Towards a strategic turning point in Stockholm. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he was open, this Monday, May 13, to the deployment of nuclear weapons in Sweden in times of war, at a time when critics are calling for their ban on the soil of the new NATO member.
The Swedish parliament will vote in June on the bilateral defense cooperation agreement (DCA) concluded with the United States which will allow the Americans to access Swedish military bases and store equipment and weapons there. Sweden ended 200 years of military non-alignment by joining NATO in March.
Several NGOs including the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, which campaigns for peace, called on the government to include in the agreement the ban on deploying nuclear weapons on Swedish soil. The government has repeatedly said such a mention is unnecessary, citing “a broad consensus on nuclear weapons” in Sweden as well as a parliamentary decision banning nuclear weapons in peacetime.
“Defend ourselves against countries that could threaten us”
But the Swedish Prime Minister felt that the situation had to be assessed differently in the event of war. “In wartime it’s a completely different question, it would completely depend on what happens,” he told public radio. “In the worst-case scenario, democratic countries in our region of the world must be able to defend themselves against countries that could threaten us with nuclear weapons,” added the head of government.
He stressed that such a decision would depend on Sweden and not the United States. “Sweden decides for Swedish territory,” he said. But, he added, “the objective of our NATO membership and our defense is to ensure that this situation does not arise.” If Ukraine had been a NATO member, “it would not have been attacked by Russia,” he said.
The Social Democratic Party, in power in Sweden at the time of the presentation of the NATO candidacy in May 2022, said at the time that it would endeavor to express “unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory. NATO members Denmark and Norway have both refused to allow permanent foreign military bases or nuclear facilities on their soil during peacetime.