As Sweden joins NATO, it bids farewell to more than two centuries of neutrality
LA TimesSweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, left, shakes hands with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, in Budapest. “Sweden is now leaving 200 years of neutrality and nonalignment behind us,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said after Hungary’s Parliament gave its approval Feb. 26, overcoming the final hurdle. Preserved in the Swedish National Archives and considered the oldest document on Sweden’s neutrality, the text reads: “We will request, as we do now, to stay totally outside of this struggle, and that Sweden and Norway, by keeping a strict neutrality towards the warring parties, can deserve, by our impartial conduct, respect and the appreciation of our system.” Along the way, Sweden’s neutrality was tested — particularly during World War II, when it made concessions to Germany to stay out of war. Many Swedes believed they remained at peace due to their neutrality, he said, but in reality “we were flexible in our application of neutrality: early in the war, making concessions to the Germans and later in the war, making concessions to the allies.” During the Cold War, when Sweden and Finland were buffer countries between NATO and the Warsaw Pact alliance, many Swedes — and Finns — felt that being outside either bloc was the best way to avoid tensions with Russia, the powerful eastern neighbor in the Baltic Sea region. Olof Palme, Sweden’s prime minister in the 1970s, described Sweden as a moral superpower that should “become active in situations where other countries, as a result of their foreign policy stance, have been incapable of engagement.” Fears of Russia’s military power stretch back centuries and lasted into the twilight years of the Cold War.
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