A JAS 39 Gripen C/D fighter aircraft takes off from Sweden’s Lulea-Kallax Airport March 4, 2024, during the NATO military exercise Nordic Response 24, a Norwegian national exercise conducted in northern Sweden, Norway and Finland with associated airspace and waters .
Anders Wiklund | AFP | Getty Images
Sweden officially joined NATO as the 32nd member on Thursday, nearly two years after it first applied for the military alliance.
Previously, the Swedish government said in a statement on Thursday that it was holding an extraordinary meeting to vote on joining NATO after all current members agreed to the country joining the military alliance.
The news was then confirmed later on Thursday by a statement from NATO, in which Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the country was “taking its rightful place at our table.”
“Sweden’s accession makes NATO stronger, Sweden safer and the entire alliance more secure. I look forward to raising their flag at NATO headquarters on Monday,” he added.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson traveled to Washington, DC this week to hand over the final documents. The country first applied to join NATO in May 2022, not long after Russia’s war against Ukraine began. This represented a significant change in Sweden’s previous policy of military non-alignment, dating back to the Napoleonic Wars.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken receives NATO ratification documents from Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson during a ceremony at the U.S. State Department to mark Sweden’s official entry into the North Atlantic Alliance on March 7, 2024 in Washington, DC
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Finland became an official member of NATO last April, in part because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Authorities in Helsinki and Stockholm decided their nations were no longer safe alone after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and applied to join the alliance a few months later.
NATO members Hungary and Turkey delayed Sweden’s accession process as both countries only voted in favor of it this year. All existing members must agree to a new country joining the alliance, the basic principle of which is that an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them.
Hungary’s ruling party, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has long opposed Sweden’s NATO membership as Sweden criticized the state of democracy in Hungary. The prime ministers of both countries met in Budapest, Hungary last month and pledged to resolve differences. They said they would “die for each other.”
Meanwhile, Turkey ratified Sweden’s NATO membership in January. It was previously said that Sweden was too tolerant of groups that the Turkish government viewed as a security threat. The anti-Muslim protests in Sweden last year further worsened relations.
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2024-03-07 17:05:18
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