If the West’s reneging on James Baker’s promise of “not one inch” of Nato eastward expansion after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall ultimately contributed to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, then Joe Biden’s promise to “defend every inch of Nato territory” triggered Sweden’s decision to seek full membership of the alliance.

Conspicuously absent from the President’s remarks were the words “and partner territory”, meaning that, if Sweden were invaded by Russia, it would need to be inside the Nato security umbrella, not next to it. Thus the then-government quickly reversed over 200 years of military non-alignment, ostensibly “hand in hand” with neighbouring Finland to join.

While Sweden’s accession to Nato was approved yesterday by a final member-state vote in the Hungarian parliament, the outcome of the two-year-long ratification process cannot be described as a full diplomatic victory. Having shown, in negotiations with Turkey, that it was prepared to trade its constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression for a Nato membership, Stockholm has emerged with a somewhat bloodied nose and some lost standing among its international peers.

During the “strategic timeout” of the 1990s and 2000s, Sweden completely dismantled its institutions of civil defence — arguably the world’s most sophisticated — and radically transformed its conventional territorial defence into a small, expeditionary force that could respond to conflicts abroad. The policy was irreverently termed the “Afghanistan doctrine” due to official statements that Sweden was “best defended in Afghanistan” — meaning that Sweden could expect to receive security assurances from the major Western powers if it proved itself a reliable member of the liberal international community.

Now that Sweden is joining the alliance, we can expect the country to become as zealous a member of Nato as it has so far been of the United Nations and the European Union. Indeed, already before membership, Sweden has gifted 15 support packages of arms and equipment to Ukraine and is, after Nato entry, expected to divert one of its two remaining army brigades to one of the three Baltic states.

A reason for this is the cast-iron belief among many Swedes that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides firm security guarantees and stipulates a concerted armed response to an attack against one member state. Therefore, the thinking goes, extensive territorial defence remains less important. Sweden, if you like, is best defended in the Baltics. However, the treaty merely, and ambiguously, states that each member should take “such action as it deems necessary”.

Stockholm appears not to have learned the lesson of the ratification process — and of national pandemic management policies before then — that countries look to their interests first before they think about the consequences for others. 

An attack on Sweden, or any other European member state of Nato, would likely be met by a “coalition of the willing”, rather than the full force of the alliance. And willingness to help will be dependent on Sweden’s ability to first fight on its own. Stockholm should thus consider balancing an enthusiasm for its newfound “community of values” with a stronger concern for national resistance. This may foster the spirit of defence of the homeland that is ultimately more important to any country’s security than Nato membership or military spending pledges.

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Johan Wennström is a Research Fellow at the Swedish Defence University, currently writing a book about Sweden’s stay-behind network during the Cold War.

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