Sweden 🇸🇪 Has Joined NATO

 

 

(These are two photos from the Sweden flag raising ceremony 🇸🇪 outside NATO headquarters earlier today, on Monday March 11, 2024. For some reason, Wikimedia Commons has not uploaded any images from the ceremony themselves. They haven't uploaded the Relations of Sweden 🇸🇪 and NATO page or the Sweden 🇸🇪's Application for NATO Membership page. They haven't updated either page since Thursday March 7, 2024, the day that Sweden 🇸🇪 actually joined the alliance, and the Swedish Prime Minister 🇸🇪, Ulf Kristerssonm did that press conference with United States Secretary of State 🇺🇸, Anthony Blinken. I don't know if or when they'll update those pages, and add images from the flag raising ceremony. So, I had to scour the Internet to find large, high quality photographs from the ceremony, and these were the best ones that I could find. If Wikimedia Commons does add images from the ceremony on their website, and they're better than these, I will replace them with those. 

 

The flag raising ceremony for Sweden 🇸🇪 was done in the rain 🌧️, it was rainy outside 🌧️ outside when they did this. Unlike the flag raising ceremony for Finland 🇫🇮 last year, which was done on a bright sunny day ☀️. You could say it's emblematic of the times we're in. Things have gotten darker and bleaker in the world since Finland 🇫🇮 joined NATO, but I'm not going to view it that way. I do think it's cool that the NATO officials at the ceremony used umbrellas ☔️ that had the NATO flag on them, like they were colored like the NATO flag and had the NATO compass symbol. That was pretty cool. I would totally get an umbrella ☂️ like that. If I ever visit NATO Headquarters in Brussels, and if they sell NATO umbrellas ☂️, I'm getting one.)

 

 

Now, I'm sure those of you that care have heard the news by now that Sweden 🇸🇪 has joined NATO. It technically already happened last week on Thursday March 7, 2024, but I wanted to wait until the flag raising ceremony took place and when the official NATO YouTube channel (which I'm subscribed to) posted a video about it. Well, both things have happened, and so I'm ready to write.

 

 

(These are the flags of Sweden 🇸🇪 and NATO. The one on top is the Swedish flag 🇸🇪 and the one on the bottom is the NATO flag.)

This is a huge deal. I said this before in the note for my Spirit of Wonder: Miss China's Ring review, but Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 being in NATO puts the alliance in a much stronger strategic position than they were previously. It means that NATO has full command and control over the Baltic Sea, which they didn't really have. Even with Estonia 🇪🇪, Latvia 🇱🇻, and Lithuania 🇱🇹 in the alliance, NATO still didn't really have that strong of a position or presence in the Baltic Sea. It wasn't as strongly defensible as it is now that Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 are both in the alliance, the two juggernauts in the Baltic. With those two countries in the alliance, NATO will have no issues defending the Baltic Sea from any Russian threat 🇷🇺.

Speaking of which, with Sweden 🇸🇪 now in the NATO alliance along with its closest neighbor, Finland 🇫🇮, Russia 🇷🇺 is now on the strategic back-foot. It is a much strategically weaker position now than was three years ago. All thanks to Putin's boneheaded decision to invade Ukraine 🇺🇦. Good job, bozo, you just brought about the very outcome that you said you wanted to prevent which was NATO expansion and NATO being on your doorstep. Now, they're even closer your doorstep, and they're now in position to stop you from threatening the Baltic Sea.

But, Russia 🇷🇺 was never under any existential threat from NATO. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 was never about NATO expansion as Putin and Russian propagandists 🇷🇺 and Russian apologists 🇷🇺 have tried to claim. They hate NATO because it's a stopgap to Russian imperialist ambitions 🇷🇺. Russia 🇷🇺 can't expand its territory in Europe, and it can't threaten its European neighbors with military force if they're in a defensive alliance that protects them from such threats.

If Russia 🇷🇺 threatened even just one of these countries, then they'd be up against 30 other countries, including the greatest military power in the entire world, the United States 🇺🇸. So, once a country joins NATO, that country becomes off-limits for Russia 🇷🇺, and it becomes less likely that Russia 🇷🇺 will attack that country since the pattern historically has been that Russia 🇷🇺 doesn't attack countries that are in NATO. That's why the Cold War never escalated into World War III. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 (This is the flag of the Soviet Union ☭ and the logo of the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance that the Soviet Union ☭ created in response to NATO. Specifically, it was created in response to West Germany 🇩🇪 joining NATO back in 1955. The one on top is the Soviet flag ☭ and the one on the bottom is the Warsaw Pact logo.)

