Facing Putin, Sweden Moves to Militarism From Pacifism as Europe Contends With End of ‘Pax Americana’
Without an American cop patrolling the Europe beat, ancient fissures suddenly resurface.
Sweden, a nation long synonymous with neutrality, is embarking on record military spending for defense and record spending for Ukraine. The moves reflect wider European doubts this spring that Washington will continue to play its post-World War II role: covering the continent with a Pax Americana.
Without an American cop patrolling the Europe beat, ancient fissures suddenly resurface. Catholic Poland arms to defend against Orthodox Russia. France and Germany maneuver for continental leadership. And Sweden, which fought 36 wars against Tsarist Russia or its predecessor state, Novgorod, is arming for an age-old aim: Western control over the Baltic.
“We have a completely new security situation… and uncertainties will remain for a long time,” Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, warned his nation recently. He announced $30 billion in spending that is to be Sweden’s “biggest rearmament since the Cold War.”
Over the next five years, Sweden is to hike defense spending to 3.5 percent of gross domestic product from the current 2.4 percent. With the Trump Administration announcing a pivot to Asia, European members of NATO scramble to revive militaries that atrophied after the end of the Cold War three decades ago.
In June, at the annual NATO summit in the Netherlands, the 32 member states are expected to raise their spending goal to 3.5 percent of GDP from its current level of 2 percent. President Trump wants 5 percent, markedly above the current American level of 3.4 percent.
The driver is Vladimir Putin, who shows no sign of backing off his attack on Ukraine. “The most acute threat to us — to our lives, to the legal system, but also to the physical lives of all people in Europe is now Russia,” a German legislator, Johann Wadephul, told an event last weekend at Berlin.
A strong candidate to be Germany’s Foreign Minister in a Friedrich Merz government, he objected to Germany’s “widespread attitude of denial” adding: “It’s very difficult, even in my party, but also with the general public, for people to come to the conclusion that Russia is so aggressive, so dangerous, and such a threat to civilization and all of us here.”
Germany’s outgoing foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said at Kyiv on Tuesday that Germany’s current and future governing parties support sending $3.2 billion for “short-term support” to Ukraine and another $8.9 billion for military support through 2029. After America, Germany is the largest supplier of military aid to Ukraine.
Germany may soon top America. The Pentagon has $3.85 billion authorized for military equipment to Ukraine. Congressional leaders say they have no plans to authorize more. In the latest sign of Washington’s new partiality to Moscow, Mr. Trump on Tuesday imposed 10 percent tariffs on Ukrainian goods exported to the United States. He did not impose new tariffs on goods from Russia or Belarus, two allies in the war.
On the military front, Defense Secretary Hegseth will not attend a gathering of 50 countries next week at Brussels to coordinate military support for Ukraine, Defense News reports, citing Pentagon sources. This would be the first time the coalition will gather without America’s Secretary of Defense participating. Germany and Britain are to chair the meeting.
News reports based on Pentagon reporting say that Mr. Hegseth is considering no longer having an American military official as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Since the post was created in 1951 — and occupied by General Eisenhower, the position has only ever been held by an American.
Yesterday, Secretary of State Rubio refuted reports that the Trump Administration is distancing America from the 75-year-old alliance. “The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been,” Mr. Rubio said at Brussels alongside NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte. “Some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is unwarranted.”
Mr. Rubio also is campaigning against a growing trend in Europe to buy European. Last month, the European Commission proposed “ReArm Europe,” a plan to spend $162 billion on defense projects. American arms makers are to be cut out of most of this spending. For one, Europeans want their own autonomous arms industry. In addition, many Europeans were unnerved last month when Mr. Trump for one week suspended military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
The Swedish defense minister, Pal Jonson, recently told reporters that Europe would eventually provide for its own defense. “The EU alone has an economy eight times as big as Russia, so if there is a will, there is a way for extensive support.”
“Sweden Is Rearming for Russia” reads an analysis written by Forbes military writer David Axe. He cites Sweden’s “expansive and diversified defense industry that builds the CV90 fighting vehicle, the Gripen fighter jet, the Archer howitzer, and modern submarines and surface warships.”
As Sweden, NATO’s newest member, migrates to militarism from pacificism, other European nations are announcing projects to contain Russia within its borders.
The Netherlands is contributing $540 million to a Ukrainian project to build a “drone wall” along its 600-mile front line and 670-mile internationally recognized border with Russia.
Further north, Estonia and Finland, two nations once controlled by Sweden, are investing in fortifying their eastern borders with Russia. This summer, the Estonian Center for Defense Investments is to announce a public tender for the construction of 600 concrete bunkers along Estonia’s 183-mile border with Russia.
Finland announced on Tuesday that it will quit a global convention banning anti-personnel mines. The mines would be stockpiled for placement along Finland’s 830-mile border with Russia. This is half of NATO’s total land border with Russia. Last week, four other “front line” countries — Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — announced that they will withdraw from the 1997 Ottawa Treaty banning landmines.
In contrast to the bouquets recently thrown to Mr. Putin by members of the Trump Administration, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, recently gave his unvarnished views on Russia: “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Tsarist, Soviet, Stalinist, Brezhnevist or Putinist imperialism. It’s always the same imperialism that wants to enslave other nations, that wants to take their lands, take their natural resources, that wants to exploit them.”
https://www.nysun.com/article/facing-putin-sweden-moves-to-militarism-from-pacifism-as-europe-contends-with-end-of-pax-americana
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