Flinging prudence – and its neutrality – to the winds, Sweden joins NATO – Part Two.

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Even before Sweden formally applied for NATO membership, seven years ago Agneta Norberg noted that it’s obvious that Sweden is a NATO country without being in NATO … Sweden has become the chosen platform for war against Russia. These developments are extremely dangerous

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1. Remembering Jamie Roth

A long-time friend, Jamie Roth, died last year. I will miss his friendship, our many discussions about the evolution of the Nordic countries, his fine, incisive, analysis of the foibles of late-phase U.S. capitalism in decline which he could explain as well as anyone.  Just appreciate the fact we had such rich exchanges over the years. And now he’s gone.

Jamie lived nearby and we would visit each other frequently, sit on each other’s porch and talk, and talk, and talk. A genuine serious, sober, systematic thinker and about as fine a Marxist intellectual as I’ll ever know. His rural Mennonite background and my urban Jewish one somehow merged into a rich connection which I’ll miss. We were both life-long Marxist academics who had somehow managed to survive a half century of teaching in academic, he at Regis University where for a while he chaired the Sociology Department, me at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. Both of us had participated in a book club together that had existed for more than a quarter of a century.

Both of us had a strong Nordic Country connection and that is

Jamie Roth in Sweden opposing the Vietnam War. (Photo credit: thank you Alice Reich)

what we frequently exchanged ideas about. Jamie had lived and studies in Sweden during the late 1960s during the height of the Vietnam War where he was a college student. Along with family, I had lived in Finland in the mid to late 1980s just prior to and during the collapse of Eastern European and Soviet Communist, where Nancy and I worked at the, then, World Peace Council.

As such, Jamie and I had both experienced the joys of living in Nordic countries with their strong social contracts and, at least then, political neutrality. Even prior to both Finland and Sweden had formally joined NATO, we had the sense that the writing was on the war, that the long period of Nordic neutrality was coming to an end. Admittedly, from our perch here high in the Rockies a lot of the details of the shift escaped up, but where it concerned the general direction of both countries, their flirtation with and willing seduction into NATO we were generally on the right track.

Although the hints of a geopolitical transition were not hard to find for anyone seriously looking, nowhere were these hints more striking than in the literature of both countries. The Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, opening with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, sliced open the right-wing, militarist, anti-immigrant, pro-capitalist streams in Swedish society long lurking under the shine of its then social-democratic facade. Jamie introduced us (our book club) to Larssson’s work and that all was not well in Sweden’s social democratic nirvana. These reactionary tendencies – for that is precisely what they are – were about to explode, while its social democratic nirvana would soon soon collapse.

He also familiarized us to the work of Henning Mankel, to my mind, one of the greatest crime novelists anywhere who explored similar themes with a perceptiveness and depth second to none. I read – and discussed with Jamie – the whole of both Larsson and Mankel’s works – I couldn’t get enough of either author … and as a result was more prepared for the Swedish/Finnish leap into NATO’s clutches.

2. Sweden takes the NATO plunge

Years before Sweden made the leap into the maelstrom called NATO, one Agneta Norberg was sounding the alarm. She campaigned to retain Swedish neutrality at a time when, frankly, it has already been seriously compromised. For some time, Sweden has long been what can be called “a mass information provider” for the U.S. military

I don’t know if Norberg’s was the only Swedish voice “out there” doing everything she could to keep Swedish Cold War neutrality alive in the post Cold War age, but there weren’t many others, and virtually none that was so well informed. At 87 she is still active as ever.

Long before Sweden joined NATO Norberg noted that “Sweden has become the chosen platform for war against Russia. These developments are extremely dangerous.

Six years ago, in 2018. Norberg was interviewed in Finland by one Johan Backman. The interview came shortly after a major NATO military exercise called “Arctic Challenge”, now an annual exercise that continue through today (2024). Norbeg describes the Arctic Challenge from 2017:

I was in Rovaniemi (above the Arctic Circle) in the beginning of June (2017) giving a talk at the enormous war game “Arctic Challenge” military exercise, The center of this exercise was Rovaniemi, together with Lulea and Buda, those three staging places with huge airfields are being developed to become a common war-planning area.(1) … I think that this Arctic Challenge exercise was the third annual one in a row. It included 150 jet fighters exercising “inter-operability.” Inter-operability is a very important strategic term. That is what Finland and Sweden were doing together with seven other countries, specifically with the United States Air Force.

For me it’s obvious that they are planning a war on Russia. This becomes a clearer when we combine these (Rovaniemi, etc) the other NATO installations surrounding Russia.

This particular “Arctic Challenge” was held a full six years before Russia launched its Special Military Operation into Ukraine. Norberg was right when she said: “For me it’s obvious that they are planning a war on Russia.” So it is not so much that Russia is planning an invasion of the Nordic countries (and W. Europe in particular) but to the contrary, that for some time time now NATO has been planning a war against Russia. 

She goes on to comment on how “well, it’s obvious that Sweden is a NATO country without being in NATO”. In the same interview, Norberg went on to talk about “S-Range”, the world’s largest satellite downloading station located just outside the small northern Swedish town of Kiruna in north central Sweden’s Arctic area.

