NATO has made Sweden a worse country

NATO has made Sweden a worse country

Today, the Swedish decision to join the war alliance is made 

Of:

Eric Rosen

PUBLISHED: TODAY 05.00

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a meeting in Madrid in the summer of 2022

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg together with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a meeting in Madrid in the summer of 2022

Photo: Bernat Armangue/TT

CULTURE

When the Riksdag today hammers out the decision that we should join NATO, the price is very high: Sweden is greatly weakened as a society governed by the rule of law and becomes a much more unfree country.

The decision is taken after a farcical year where first a social democratic and then a right-wing government embarrassed themselves and dragged Sweden into the dirt.

All to appease idiots in whose hands we chose to place our security.

In the trilateral agreement that Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) signed on June 28 last year and that Foreign Minister Tobias Billström (M) turned inside out on himself to live up to, there are a series of fatal promises to Turkey.

Extraditions, not infrequently secret, of individuals Turkey considers reprehensible will be carried out. All support to the Kurdish organizations YPG and PYD, which fought harder than anyone else against IS, must be stopped. Sweden must remove all obstacles to arms exports to Turkey. And not least: Sweden has promised to enact new terror laws.

The NATO agreement was concluded under Jens Stoltenberg's supervision and is thus the product of the entire war club, not just dictator Erdoğan's act of blackmail against Sweden and Finland.

Then the current government has written legislation so vague and unclear that it can cover pretty much anything. Anyone can soon become a terrorist

With regard to the new terror laws, many have already highlighted the Council of Law's criticism. Aftonbladet's Oisín Cantwell writes, for example: "The lawyers warn that the new paragraphs are so unclear that they can be used against movements that, with weapons in hand, try to overthrow dictatorships. [...] The lawyers also warn that these sections can lead to restrictions on freedom of press and expression."

Cantwell saw the politicians' way of acting, calling them "thugs". Personally, when I read the opinion of the Legislative Council, I see something even bigger. It is a story of ill-conceived repression so sweeping and comprehensive as to be anti-democratic. I read the text as a warning, not primarily to the legislators about their competence, but to the whole of society. About how we change, become a different country.

In the process that leads to the law that will now come into force on June 1, to NATO's great joy, the previous government has pushed through a change in the form of government, so that it will be possible to limit Swedish freedom of association.

Then the current government has written legislation so vague and unclear that it can cover pretty much anything. Anyone can soon become a terrorist.

The vagueness means risks not only for those who want to support the PKK or Islamist terrorism, on the contrary, it is so open that even relations with international movements - on the left or far right - can be seen as support for organized terrorism.

It is likely that even left-wing parties and Sweden Democrats, as well as the occasional snitch, will have to see some of their international collaborations as a kind of terrorist support in the future.

As the Legislative Council writes, the unclear purpose could possibly be to criminalize association with an organization where "most of the people in the association sympathize with the crimes committed by a few people in it". Police and courts "may have to make trade-offs of a political nature or at least trade-offs that other states consider to be of a political nature". A nightmarish development for a rule of law.

Another question the Law Council has is whether it is always indefensible to "associate with an organization that wants to overthrow a dictatorship or a democratically dubious regime" if it is not at the same time certain that that organization will replace the dictatorship with a constitutional democracy. To mention something. If more people read the objections, more people would be scared. The text is here.

So why does Ulf Kristersson's government as well as the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats completely ignore all objections? Well, because the only important thing is NATO.

Then it must be rushed through, even if the politicians agree that it is too vague, unclear and judicially uncertain. Safety is considered to trump legal certainty. On area after area. And Sweden is considered today, by a qualified majority in the Riksdag, to be safer if we make undemocratic decisions to protect our democracy.

Perhaps the same desire to be prepared and not to upset any NATO general is behind the decision that Sweden will join the military alliance without saying no to the placement of nuclear weapons on Swedish soil. Instead, we have chosen to lean against a formulation that it is probably not necessary, the government does not see "that there is reason to have nuclear weapons or permanent bases on Swedish territory in peacetime". It is an analysis as stable as last spring's many statements that Turkey will not pose a major problem for a Swedish NATO application.

In order to create a safe country, we refrain from making sure that no nuclear weapons are placed in Sweden, instead we enter with a pious hope that nothing will change.

The Riksdag will make its decision today. The few who vote no are not enough. After that, only ratification by the remaining NATO countries remains. But even if Turkey makes such high demands on restricted Swedish democracy and undermined Swedish legal certainty that we refuse to go along, the steps that have already been taken can be undone.

Sweden has already become a more insecure and worse country in the process.