{"id":30124,"date":"2016-09-13T17:17:06","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T00:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato"},"modified":"2017-06-04T14:16:12","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T21:16:12","slug":"fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato","title":{"rendered":"Fear Of Russia Drives Sweden Closer To NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Wow; Europe is growing more nervous.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>WASHINGTON: The <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/07\/nato-not-ready-as-russian-sub-threat-rises-csis\/\">Russian threat<\/a> has driven Sweden so close to <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/06\/spend-more-do-more-stoltenberg-carter-to-nato-russia-note-the-new-brigades\/\">NATO<\/a> that the once-neutral nation is becoming an ally in all but name. While the current Swedish government won\u2019t apply for NATO membership \u2014 a position it just reiterated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2016-09-09\/sweden-says-no-to-nato-even-as-study-shows-advantages-of-joining\">Friday<\/a> \u2014 every other kind of collaboration is not only on the table, but actually happening more and more.<\/p>\n<p>Recent agreements are bringing Sweden into NATO policy councils and wargame planning in unprecedented ways. Sweden is <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2015\/09\/russian-a2ad-threat-drives-lockheeds-jassm-sales\/\">building up its forces<\/a> to keep an ever closer watch on Russia both in the <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/05\/should-coasties-or-navy-build-new-icebreaker\/\">Arctic<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/08\/how-to-secure-natos-frontline-states\/\">Baltic<\/a>. A Host Nation Agreement \u2014 signed just months after <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2014\/04\/will-putin-push-sweden-toward-nato\/\">Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea<\/a> \u2014 makes it easier for NATO to operate in Swedish territory (if invited). Sweden has even sent troops to Afghanistan. With friends like these, who needs formal allies?<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/09\/fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato\/\">http:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2016\/09\/fear-of-russia-drives-sweden-closer-to-nato\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow; Europe is growing more nervous. WASHINGTON: The Russian threat has driven Sweden so close to NATO that the once-neutral nation is becoming an ally in all but name. While the current Swedish government won\u2019t apply for NATO membership \u2014 a position it just reiterated Friday \u2014 every other kind of collaboration is not only [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66257,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30124\/revisions\/66257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}