For Swedes it means a dramatic change of national identity, while the alliance gets greater control of the Baltic Sea
Just a few short months ago, Sweden’s Nato membership seemed a very long way from being a done deal. Having submitted its application to join in May 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seemed at times as though Stockholm might be left hanging interminably. While Finland, which had applied to join the alliance at the same time as its neighbour, became a member at record speed last April, Sweden got stuck in a diplomatic quagmire.
Last summer a series of Qur’an burnings in Sweden inflamed ties with Turkey, making a “yes” from Ankara look unlikely and at times inconceivable. And as recently as September, Viktor Orbán’s government was embroiled in a public war of words with Sweden over criticism of Hungary’s democracy and teaching in Swedish schools. Late last month, after Turkey’s parliament had given Sweden the green light, the Hungarian prime minister was still pushing for negotiations in a public letter to his Swedish counterpart, Ulf Kristersson.
Now all that is history. The almost two-year waiting game ended last week when Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz, announced that the issue would be raised in parliament. By Friday, Kristersson and Orbán were standing side by side unveiling a military deal enabling Hungary to buy four Gripen planes from Sweden and declaring that while they still did not agree on everything, they were “prepared to die for each other”. On Monday the Hungarian parliament finally voted in favour of the Scandinavian country’s membership.
I mean they fought in Afghanistan alongside US and joint forces despite not being in NATO. It’s not like a sudden change in military posture.
But now they put a ring on it.
They’re the Belle of the ball!
They’ve increased defense spending by something like 40%
It ain’t nothing.
I wonder why
A large increase in percentage, but I imagine it’s not particularly high in absolute numbers given that we spend a quite small fraction of our taxes on defense.
I googled. Nearing 1% of GDP in 2018. 2.1% of GDP in 2024. Roughly $11.5 billion. Not nothing for a small country. Russia’s at 60 billion, but has more than ten times as many people.
What’s Russia’s percentage of GDP, though?
IRC that 60 billion is 4%. But those are 2022 numbers.
Obviously they’re spending far more now.
Also, given they’ve had been preparing for the war in Ukraine for a while, I suspect they were lying about their true defense spending in 2022 also, but lying about it to avoid raising any alarms.
The US spends 3.7% but unlike the US Sweden doesn’t maintain military bases across the globe or need the capability to fight China in Taiwan.
NOW Ukraine finally gets some Gripens, right?
If I remember right, they’ve had a handful of Ukrainians training on them for awhile, and it’ll probably be a lot harder to muck up shipments of Sweden’s in-house fighter jet that they have unilateral authority to give.
Would be a nice notch of national prestige for the Swedes, having Swedish-made jets getting to Ukraine first.
I’d really love to know who had what on Orban to cause him to change his tune so radically.
Im hungarian, the goal of orban was to get more gripens (swedes didnt wanted to give more, as they dont approve orban’s autocratic, kleptocratic, putin puppet system), and to fight back because of the negative opinions of swedes towards his sick corrupt system, mostly for orban’s fans, who like this “renegade” behavior, while they are live like slaves, and never were renegades, just in words, they always salute to their masters. These fans are like trump’s: lowlife, uneducated, factory workers, or jobless, who dont know any foreign language, dont see the world, they are angry for others who live better than them, and the most of them felt the commie system before 1989 very comfortable, and they want it back, except of tagged as commies, so the marketing says the opposite.
Great thanks. So is he still popular with the rightwing scum? Or has he chilled out a bit?
He is popular, with the so called “rightwing” scum. He is doing the commie (dont mix with real communists) politics but wrapped in nationalist box that these “rightwing”-s want, and they are very active, as they are old nostalgic pensioners, or jobless middle age people, who have time.
I cite hungarian a philosophic-politic-social analyst, Róbert Puzsér: “the majority of hungarians didn’t wanted democracy and capitalism az 1989, they just wanted nationalist communism, instead of internationalism communism.”
In former eastern block many people like this, see Fico in slovakia, who is the same nationalist commie. But very similar happens in USA, with trump.
The orbanist propaganda intentionally mixing LGBT people with pedophiles, to create an enemy for their idiotic voters Few weeks ago it turned out, that the president Katalin Novák pardoned a convicted pedophile helper one year ago who tried to hide pedophile crimes of the director few years ago in a governmental orphanage. The president, and some orban puppets resigned because of this, and its clear that both the pedophile helper and the pedophile director were orban’s close friends, but the “rightists” just doesnt care about this. Just like few years before when the hungarian secret service transported the hungarian ambassador from Peru, before the peruvian police arrived, because the ambassador had 19000 pedophile photos on his GOVERNENT laptop!
Fun fact, in hungary the president have just formal rights, like giving pardons, and signing laws, which he/she can reject and send back for refinement ONCE, next time he/she MUST sign it. But since orban have 2/3 majority (~50% of votes on elections), and the parlaiment elects the presidents, all of the presidents are orbans puppets, we call them “orban’s pen”.
Meanwhile the “nationalist” orban government sells everything to chinese, and ruskies, or to any multinational company that participate in corruption (nearly all).
Thank you! I think I refer to them as ‘rightwing’ because the MAGA lot in the US love him for his autocratic ways.
Sweden had Gripen fighter jets he wanted to buy.
God bless the greatest alliance mankind has ever seen!
I have a friend in the Swedish military and I’m happy that our countries are (soon to be) allies too.
Technically unrelated but: Canada should send Ukraine (almost) all our tanks. We should retain only enough to train Canadians and Ukrainians.
I would keep some tanks pending US elections this year 🤠
