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full screen Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard. Photo: Wiktor Nummelin / TT
Maria Malmer Stenergard accuses her representative Margot Wallström of having put Swedish interests second.
She condemns the foreign policy that was carried out in the past as “symbolic politics”.
– It is contentless, ignorant and an attempt to unabashedly rewrite history, replies Wallström.
Last week, Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard gave a speech at the Foreign Policy Institute. Some of the speech has angered Margot Wallström (S), Minister of Foreign Affairs 2014–2019.
“For far too long, Swedish foreign policy was characterized by an idea that we should be a moral great power. It was an expression of a kind of Swedish exceptionalism. A moral great power whose morality consisted in not choosing sides. A moral great power with the belief that we could shape the world not through action, but through symbolic politics,” Malmer Stenergard said in his speech.
– This is pure nonsense. Both social democratic and bourgeois governments have stood for a foreign policy that rests on a broad consensus, that we should be active members of both the UN and the EU, says Wallström.
Immoral to support anti-apartheid?
She turns against the fact that Sweden would have had a self-image as a moral great power.
– But if you now discuss that concept, you can ask yourself what it is that is so difficult for her to put up with. Was it immoral to support the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa?
Wallström lists some impressions that she believes Sweden contributed during her time in power: the introduction of feminist foreign policy, the peace negotiations on Yemen, the Stockholm Initiative for nuclear disarmament and the time as a member of the UN Security Council.
What impression has feminist foreign policy had?
– This means fighting for the rights of girls and women around the world. An insight that peace negotiations are weakened if women are not at the negotiating table. Now 14 countries are following suit, making action plans and putting this high on the agenda. Mexico and Spain for example.
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full screen Margot Wallström (S). Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT
Proud of Carl Bildt’s commitment
Wallström continues:
– Every era has its foreign policy. But why remove the old? I was proud to carry on things that Carl Bildt had started, his commitment to Eastern Europe for example.
Do you think this is also an attack on the policy that was carried out during Bildt’s time?
– Yes, in a way it is. It was obvious to me to have good contact with Carl. We were able to speak to him and his cabinet secretary. Billström never greeted me. I tried to reach him by phone to tell him about the Ukraine work, which I participated in and which the Swedish government did, but he never heard back.
Of course to put Sweden first
Does Maria Malmer Stenergard have the skills required to be foreign minister?
– She is new so she has to find her way. But claiming these things must actually get a response. She picks cheap points and claims completely unworthy things. It goes without saying that every foreign minister puts his country first. We did too. That is why you are foreign minister. It was clear that they put Sweden first.
You were a former foreign minister from the opposition party, can you really take your criticism seriously?
– I don’t care about that. I’m just going to say what I think. I still have five years of experience and a certain weight in these matters, then others can judge the factual arguments. But we should not allow outright lies and strange paraphrases.
The answer: Swedish interests came second
Maria Malmer Stenergard writes in an SMS to Aftonbladet that she does not at all share Margot Wallström’s view of what it means to put Sweden first.
– For this government, this means that we must work for Swedish interests such as free trade and a safe neighborhood together with the countries that are closest to us – in the Nordics and Baltics, in the EU and in NATO, says Malmer Stenergard.
She continues:
– With Wallström’s foreign policy, such Swedish interests and our immediate area came second. We cannot afford that, especially not with the security policy situation that prevails today.
Aftonbladet has sought Carl Bildt for a comment on Malmer Stenergard’s speech, he has not returned with an answer.