NATO

Sweden’s 21-month stay in NATO’s waiting room came to an end this week with long-awaited ratification of its May 2022 membership application by the Hungarian parliament.

Stockholm’s accession completes NATO’s expansion to 32 members, a growth prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and met with repeated threats from President Vladimir Putin and his top officials.

Membership for Sweden and neighboring Finland—which joined in April 2023—has transformed NATO’s security environment in northern Europe and the Arctic, adding 830 miles of frontier with Russia and drawing a NATO noose around the Baltic Sea, already referred to by some officials as a “NATO lake.”

Hungary’s parliament has approved Sweden’s Nato accession nearly two years after the historically neutral country applied to join the western military alliance, bringing to an end months of diplomatic wrangling.

Speaking after the vote in Budapest on Monday, the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, hailed “a historic day”. “The parliaments of all Nato member states have now voted in favour of Swedish accession to Nato. Sweden stands ready to shoulder its responsibility for Euro-Atlantic security,” he said.

Donald Trump’s recent threats that NATO members who miss their spending targets — like Canada — won’t be protected by the United States show he’s “serious” about ultimately withdrawing the U.S. from the military alliance, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton says.

That “simple view” of America’s relationships with its allies may likely inform Trump’s approach to U.S.-Canada relations and strategic partnerships between the two countries, Bolton says — including NORAD — if Trump returns to the White House.

I find it strange that it is assumed the US will always pick up the slack for its so called NATO partners.

Nearly three quarters of a century after Nato’s founding, Britain has slid down its league table of political and military power: from a near-peer ally of the United States to more or less open vassalage. To witness the conquered mindset of the British establishment, one need only read a recent article deliberating on what is to be done with the British Army, plummeting in numbers, capability and international esteem. It proposes to reshape our land forces as a collection of Special Forces units at America’s disposal: “we are likely to fight as part of a coalition in future, so why not be the sharpened tip of the American spear?”