War today – all wars – are launched with the help of satellites. Satellites are swirling around the globe taking photos of the entire world and these photos have been downloaded. S-Range is downloading the photos and sending them to the Pentagon.

Long before this U.S. satellite base was established at Kiruna, in 2004, the Swedish Parliament passed a law opening up the sale of land for whatever purpose in Sweden’s far north “in an area as big as Germany”. Germany was mentioned because prior to setting up this satellite base in northern Sweden, it existed in Germany but pressure from German society resulted in it closure there. The Swedish government, generally unknown to its population, welcomed the base to move to its territory. Admitting that “she was genuinely frightened over how … the situation developing in the north of Sweden and for the Nordic countries”, Norberg noted:

After that in 2006 military exercises began on an almost yearly basis – Nordic air maneuvers involving ten, twelve counties. Arctic Challenge” followed with pretty much the same countries involved – Germany, Britain, France, U.S., Belgium, Netherlands and occasionally also the Baltic states.

Norberg then turned her attention to the naval arms race already escalating in the Baltic Sea, no longer, “the Sea of Peace” where NATO war games have been taking place for more than a decade. Again, she is noting the NATO-led militarization of the area more than a decade prior to the Russians launching their offensive into Ukraine.

What has happened in the Baltic Sea that is frightening? Here’s an example – one of the ten, twenty I could cite – Baltic NATO naval maneuvers in 2013, 2014 involving countries that are
training for war under the title of “Baltic Operations.” Add to this – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania now house U.S. in Ämari, Estonia (about 28 miles west and a little south of Tallinn, the capitol), in Šiauliai in Lithuania (about 133 miles northwest of Vilnius, the capitol) and at the port city of Liepaja in Latvia. There are NATO bases in all three countries.

… And now here we are again with the lies, demonizing Russia, a huge neighbor with all kinds of perfidious evil. We are in an evil moment today that makes us believe that Russia is planning to
attack Sweden. I say, don’t count on me to be a part of such nonsense.

The NATO-Swedish relationship, that had started informally but energetically already in 2004, was formalized in 2014 when Sweden signed a “Host Nation Support Agreement” with NATO. It indicated that from then on NATO trained in Sweden. It also bound Sweden to NATO in other ways: if Sweden was to be attacked and could not sufficiently defend itself, then
this Host Nation Support Agreement kicks in and the United States, through NATO will “come to Sweden’s defense.” It also meant that Sweden had no say in a war about troops deployed in Sweden using nuclear weapons.

Sweden has been training for such a possible scenario. What this means is that Swedish soldiers, through their NATO connection, have been training for war against Russia in these exercises from Stockholm to Gothenburg as well as on Gotland (Swedish island off the east coast of the Swedish mainland in the Baltic Sea). U.S. military has come to Sweden and not only U.S. troops but also a good deal of equipment.

During the Aurora maneuvers, 1435 U.S. troops landed at Gothenburg. Sweden contributed about 20,000 troops. 575 other foreign soldiers participated from other NATO countries
including France, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and Denmark. The maneuvers were work on NATO-Swedish military cooperation as defined by the Host Nation Support Agreement. The weaponry involved included surface-to-air Patriot missiles and the military experts versed in using them.

Already around the same time, 2014, the Swedish island of Gotland, in the western reaches of the Baltic Sea was being prepped for war. A U.S.  helicopter company was been deployed., along with 80 military personnel. The equipment includes Chinook and Apache helicopters. Besides the helicopters U.S. marines, national guard personnel started to  participate in war training on Gotland, in the middle of the Baltic Sea, and in a very strategic position for launching an attack on Russia.

That said, there are suggestions that NATO-Swedish cooperation had developed stealthly even earlier than 2014. A decade before sophisticated antennas of the kind used to track satellites and air craft had already been established on Gotland. During the Cold War, the Swedes had already permitted the United States to install antenna’s necessary for launching missiles, ie, to go to war.

Besides the Kiruna satellite listening station, and its growing relationship with NATO and all that that entailed, even prior to 2014 Sweden had an underwater “listening bas” at Leershield, s nine Swedish miles south of Goteberg in the south. Leershield has the capability to intercept all underwater Russian cable traffic which are sent either to Britain or the United States.
The same with Louvin in the middle of Stockholm. All the cables coming from Russia through Sweden are taken and sent to the U.S. and U.K., all the military information, political
information to enhance the Pentagon’s current control over Russia.

Sweden’s recent entry into NATO is simply the icing on the cake of a relationship that had been growing since the 1989, 1991 collapse of communism in Europe. The military-institutional relationship had long been in place. The Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, simply gave a final boost to the Swedish-NATO security marriage.

What a shame! From a prosperous neutral country to a likely target of Russian missiles should regional war break out. Totally unnecessary but, … here we are!

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1. Rovaniemi is in Finland above the Arctic Circle, essentially the center of Finnish Lapland. Lulea is on Sweden’s northeast coast, Buda in central Sweden west and a hair north of Stockholm.

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Flinging prudence – and its neutrality – to the winds, Sweden joins NATO – Part One.