse. The second intifada lasted from about 2000 to 2005. The Israel-Palestine conflict was not solved by this process. The Norwegian value-added here was limited. In other words, Norway may not have played a good role.
The second reason is based on how the “Norwegians have mediated in Sri Lanka, Guatemala and Colombia.” These examples, however, are totally irrelevant as none of these countries are in Europe. Remember, Europe was supposed to be the relevant area for our concerns according to the editorial’s own claims. Now in the editorial Europe is irrelevant (when it’s convenient for the argument). What’s left unstated in the editorial is that the most significant region for Sweden’s self-interest is to mediate between NATO and Russia. Here is where diplomacy and Sweden’s status outside of NATO is most relevant. Yet, the editorial brings up a series of irrelevant examples.
The third reason seems like the biggest stretch when we learn that Norway awards “the world’s most prestigious peace prize.” In 2021, Dagens Nyheter published a public opinion article which showed that Norway’s administration of the Nobel Peace Prize was faulty, going against the intentions of Alfred Nobel. It’s not a secret that Norway awarded the Prize to U.S. President Barrack Obama whose administration not only classified civilians in the proximity of drone strikes as terrorists, but also went along with the modernization of the nuclear weapons complex in the U.S. So when Norway is in a military alliance with the U.S., that raises lots of questions. The editorial claims that NATO opponents are out of touch with reality, but this part about the Nobel Prize indicates perhaps the editorial writers themselves have not faced the reality.
The editorial suggests that opponents of NATO must sharpen their “casual arguments” and apparently makes a vague reference to the Russian threat. Sweden must join NATO because otherwise it would be irresponsible. This suggests that there is no democracy that makes foreign policy or motivates it but rather state-to-state obligations. This idea of policy based on the obligation of one state to another, without democratic concern, clearly resembles the logic of the U.S. Monroe doctrine or Putin’s musings about what Russia “owes” Ukraine.
As noted elsewhere, NATO membership or the move to it reduces Sweden’s security. Let us conclude by sharpening the arguments. Let us think seriously about the Russian threat. This threat is layered in several absurdities when it comes to the threat to Sweden. The logic used to assess Swedish security is based on the most twisted logic possible. A key incident illustrates why this is the case.
One news source, The Aviationist, stated in an entry by Stefano D’Urso that “based on the photos released by the Swedish Air Force, the four Russian aircraft” which entered Swedish air space on March 2, 2022 “appeared to be unarmed.” This entry explained: “sporadic violations have been reported in the region in the past few years, with Russian spyplanes or fighters shortly intruding into the Swedish airspace during their missions over the Baltic Sea.” The Aviationist was contradicted by other news sources. On March 30, 2002 the Expressen newspaper reported the following: “In March, Russian planes violated Swedish airspace. Two of them were equipped with nuclear weapons, [according to the Television 4 News] TV4 Nyheterna. ‘If this is true, we are talking about a completely different magnitude of the incident,’ [said] Jörgen Elving, former lieutenant colonel.” In contrast, the TT news service quoted Andreas Hörnedal who stated: “My assessment of the pictures posted by the Armed Forces, which in itself was quite low-resolution, was that the plane looked completely unarmed, and this applies to all planes. Hörnedal “is a research leader and expert on airborne weapons at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI).”
What can we conclude? We can conclude that the Swedish weapons transfers to Ukraine were a potentially high risk operation, the level of risk which was either (a) under-estimated, (b) ill thought out, (c) under-researched, (d) not gamed out, (e) short-term oriented, or some combination. That approach is based on just the entry of Russian planes into Swedish air space and the way such assessments are deployed to increase the hysteria to increase military budgets. If the information about nuclear weapons on the planes is false, we are left with the puzzle as to why the news story circulated in Expressen, Aftonbladet, TV4 and SVT, with zero follow up. We are left with this curiosity. The risk of the Russian planes can’t be so high as to be a big danger and make the arms transfer to Ukraine seem like a terrible mistake. Yet, the risk of the Russian planes can’t be so low as to not warrant the necessary hysteria to increase the military budget and make a push towards Sweden joining NATO. The risk must be exactly calibrated and perfected to achieve multiple political goals. This is rather odd. The competing experts who claim there are or are not nuclear weapons contribute to the seesaw assessments necessary for this delicate balancing act.
Anna Wieslander, the Stockholm-based Northern Europe director for the Atlantic Council, has asked, “can you take out the insurance when the house is on fire?” The argument here is that Sweden might want to join NATO too late, when the danger is already present. The analogy should be rather, “do you want to take out insurance when that causes a fire by NATO arsonists?” The idea that NATO expansion has nothing to do with the triggering of the Ukraine crisis is a highly disputable proposition. And even if Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO, Swedish defense “experts” have never proven how Russia’s aggressive moves towards Sweden are de-coupled from Sweden’s military actions aimed at Russia (through military exercises or arms transfers to Ukraine).
