Nordic Holdouts: Sweden and Finland Mull Joining NATO

By Aron Lamm
August 11, 2011

The simmering NATO membership debate in the supposedly neutral Nordic strongholds of Finland and Sweden have come to the fore lately.

In Sweden, a NATO assessment of the Swedish military led to questions about whether the Swedish conservative government is trying to sneak the country into NATO. In neighboring Finland, the minister for defense recently stated that Finland should consider joining NATO for financial reasons.

Officially speaking, neither country has plans to join NATO, but both are members of the Partnership for Peace program. They also both participate in NATO operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and Sweden is also participating in the Libya effort. Every now and then, voices in both countries are raised for full membership.

While this would mean the possibility to actually influence the operations in which they participate, as well as guaranteed protection in the case of war, it would also mean that they would lose their status as neutral peace brokers on the international stage.

Some say that this status is in fact already in jeopardy due to the countries’ current close collaboration with NATO. Sweden’s Defense Ministry recently announced that the armed forces have been reviewed by the NATO Planning and Review Process.

In an article in Swedish newspaper DN recently, former Swedish minister for defense, Thage G. Peterson, and a former Swedish United Nations Ambassador Anders Ferm, accused the government of trying to sneak Sweden into NATO.

"Sweden is in a gray area where we can neither reap the full benefits of a NATO membership, nor claim to be unaligned. The rest of the world sees Sweden as a NATO appendage—but only one Swede in five thinks we should join," the article says.

In a direct reply, former commander-in-chief of the Swedish armed forces says that the reality is Sweden has been a silent member of NATO since the end of World War II.

Meanwhile, Finnish Defense Minister Stefan Wallin, told newspaper Salon Seudun Sanomat this week that the recent cutbacks on military spending raises the question if Finland would be able to defend itself effectively if needed, or if NATO membership would be prudent.

His fellow cabinet member, Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, quickly dismissed this idea, however. He told TV station YLE on Wednesday that NATO membership was "not on the table under the current administration."

The official stance in Sweden is similar, with only one party in the Swedish Parliament and less than one Swede in five supporting a NATO membership, according to a 2010 survey by SOM, an organization affiliated with the University of Gothenburg.

Yet, the door to NATO seems wide open for the day the Swedes change their minds.

NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in response to a question during his visit at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in March that Sweden already fulfills all criteria for a full NATO membership.

Rasmussen said, "Our door remains open for all democracies in Europe that fulfill the necessary criteria," a category that would most likely include Finland as well, but he added that he did not wish to interfere with a nation’s domestic policy.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/nordic-holdouts-sweden-and-finland-mull-joining-nato-60297.html.