 

 

 

 

The Soviet Union ☭ and the Warsaw Pact didn't want to risk starting a nuclear war ☢️ by attacking NATO countries. Putin, although he talks a big game about how Russia 🇷🇺 is ready and willing to use nuclear weapons ☢️ if they feel threatened, and has tried to frame the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 as a war against NATO and the West more broadly, he hasn't done anything. Russia 🇷🇺 has not made any moves on NATO. Not before the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦 and not since the war in Ukraine 🇺🇦. 

 

Putin is scared of NATO. He hates it, but he's scared of it at the same time. He's scared of having to fight NATO in a conventional war because he knows that Russia 🇷🇺 would lose that fight. They would lose the war if NATO entered in, and fought directly on Ukraine 🇺🇦's side. And he hates NATO because it prevents him from expanding Russia 🇷🇺's territory westward and conquering all of Eastern Europe. 

 

Just as Spaghetti Kozak 🍝 said in his video on the dumbest arguments about the war in the Ukraine 🇺🇦, because a country like Estonia 🇪🇪, which used to be apart of the Soviet Union ☭ before it seceded from it in 1991, five months before its collapse and dissolution, is in NATO, Russia 🇷🇺 has to treat it like a real sovereign country and not as a vassal, puppet state, or client state, or even a full-on colony apart of their territory. 

 

The Russians 🇷🇺 attacked Ukraine 🇺🇦 because they don't see Ukraine 🇺🇦 as a real country with its own culture, language, and identity. They see it as apart of their empire, and they felt safe in trying to retake it militarily because it wasn't in NATO or even in the EU 🇪🇺. The argument has been made since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 began in 2022, that if Georgia 🇬🇪 and Ukraine 🇺🇦 were both in NATO, Russia 🇷🇺 would have never invaded them.

 

That's why whenever Russian aggression 🇷🇺 flares up, efforts by European nations to seek NATO memberships increase. European countries are more likely to seek NATO membership if Russia 🇷🇺 is behaving aggressively on the continent. That's what happened with Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪. That's why it was such a stupid decision from a purely strategic point of view for Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 when he did. Or just any time really. Had Putin never invaded Ukraine 🇺🇦, neither Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 would have joined. But, he did, and here we are.

 

The only real exception to this are the Balkan countries, Slovenia 🇸🇮, Croatia 🇭🇷, Montenegro 🇲🇪, and North Macedonia 🇲🇰, all of whom are in NATO, with the last two, Montenegro 🇲🇪 and North Macedonia 🇲🇰 both joining in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Montenegro 🇲🇪 joined in 2017 and North Macedonia 🇲🇰 joined in 2020. Those countries are not necessarily under threat from Russia 🇷🇺, but they are under threat from Serbia 🇷🇸, a Russian ally 🇷🇺, who could always start something at any time, given the strong Serb nationalist sentiments in Bosnia 🇧🇦 and Kosovo 🇽🇰. Another conflict in the Balkans could spark up in the future, and Serbia 🇷🇸 or Serb nationalists/separatists could be the instigators of that conflict.

One of the things that motivated Slovenia 🇸🇮 and Croatia 🇭🇷 to join NATO was the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, particularly, the Bosnian War 🇧🇦, where Serb nationalists tried to break away from Bosnia and Herzegovina 🇧🇦 after it declared independence from Yugoslavia. They proclaimed unrecognized breakaway states out of the Serb majority regions of the country such as Republika Srpska, and waged a brutal insurgency against the Bosnian government 🇧🇦, while also trying to ethnically cleanse the non-Serb areas, and repopulate them with ethnic Serbs.

The Bosnian Serb separatists committed many war crimes, atrocities, and crimes against humanity against the Bosniaks and Croats in the country in order to achieve their goal of creating a pure Serb state, and perhaps even join with Serbia 🇷🇸 proper. We're talking acts of genocide here. All the while, the Yugoslav government in Belgrade was secretly supporting the Bosnian Serb forces, and even encouraging their ethnic cleansing and genocidal operations against the Bosniaks and Croats.

