| From: [email protected] (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.world.europe.northern,clari.world.organizations,
clari.world.europe.benelux
Subject: Cold War Neutrals Sign NATO Partnership
Date: Sun, 8 May 94 0:00:09 PDT
BRUSSELS, Belgium, (Reuter) - Sweden and Finland break a
tradition of firm neutrality that endured throughout the Cold
War Monday when they forge a formal link with NATO by signing
the alliance's "Partnership for Peace."
The partnership, originally designed to provide closer
military links between NATO and its former enemies, will enable
the two countries to take part in joint peacekeeping exercises
and other training with the alliance.
Fifteen countries from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union have signed the partnership scheme so far, many of them in
the hope that it will help them become full members of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
While Sweden and Finland have no intention of joining the
16-nation alliance, they plan to join the European Union next
year. The EU is developing a common foreign and security policy.
NATO has accepted Sweden and Finland as participants in the
scheme because both countries have long experience in U.N.
peacekeeping operations which could prove useful to the alliance
as it takes on new missions in the post-Cold War world.
Finland has already suggested setting up a peacekeeping
college in Helsinki to which NATO countries and others would be
invited to send officers for training, alliance sources say.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margaretha af Ugglas and Finnish
Foreign Minister Heikki Haavisto will sign the partnership at
NATO headquarters Monday.
Alliance sources said both countries would then present NATO
with a detailed outline of the cooperation they want under the
scheme Tuesday.
|
| Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
From: [email protected] (Yli-Kuha Kari)
Subject: Sweden comes down off the fence
Sender: [email protected] (#Kotilo NEWS system )
Organization: Tampere University of Technology
Date: Sun, 8 May 1994 15:29:54 GMT
In the weekly European (6-12 May) I saw today an article on page 11
about Sweden that might interest some of you. I'm quoting only a few
parts of the article which is written from the European (the weekly)
point of view. The excerpts are (naturally) selected from a Finnish
point of view. I'm not trying to start a new thread, this is just FYI.
The article is about the NATO Partnership for Peace to be signed up on
9 May.
[start quote]
TITLE: Sweden comes down off the fence
AUTHOR: Ian Mather, Diplomatic Editor, reports from Stockholm on the
dramatic changes of attitude bringing more than 200 years of Swedish
neutrality to an end.
EXCERPTS:
Non-swedes are rarely neutral about the Swedes. For a country of only
eight million people, tucked away on the northern fringe of Europe and
threatening nobody, Sweden provokes surprisingly strong feelings.
It is uncritically admired for having created the ultimate welfare
state, linked to a tradition of neutrality which has kept it out of
wars for 200 years. On the other hand, Swedes stand condemned as
hypocrites for preaching the virtues of a cradle-to-grave caring
society while spending disproportionately large sums of manufacturing
weapons, which they then sell to the rest of the world to subsidise
their own inflated social benefits.
The Swedish paradox is summed up by the Nobel peace prize, endowed by
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Even today, the Swedes continue
to produce a flow of new weapons for world markets. These include what
is claimed to be the world's only "homing mortar", a torpedo that can
detect submarines in shallow water, and a particularly vicious mine
with "multi-sensors", called Bunny.
[some talk about the changed attitude in Sweden about neutrality...]
Sweden is also to adopt a wait-and-see stance towards the Western
European Union, which the EU has said will be developed as the EU's
defence component. Swedes will not accept the commitment involved in
Article Five of the WEU's founding treaty, which stipulates that if one
member state is attacked the others will give it all military
assistance.
But the Swedish government argues that joining the WEU is not
obligatory for the members of the EU. Denmark and Ireland are not
members. "The WEU states declared that states that were members of the
EU would be invited to join the WEU. Since this was an invitation it
did not constitute an obligation", said a recent foreigh ministry
report.
[...]
Unlike all other countries in Europe, which are cutting back on defense
spending, Sweden is increasing its defense budget to 2.5 per cent of
GNP, one of the highest in Europe. Most of the extra funds will go on
buying new tanks for its army, new planes and new missiles for its air
force.
[...about the self-sufficiency of the Swedish defence...]
So far, no other country is buying the Gripen and Sweden suffered a
humiliating blow when Finland decided to buy American F-16s. Finland,
along with Austria and Denmark, had made substantial contributions to
to the Swedish coffers by buying an earlier Swedish warplane, the
Draken.
[...] [end quote]
--
/Kari
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected] (Ahrvid Engholm)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Re: Sweden comes down off the fence
Date: 8 May 1994 16:58:55 GMT
Organization: Stacken Computer Club, Stockholm, Sweden
The Swedish weapons export, I dare say, has very little to do with
paying for social benefits. (I'm a pacifist, BTW, and don't think we
should pro- duce weapons. But let's go on.)
The reasons for having an export of weapons is usually explained this
way:
1) A neutral state needs its own arms industry in case there's a
conflict around us and we get cut off. This was exactly what happened
during WWII.
2) But an arms industry is expensive to run. If it can get some of its
incomes from export, it will become cheaper.
3) So they export. There are some laws governing to who the weapons may
be sold. Basically they may not be sold to countries with internal
unrest, or with a probability to go to war. Or more simply: you may
export weapons to those who don't need them...
> The Swedish paradox is summed up by the Nobel peace prize, endowed by
>Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Even today, the Swedes continue to
>produce a flow of new weapons for world markets. These include what is claimed
>to be the world's only "homing mortar", a torpedo that can detect submarines
>in shallow water, and a particularly vicious mine with "multi-sensors",
>called Bunny.
And the JAS fighter, and the Carl Gustaf grenade launcher, and
gunpowder, and...
By the way, dynamite is an explosive that usually is unfit for military
purposes. It is to unstable. You can't put dynamite in an artillery
shell. It will blow up when you fire. The military use other
explosives. So Alfred Nobel didn't after all invent a potent military
explosive.
My own opinion is that the politicians are stalling [on the question of
joining the WEU]. The public opinion might not yet be ready for
abandoning the traditional policy of neutrality. In a decade or so,
maybe the public opinion has changed, and the question can be brought
up again. Meanwhile there is no need to rush ahead and make
committments.
An important thing is of course that the political situation in Europe
has changed drastically. Before there was a point with being neutral in
case of a conflict between the east and the west. Now, the east side is
no more. What shall you be neutral against? At the same time, the
situation in parts of the old east bloc isn't exactly stable, so it is
sensible to wait and see, and prepare yourself to abandon the policy of
neutrality, without doing it quite yet.
The present government is lead by the traditionally defence-friendly
conservatives (and the minister of defence is a conservative). They
have accused the social democrats of making the defence lag behind, and
they say they are only correcting the situation. Besides, if there are
unrest in Russia, Sweden lies very close.
Taiwan is said to be interested in the JAS Gripen. Some German defence
politicians have said it could replace the increasingly more expensive
Eurofighter project. A British firm has offered to help the
international marketing of the JAS fighter. Those who think that we
should export weapons may yet have a few things to hope for.
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