Sweden joins the US ruling power

American politics

NATO membership is undemocratic and unwise 

 

Göran Therborn

 

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

 

Updated 15:04 | Published at 04:00  

 

The new American world order is a friend-enemy world, without universal rules, writes Göran Therborn. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto 

 

The Swedish right has reached its great goal since 1945, to become part of the American empire. 200 years of successful Swedish peace and neutrality policy have been abandoned for a US-led military alliance. If there is a third world war, Sweden must absolutely be involved. Both Andersson and Kristersson  have promised NATO - but not the Swedish people.  

 

With the great power's audacity and power to turn the language to suit its interests, the US calls its dominance of the world a "rules-based international order", something that naive Swedish foreign politicians bought cheaply. In fact, the US constantly deviates from international rules. After the Cold War and its political dividing lines and special rules, the US has mainly become the world's bully with military invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq and with troops in Syria and with unilateral economic "sanctions" against countries, organizations and individuals. 

 

Every year, the United Nations calls on the United States to lift the sanctions against Cuba. Without result. The US has also ratified far fewer UN conventions than other countries. The country has opted out of the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the International Criminal Court, and for a while one of its prosecutors was put on the sanctions list. The nonchalance of, or disdain for, the world's most important rule-making organization was recently spotlighted. Five countries in the world have not submitted a single report on their work towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN in 2015: Haiti, Yemen, Myanmar, South Sudan and the United States. 

 

*The US has turned away from a regular world order of free trade and free movement of  capital to a concentration on national “security interests*  

 

The propaganda about a "rules-based international order" is extra brazen, since the US has now not only violated the US-inspired rules of the World Trade Organization, but has thrown the entire international game over, as China emerged as the winner of globalization. The US has turned away from a regular world order of free trade and free movement of capital to a concentration on national "security interests", with strategic export and import bans, investment controls, special national subsidies, military alliances and power struggles between states. Even the rules of geography change. The Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean are now included in the North Atlantic, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO is supposed to operate.  

 

The new American world order is a friend-foe world, without universal rules. It means a strategic retreat, a recognition that the United States cannot make disciples of the entire world. But at the same time a strategy to maintain the rest of the world power.  

 

The United States is the last holder of a North Atlantic world power, a white Christian missionary dynasty established some five hundred years ago, in Spain. Sweden has now linked itself to this aging ruling dynasty's continued claim to power over the world. It is an unwise and anti-democratic decision. In the long run, the earth cannot be ruled by a power elite based in a shrinking tenth of the world's population.