The Yugoslav government tried to keep it a secret, like they weren't public about their support for the Bosnian Serb separatists, and they denied it every time they were asked it by the media, or by other governments, or international organizations. But everyone knew that they were supporting them. It was an open secret, and everyone kind of knew the Bosnian Serbs were getting their marching orders from Belgrade, and that Belgrade was supporting them militarily. It wasn't as if Belgrade was doing anything to stop or discourage the killing. They weren't, they were actively encouraging and endorsing it. Russian mercenaries 🇷🇺 also participated in the conflict to support the Bosnian Serb forces.

 

Of course, the Bosnian Serbs were not the only ones causing trouble in Bosnia 🇧🇦 in the early-to-90s, there was also the Bosnian Croats as well. They proclaimed their own unrecognized independent state called the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and their military wing, the Croatian Defense Council fought against the Bosnian Serb Army as well as the regular Bosnian military 🇧🇦 to the extent that one existed at that time.

Although, there were points when the Bosnian Croats did join forces with the Bosnian military 🇧🇦 to fight the Bosnian Serbs, and they did enter some sort of truce 🏳️. An actual ceasefire agreement was signed between the two sides called the Washington Agreement. The Bosnian Croats fought with many of the same goals as the Bosnian Serbs, to create their own ethnostate, in this case, a Croat state. Only they had a more clearly defined goal of unifying with Croatia 🇭🇷 proper. The Croatian government 🇭🇷 even supported them in their efforts to break away from Bosnia 🇧🇦 and join Croatia 🇭🇷. The supported them militarily as well as politically. The war waged by Bosnian Croats against the Bosnian government 🇧🇦 and ethnic Bosniaks is often to referred to as the Croat-Bosniak War, a "war within a war" that lasted from 1992 to 1994.

And they committed almost as many war crimes and atrocities as the Bosnian Serbs did, and many of the leaders of the Croatian Republic were prosecuted and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. One of those leaders even committed suicide while sitting in court after he heard the guilty verdict, by drinking some poison ☠️. That leader was Slobodan Praljak, a general in the Croatian Defense Council and the actual Croatian Army 🇭🇷 itself who participated in the Croat-Bosniak War.

He died in 2017 inside the courtroom in The Hague from suicide via poisoning after the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found him guilty of war crimes against Bosniaks, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. This man ♂︎ killed himself while in court because he rejected that guilty verdict and didn't want to serve that 20 year prison sentence. What some people will do to escape accountability 🙂‍↔️.

 
So, it wasn't just the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats who were being aggressive and committing war crimes and genocide during the war, it was the Bosniaks as well too a little bit, but not to the same extent as the Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Croats. There were foreign fighters who came in to fight on the side of the Bosnian government 🇧🇦 and Bosniaks in general. The Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats had foreign fighters fighting on their sides too, including a Neo-Nazi named Jackie Arklöv, who was from Sweden 🇸🇪 and fought on the side of the Bosnian Croats. But, it was mostly the Bosnian government and Bosnian military 🇧🇦 that relied on foreign fighters, more than the Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Croats.

 

Jihadists got in on the action, even some with ties to al-Qaeda, and formed the Bosnian mujahideen, which collaborated the Bosnian government and military 🇧🇦 to fight the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat separatists. Two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were apart of the Bosnian mujahideen. They were members of al-Qaeda of course, and they would go on to be one of the men ♂︎ that hijacked American Airlines 🇺🇸 Flight 77, the plane ✈️ that hit the Pentagon. They fought in this war too.

Not as many Bosniaks were prosecuted as Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Croats, but a few were. Particularly high-ranking people such as Enver Hadžihasanović, the former Bosnian Chief of Staff of the Army 🇧🇦, Amir Kubura, a former commander in the Bosnian Army 🇧🇦, and Rasim Delić, the former Bosnian Chief of Staff 🇧🇦. But, for the sake of this, I'm mostly focusing on the Bosnian Serb aggression in the Bosnian War 🇧🇦, and how that contributed to the wave of NATO membership in the former Yugoslavia.

 

Croatia 🇭🇷 fought its own war of independence against Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav military was a largely Serb dominated force, especially by that time) and Croatian Serb separatist forces while the Bosnian War 🇧🇦 was taking place. The Bosnian War 🇧🇦 started one year after the Croatian War of Independence 🇭🇷 started, and the Croatian War of Independence 🇭🇷 ended two years before the Bosnian War 🇧🇦 ended.

