No words can mask the bleeding NATO wound
Niclas Vent
Reporter
This is a comment text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Published 12.24
After several years of deteriorating security, the first weeks of the year unfortunately carry a clear promise:
It will get even worse in the future.
At Sweden's most important security conference, someone must dare to say what is the reason for this.
He came as a dream about the USA.
When Chris Cavoli arrived at the People and Defense rikskonferens National Conference in i Sälen a year ago, a nervous Swedish security policy establishment willingly fell into his soft arms.
The NATO Supreme Commander was full of praise for Sweden. Clear about the Russian threat. Concrete and professional. A smile warm as a spring breeze.
A week before Donald Trump was to be sworn in as president, no one could signal calm and continuity better than the American general.
No one better personified the “home” that Ulf Kristersson thought he had found for Sweden in NATO.
A home for peace and freedom. A home of friendship, feelings and values, not just hard power.
Chris Cavoli stood for all that.
The Russian threat is real, he said. It is systematic. Long-term. Generational.
Three months later, because of these very perceptions, he was a hair away form being fired.
Over the past year, I have heard many serious men in uniform say the same thing:
Sweden’s problem is not who is in the White House, it is who is in the Kremlin.
Unfortunately, that has become less and less true.
Don’t get me wrong. There is only one world leader threatening Europe with large-scale war and devastation. Putin’s challenge is serious and long-term, but the problem he presents us with has the advantage of not swinging back and forth.
The war in Ukraine is soon entering its fifth year.
How we meet the threat from Russia is clear by now, and there is great political consensus in Sweden to do so.
That is why our most important security conference here in Sälen in the year of disfavor 2026 can get away with the theme “Action and Delivery”.
Putin can be planned for.
How do you plan for Donald Trump?
Give him a year in the White House, and nothing will be the same.
He has:
- Pointed out the EU as enemy number one in his national security strategy.
- Exploited Europe's security deficit to impose high tariffs on us.
- In violation of international law, his allies claim to uphold, bombed Iran and kidnapped the dictator of Venezuela.
- Provided no financial support to Ukraine.
- Increasingly clearly sided with Russia in the peace talks
- Increasingly loudly demanded to take over Greenland from Denmark.
The last point is particularly serious.
Not only would a takeover of Greenland against Denmark's will be a death sentence for NATO.
The row is already increasing the risk of war with Russia, because it is splitting our alliance and reducing our deterrence.
Therefore, this conclusion seems inevitable to me:
What has worsened Swedish and European security the most in the past year has its origins in the White House, not in the Kremlin.
Sweden's and Europe's Trump strategy has so far been to trust the bureaucratic processes and minimize conflict politically. The military has continued to work as usual, while our politicians have flattered, coaxed and folded.
That strategy has always had a best-before date. If the US takes Greenland, that date will definitely have passed.
Soon enough, Europe could stand alone and divided, besieged and pressed from both East and West.
It is an almost unreal dangerous situation, and the development of events that may follow it is really hard to see the bottom of it.
Today, a new American NATO Supreme Commander, Alexus Grynkewich, will arrive in Sälen.
But this time, no words will be able to mask the bleeding wound in the alliance.
NATO is still alive, just barely, but everything that Kristersson wanted to come home to has already died.
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