Enjoy now - the hangover can be terrible
Sweden's first NATO meeting could be the beginning of the end
Niclas Vent
Reporter
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Published 10.41
NATO is coming home, bigger and more beautiful than ever, for a star-studded 75th anniversary party where Sweden has a good chance of becoming queen of the ball.
Enjoy the party.
The hangover can be terrible.
Quick version
History has its ironies.
In February 2022, the most powerful collection of states in world history found itself sitting with a defense alliance that could not defend itself.
It was not to be.
The wars the alliance countries had intended to fight were small, far away and against technologically inferior opponents. How large the bet would be was always selectable. If things went wrong, you could always go home. Which we did too.
The era of expeditionary warfare was every finance minister's dream.
Heavy and expensive equipment such as artillery pieces, tanks and anti-aircraft robots were not needed and the only soldiers who needed to be fully prepared were the few who were actually deployed.
There was money to be saved, and the states of Europe were happy to do so.
Red pencils went into the investment plans and what could have become gunpowder and carbines were burned on holidays, employment tax deductions and kitchen renovations.
We mortgaged the eternal peace and lived up the profits.
It was, of course, to some extent understandable.
Anyone who doesn't aspire to a world where steel has become ploughshares and vineyard knives should be put in, but with a neighbor like ours it would have been wise to save at least a few swords and spears under the floorboards.
History swung as it usually does. First slowly - then very, very fast.
That's why the February 2022 awakening was so brutal.
Hundreds of thousands dead and wounded. Thousands of tanks lost. Killing, grinding battles in larger formations than NATO has practiced with for ages.
"It could not have been more different from what we had prepared for," as NATO's Supreme Commander Christopher Cavoli says.
The alliance met the new world with empty stores, pants down and a 33-year-old collective defense plan that should have been updated in 1994, the bright summer of the World Cup when the future could still be imagined as a better place.
The 2,5 years that have passed since the invasion have been spent getting NATO back on its feet.
Write plans that can actually be used. Make sure there are troops to carry them out.
The plans are now available.
The troops... Well.
Informed sources recently told the Financial Times that the alliance has about 5 percent of the air defense systems that would be needed to defend the eastern flank against a Russian attack. Britain is "not ready to fight and win an armed conflict on any scale at all", according to the outgoing head of the Ministry of Defense's evaluation.
To take just two examples.
This is where NATO stands when, after 75 years, the alliance comes home to the city where it was created. There is simply a lot to do.
Still, expectations for the summit in Washington are low.
The US has actively worked to make it so.
Just four days after the summit, the Republicans gather at the convention to officially choose Donald Trump as the presidential candidate. This is when the election campaign begins in earnest. The entire NATO meeting will therefore be discussed in the shadow of American domestic politics, and the road here has been about managing expectations from the US side.
There absolutely must not be a big row about the writings about Ukraine's future membership, as in Vilnius last year. Now it is unity and strength that must be shown. Joe Biden should shine as the leader of the free world.
For the same reason, a higher target for defense spending will not be on the agenda, even though it would appear to be needed. The fact that more NATO countries than ever now reach the 2 percent goal is a bummer for Biden. Raised ambitions, on the other hand, mean that scores of countries are moved to the wrong side of the goal line with the stroke of a pen, a gift to Donald Trump's parasitic rhetoric that Biden is not eager to send.
Biden needs victories - and Sweden's entry into the alliance is a clear one. Therefore, he will make sure that Sweden is in the spotlight in one way or another, like this at our first summit as a member.
It will be brilliant, and Ulf Kristersson will take the opportunity to sunbathe.
Everyone knows that everything said at the meeting can turn to dust and ashes in November.
If Donald Trump is elected president, everything can be turned upside down.
At the summit in the Netherlands next year, we could have an American president who threatens to end aid to Ukraine, wants to make peace with Russia, promises not to admit new members to the alliance, withdraws American troops from Europe, scales back American participation in NATO structure and require the Europeans to pay cash for American capability enhancers they themselves lack.
No one will say it out loud, but this possible future will undoubtedly shape the mood at this year's NATO summit as well.
An ever so lovely dance is overshadowed by the knowledge that it could be the last.
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