The Swedish island of Gotland, located 120 miles southeast of Stockholm and slightly smaller than Rhode Island, is home to around 60,000 people, a thriving local farm scene and one of the world’s northernmost vineyards.
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In the face of the continued threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin, it’s also become one of the world’s most important geopolitical hotspots: For years American and European analysts have warned that the island in the middle of the Baltic Sea would likely play a key role in a broader Russian attack against Europe, with Russia potentially attempting to occupy Gotland to facilitate a larger regional invasion. In March 2022 – just days after Putin invaded Ukraine – Russian fighter jets emphasized the threat by buzzing Gotland airspace.
Now the island will be defended by the collective heft of the world’s biggest military alliance. Last week, Sweden cleared its last hurdle to joining NATO with a vote of approval from Hungary’s parliament. The highly anticipated vote came after more than a year and a half of delays from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a right-wing Putin sympathizer who had served as the last holdout, as well as a last minute visit to Budapest from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
“Sweden is leaving 200 years of neutrality and military non-alignment behind,” Kristersson said in a press conference following the vote. “We are joining NATO in order to defend what we are and everything we believe in even better.”
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The addition to the alliance of both Sweden and Finland, whose entry was approved last April, amounts to a symbolic blow to Putin, whose imperialist aims depend on a weakened Europe and who cited NATO expansion and “aggression” as part of his justification for his Ukraine invasion. It also represents a major tactical and logistical boost for the 74-year-old partnership even as it’s simultaneously dealing with thorny questions about American commitment prompted by former President Donald Trump’s recent incendiary comments.
“Sweden is a very militarily formidable state with a very strategic location on the Baltic Sea, so paired up with Finland … it really strengthens NATO’s northern flank,” says Kal Raustiala, an international law professor at UCLA and the director of the university’s Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations. “It’s good for the alliance, and it’s also kind of a telling sign of where things stand.”
Finland’s strategic importance comes from its 830-mile land border with Russia, which mostly runs along rural forested areas. While Finland, as a longtime NATO partner nation, has already had some involvement with NATO military exercises and hosted some of its troops, full membership will allow the alliance to significantly beef up its military presence in Russia’s vicinity, including with additional weapons and infrastructure. (Although officials have made clear that Finland will not allow nuclear weapons to be stationed on its territory, citing national law.)
Finland, a country of fewer than 6 million people, also boasts an outsize military might, with an arsenal of howitzers, mortars and rocket launchers that it calls “Western Europe’s strongest artillery” and a long tradition of self defense that includes compulsory military service for men and an elaborate tunnel network under Helsinki.
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“We’ve likely seen no comparable boost to the strength of Western security,” John R. Deni, a professor at the U.S. Army War College and the author of a book on NATO’s Article 5, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed following Finland’s accession, “since West Germany joined the alliance in 1955.”
With the admission of Sweden, NATO gains a larger, wealthy nation with an advanced military, including a strong air force, and a particularly robust defense industry. Led by Saab, the country’s manufacturers already produce sophisticated fighter jets, tanks, submarines and other weapons, mostly for export. In 2022, Sweden’s defense industry was estimated at $3 billion, according to the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank. NATO membership means Swedish manufacturers will likely ink new deals with other member states, providing a lift both to the alliance’s defense capabilities and Sweden’s economy. Swedish producers have already been gearing up.
The accession of the two countries also significantly bolsters NATO’s presence in the Arctic, a region that’s emerging as another hotspot for tensions with Putin. For years Russia, which has long held its largest nuclear stockpile on the Kola Peninsula in the far northwest of the country, has been building up its Arctic military infrastructure. Experts caution the region is likely to be the site of an increased Russian hybrid warfare campaign, which blends traditional tactics such as espionage with cyber, energy and other nontraditional attacks.
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And in the Baltics, the significance of the alliance’s new territory reaches beyond Gotland: Sweden’s and Finland’s thousands of miles of Baltic Sea coastline means the alliance has near-complete control over the body of water, prompting references to a kind of “NATO lake.”
For aligned Europe, it’s a major geopolitical victory that serves to further isolate Russia – and underscores the severity of the tension that’s been gripping the continent since the Ukraine invasion. “It’s not just another state joining NATO,” notes Raustiala. “It’s Sweden,” a famously neutral country that’s tried to avoid such entanglements for centuries.
In January, after Putin complained about a change to Latvian immigration law that required some Russian residents to pass a Latvian language test, the Institute for Study of War, a Washington think tank, concluded that Putin was escalating his rhetoric in order “to set information conditions for future escalations against the Baltic countries.”
That same month, Sweden’s civil defense minister told residents to prepare for war.
Why It Matters That Sweden Is Joining NATO
5
24
06.03.2024
The Swedish island of Gotland, located 120 miles southeast of Stockholm and slightly smaller than Rhode Island, is home to around 60,000 people, a thriving local farm scene and one of the world’s northernmost vineyards.
Related:
In the face of the continued threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin, it’s also become one of the world’s most important geopolitical hotspots: For years American and European analysts have warned that the island in the middle of the Baltic Sea would likely play a key role in a broader Russian attack against Europe, with Russia potentially attempting to occupy Gotland to facilitate a larger regional invasion. In March 2022 – just days after Putin invaded Ukraine – Russian fighter jets emphasized the threat by buzzing Gotland airspace.
Now the island will be defended by the collective heft of the world’s biggest military alliance. Last week, Sweden cleared its last hurdle to joining NATO with a vote of approval from Hungary’s parliament. The highly anticipated vote came after more than a year and a half of delays from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a right-wing Putin sympathizer who had served as the last holdout, as well as a last minute visit to Budapest from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
“Sweden is leaving 200 years of neutrality and military non-alignment behind,” Kristersson said in a press conference following the vote. “We are joining NATO in order to defend what we are and everything we believe in even better.”
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