So, it was a combination of Yugoslav/Serbian intervention 🇷🇸, Serb separatism and Serb nationalism, and Russian mercenary support 🇷🇺 for those things that motivated Slovenia 🇸🇮 and Croatia 🇭🇷 to join NATO, who was heavily involved in the Yugoslav Wars, specifically the Bosnian War 🇧🇦 and the Kosovo War 🇽🇰. Bosnia 🇧🇦 has also tried to seek NATO membership for quite some time, as well as EU membership 🇪🇺, but there hasn't really been any movement on that.

Going back to the Kosovo War 🇽🇰 though, Russia 🇷🇺 did threaten to get involved and did threaten to go to war with NATO over their handling of the conflict between the Yugoslav government and military and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia particularly vexed the Russians 🇷🇺, and pushed them to take more decisive action in the Kosovo War 🇽🇰, and almost threaten to start World War III over it. You'll often hear Russian propaganda 🇷🇺 talk about the NATO bombing campaign over Yugoslavia as a way to demonize the alliance, and justify their country's own military aggression in places like Georgia 🇬🇪 and Ukraine 🇺🇦.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed during the war, and thus World War III was prevented for now. Whether or not, we'd be as lucky now with the kind of government that Russia 🇷🇺 has now is yet to be seen. I kind of doubt that the Russians 🇷🇺 now would be as coolheaded as they were in the late 90s as they were under Yeltsin. Under Putin, they'd be more likely to escalate. But yeah, that was likely another factor that motivated Slovenia 🇸🇮 and Croatia 🇭🇷 to seek NATO membership, Russia 🇷🇺 inserting itself into the Kosovo War 🇽🇰 and threatening to go to war over Kosovo 🇽🇰.

The entire Kosovo War 🇽🇰 probably motivated Montenegro 🇲🇪 and North Macedonia 🇲🇰 to seek NATO membership since they're both closer in proximity to Serbia 🇷🇸 and Kosovo 🇽🇰 than Slovenia 🇸🇮 and Croatia 🇭🇷 are. They share borders with those two countries, whereas Slovenia 🇸🇮 and Croatia 🇭🇷 don't. Although, NATO still has a peacekeeping force inside of Kosovo 🇽🇰 even after all these years after the war ended, and that NATO peacekeeping force is the only thing preventing violence from breaking out in Kosovo 🇽🇰. It's also the only thing that's deterring Serbia 🇷🇸 from trying to retake it militarily, since they view it as part of their territory. They don't recognize the independence of Kosovo 🇽🇰.

 

 

 

(This is the flag of the Kosovo Force, or KFOR for short, the NATO-led international peacekeeping force inside Kosovo 🇽🇰. It was established after the Kosovo War 🇽🇰, which started in 1998 and ended in 1999. The war started on February 28, 1998 and ended on June 11, 1999 to be exact. Although, I said that it is predominantly a NATO peacekeeping force, and it is, it also includes many countries that aren't or weren't in NATO. Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 were both in KFOR before either of them joined NATO. Even Russia 🇷🇺 and Ukraine 🇺🇦 were apart of KFOR, but both countries withdrew from it. Russia 🇷🇺 withdrew in 2003, and Ukraine 🇺🇦 withdrew in 2022 for obvious reasons. It's hard to participate in a peacekeeping mission in the Balkans when you're the middle of fighting a full-scale war against Russia 🇷🇺. You need all the military forces, all the troops you can get.)

 

 

Russian propaganda 🇷🇺 has tried to portray the peacekeeping mission inside Kosovo 🇽🇰 in a negative light, and make it seem more imperialistic by calling it an occupation, and saying that it's an occupation of Serbia 🇷🇸. Meaning that the Russians 🇷🇺 don't recognize Kosovo 🇽🇰 as an independent country either. It's not an occupation, and it isn't Serbian territory 🇷🇸. It's a peacekeeping mission with the stated intention of preventing further violence inside Kosovo 🇽🇰, and deterring Serbia 🇷🇸 from pursuing military action against Kosovo 🇽🇰. NATO started this peacekeeping mission in collaboration with and cooperation from the UN 🇺🇳. The whole thing is UN approved 🇺🇳.

