Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
The Hungarian parliament has approved the Swedish NATO membership. Sweden agreed to sell more Gripen, and to modernise the existing ones. That was a long birth. Can we move on now, yes...?
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Russia has added Avdiivka, NATO has added Sweden, the latter even joined voluntarily.
Both turkey and Hungary played hard to bargain, but both got what they wanted everybody wins that's OK NATO has now a strong ally and controls another sea entrance of Russia win-win. Take the Swedish island of Gotland. It is in the middle of that Baltic Sea, facing the Baltic States and Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave. The island will be a strategic base of operations for NATO forces. Together with the Danes, the Swedes control a number of crucial shipping lanes for ships coming from Russia, for example in the Baltic or Baltic Sea. This will make it easier for NATO to monitor Russian ships, as well as to set up air patrols.
Finland and Sweden were neutral and independent. As a result, they greatly expanded their armed forces in all areas. They did not want to depend on other countries, which is often the case in Western Europe. We always thought it was better to spread tasks across countries. Now that it comes down to it, it turns out that we spread those defence tasks too much. Finland and Sweden, on the other hand, have fully equipped and robust armed forces. Finland, for example, still has reservists who can be called under arms. They are also close to the Baltic States. Should Article 5 of the NATO Treaty ever go into effect, we can now provide faster assistance to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.