If the NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo 🇽🇰 is an occupation, then Russia 🇷🇺's peacekeeping mission inside Nagorno-Karabakh was also an occupation. They didn't even have UN approval or cooperation 🇺🇳 for their peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor did they do a particularly good job at it since violence ended up breaking out there on their watch, and Azerbaijan 🇦🇿 fully conquered the territory. Anyway, hopefully things don't get to that point where NATO and Russia 🇷🇺 are pushed closer to war. That's why we must continue supporting Ukraine 🇺🇦, so that we don't get to that point, and so we don't have to make the tough and difficult decisions.

Speaking of which, with Sweden 🇸🇪 now in NATO, supporting Ukraine 🇺🇦 for them will a lot easier and more streamlined, since they'll have access to NATO equipment and weaponry, NATO standard ammunition, and they'll be able to send this military hardware to Ukraine 🇺🇦 through the NATO pipeline. And of course, as many have said before, Sweden 🇸🇪 brings its own unique military capabilities to the alliance as well. Sweden 🇸🇪 has a pretty strong and capable military of its own, and with them in the alliance, NATO's fighting capabilities overall will be increased ten fold. NATO benefits tremendously having Sweden 🇸🇪 and Finland 🇫🇮 within the alliance.

And with Sweden 🇸🇪 now in NATO, this means that all the Nordic countries are in the alliance. Not just Sweden 🇸🇪 and Finland 🇫🇮, but also Norway 🇳🇴, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Iceland 🇮🇸. They're all in the alliance together now. They may not all be in the EU 🇪🇺, but they are all in NATO now. I just thought that was an interesting tidbit to point out, since for the longest time, Norway 🇳🇴, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Iceland 🇮🇸 were only three Nordic countries in NATO. But now that Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 have joined, now the gang's all here, they'll together. In addition, all of Scandinavia is in it with Sweden 🇸🇪, Norway 🇳🇴, and Denmark 🇩🇰. Before 2024, the only two Scandinavian countries in NATO were Norway 🇳🇴 and Denmark 🇩🇰, but now Sweden 🇸🇪 has joined them and completed the trifecta.

But, this stunning achievement underscores why it's so important to keep NATO around, to keep it united, and to keep it strong. This is why Donald Trump should not get re-elected, and why he must lose the 2024 Presidential Election, and why Biden must win. Trump has said on multiple occasions that he wants to pull the United States 🇺🇸 out of NATO, which would already be disastrous since a good chunk of NATO's strength as a military force comes from the United States 🇺🇸. NATO would be a lot weaker without the US 🇺🇸 in there. But, he has also said that he would let Russia 🇷🇺 do whatever it wanted in Europe, and let it attack other members of the alliance if he didn't feel that they "paid up" enough.

Trump has a distorted view of how NATO members pay their fair share in terms of military spending, he doesn't understand it at all, and he views it as a mob-like collection arrangement. That's how it works at all. So, if Trump got elected again, then he'll completely dismantle the NATO as we know it, and all this effort to get Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪 into the alliance, all the hurdles that Sweden 🇸🇪 in particular had to jump through, all of the obstacles they had to overcome, will have been for nothing.

So, if you want Finland 🇫🇮 and Sweden 🇸🇪's accession to NATO to actually matter in the long run, and not just be a meaningless gesture, then Trump has to lose the 2024 election. It's up to us, the American people 🇺🇸 to make sure that he does lose, and that Biden gets re-elected because of the two candidates, Biden is the only one that cares about NATO, and sees the value in it, and sees the threat that Russia 🇷🇺 continues to pose. After all, American national security 🇺🇸 is closely tied with European security. So, if you're American 🇺🇸 and you care about our own national security, and you care about NATO, and you care about what happens to our allies, or if you just want to prevent World War III and prevent nuclear war ☢️ with Russia 🇷🇺, then vote blue 💙 this November. 

 

 

(These are photos from Thursday March 7, 2024, when Sweden 🇸🇪's accession to NATO was finalized, all the paperwork was signed and Sweden 🇸🇪 was finally in the alliance. Swedish Prime Minister 🇸🇪, Ulf Kristerssonm joined with US Secretary of State 🇺🇸, Anthony Blinken to give a press conference talking about Sweden 🇸🇪 finally achieving NATO membership, and that's where these photos were taken. They're from the press conference they did.)

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Here's video by NATO congratulating Sweden 🇸🇪's accession into NATO: