Tag: Gotland

4) To be or NATO be. Lesson twentynine

Putin visited Finland in June-July 2016 in conjunction with Russia’s up to date biggest readiness control exercise, which was carried out on August 25-31, 2016. It was an informal visit, and according to Russia, they didn’t sign any agreements. Sauli Niinistö and Putin discussed “the relations between Finland and Russia and the situation in Europe”. Before that Putin and the Finnish president Sauli Niinistö met as recently as March 2016 in Moscow.

Nato held a summit in the first week of July 2016, where it was agreed to deploy four reinforced battalions in the Baltic countries and in Poland, which Russia naturally opposed.

At a previous meeting in Finland the Moderate (Moderaterna = alleged right wing political party in Sweden) Karin Enström, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized Niinistö for meeting with Putin. Niinistö replied that Sweden does not keep up with what is happening in the world and that, e.g. The United States has an active dialogue with Russia. But you have to understand that Finland is cornered by Russia and that it was no coincidence that Putin took a trip over the border in conjunction with the Russian mass mobilization. What were discussed there can determine Sweden’s fate.

The country that wants to annex the Baltics and is located in the east, gain a huge advantage, if they undisturbed under false pretences that no Natoland is going to be affected, first can seize the large Swedish island of Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea. If they seize Gotland they can create a total A2AD (Anti Access/Area Denial) over large parts of Scandinavia and the whole of the Baltic Sea with advanced long range air defense systems.

I think that Russia will try to find cracks in the Swedish-Finnish relations. They hope that one country will not apply for NATO membership without the other country also doing so, and that there will therefore be no membership for any of the countries. In one way, the True Finns (political right wing party in Finland) are dangerous which have worked to strip the Swedish-speaking part of the Finnish people of their civil rights. It may come back to haunt them. I believe that Finland is more dependent on hooking on a Swedish membership than Sweden is dependent on hooking on a Finnish membership. Finland, with NATO’s eyes, can probably be more easily sacrificed than Sweden. It can put Finland in a difficult situation if Sweden joins the NATO organization without a co-signing together with Finland. It’s what happened when Sweden joined the EU. The Finns haven’t forgotten.

In the above diagram you can see who the weakest link in the chain is. It’s Germany. For my part, although Sweden is not a member of NATO, I am prepared to help defend a NATO nation in the Nordic region, if it is small, like the Baltic States or Iceland. But promises of military aid without first showing that you are really prepared to follow up on it are not worth much. So I am ready, if I were an authorized statesman, to let our Visby-class corvettes and our submarines, from time to time patrol the waters of the Baltic States in peacetime. I have already made a Baltic ex officer assurances and thus I cannot back down.

I am also ready to support Finland in different ways. But it doesn’t matter what I say, or even what our defense minister Peter Hultqvist says, if we do not have a plan for how the help should be executed in peacetime and in wartime or if we don’t have the means to help in any decisive way. We are not alone in not having a plan. NATO lacks or lacked a functioning plan since the United States doesn’t have any land-based persevering deterrent like medium-range ballistic missile systems with versatile types of war heads, like the Russian Iskander-M, which is deployed in Kaliningrad. The United States has phased out most of its tactical nuclear arsenal and the one that is available is not land-based, it is air and sea based.

This is the fourth and last lesson concerning Sweden, Finland and NATO. I hope I haven’t left the Finns with a grudge towards this patriotic Swede. I am prepared to help the Finns with whatever help we can allow ourselves to give to them, even officers and fighting units in Swedish uniform. A hypothetic war in the twentytwenties will be much more qualitatively materiel focused than in the Russo-Finnish winterwar in 1939-1940, and I am afraid that we are not going to be willing to supply the advanced materiel the Finns are going to need without also controlling its contributive forms. That means that wherever there is advanced Swedish equipment, it is going to be operated by Swedish personnel under Swedish command. At least if I have anything to say about it.

But first we need a solid plan and binding agreements.

Homework:

Can Sweden and Finland prevent that Russia could find cracks in our Swedish-Finnish relations? If so, how?

Please motivate your answer!

Roger M. Klang, defense political Spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden

1) To be or NATO be. Lesson twentysix

Since 2014, a threatening Russian rhetoric combined with an aggressive behavior on the military air and sea arena has been displayed towards both Sweden and Finland, mainly regarding our approach to NATO. Russia threatens us, not because we could seek membership in NATO, but because we are approaching NATO. This is both good and bad news.

The good news is that Putin knows that Russia cannot reasonably attack Sweden unprovoked and that there is room for us to slip into and acclimatize in NATO in the future without formally joining.

The bad news is that it gets more difficult to formally join NATO. Unfortunately, Russia’s rhetoric is toxic, everybody are fascists and Russia is entitled to expansive self-defense. This means that they have stopped every form of dialogue. It means more polarization that can lead to war. Everything is depending on Russia now.

The question as I see it is not if Sweden and Finland should join NATO. The question is; how strong military forces each country must have, in order to have the freedom of choice both to stand outside NATO alt. to join NATO.

If we should be non-aligned or full-fledged NATO members also boil down to; Can NATO, i.e. the US, deploy forces via the Atlantic puddle or via the air and deploy mechanized troops before the one week military resistance is over and Gotland and/or northern Norrland and Scania in the south are taken. At a superficial glance, the most important thing seems to be to get help with air forces.

But it is not enough having a significant airforce to beat the Russians in northern Norrland, because the enemy has mobile air defense systems. Therefore, the most important thing for us is that we have our own air defense systems in Norrland and preferably land-based cruise missiles with supportive types of UAS and that we can meet the enemy on the ground.

The answer to whether the United States can deploy forces in time I guess depends on their willingness to sacrifice soldiers and tax mony for us, and it also depends on what kind of military branch and weapon systems we can expect them to help us with, and in which part(s) of Sweden the war is raging.

Air force reinforcements could in principle arrive here before the week is over. But then we may not have any remaining relevant airbases given that we have probably been combated. Then we are faced with “fait accompli” regarding Gotland’s air defense. American air forces need 2-4 days before they can reach Norway. Marine forces need 8-14 days, and green forces need 1-2 months before they can reach a Swedish or Norwegian port.

What could possibly make a difference on the island of Gotland is, above all, target-measuring ability for cruise missiles, but also soldiers with FGM-148 Javelin against combat vehicles and air defense systems, etc. The first mentioned probably requires compatibility in certain areas, because information must be able to be linked and used by a platform with cruise missiles which is located e.g. in Skagerack.

In Norrland, our airbases will probably also be combated. But possibly the railway connection between the Norwegian Trondheim, where the United States has pre-stocked materiel in different mountain rooms, and Swedish Luleå is intact or can be repaired quickly.

The Port of Gothenburg can be used, but Russia can threaten to mine it. Whether they make real of the threat or not, noone will dare to use the harbor before it is mine-searched.

If the Finnish army lasts for just over 3 weeks, a heavy American mechanized brigade with equipment and personnel will be able to deploy, in addition to the combat vehicles that may be pre-stored in a total of 8 mountain rooms in the Trøndelagsregion, in Norway with transport flights and from there to Norrland and/or Finland via the railway. But there is no reason to assume that the railway remains intact all the way, though all the way may not be needed.

One can ask whether the Swedish influence in the world decreases if we join NATO where the enemy always is called Russia, China or the militant Islamism. But what do the politicians really mean by “non-alignment”, do they mean that we should be solitary and alignment free (read; completely alone in the world), or do they mean that we should safeguard our freedom to choose our alliance partners as we see fit?

From the beginning our neutrality policy was called; “Alliance in peace, aimed at neutrality in war” when the declaration was first formulated by Olof Palme and the Social Democrats in the early 1970s. The Swedish Social Democrats largely adhere to this declaration today. The declaration is easy to read and it can be interpreted in only two ways. Olof Palme wasn’t a cowardly man but the way the world sees this declaration reads either ”cowardice” or ”I am a traitor”. The problem for us is that the next war can very well be confined to ourselves and a well-known provocator, so that we are the ones standing with our pants down.

One can look at our non-alignment today as if we want to keep our freedom to act as we see fit, or in other words to make decisions after our conscience. Praxis is that we choose alliance partners and not only for our own gain. Given the unilateral declaration of solidarity proclamated by our former so called right wing government, it is a matter of being free to choose our own alliance partners. But the declaration of solidarity was not popular, at least not in Finland, and this is because we cannot back up our former governments great fine words militarily.

There is no doubt that as long as the Baltic countries can count on American help, Sweden can count on an American interest in using our territory. Ironically, this means that Russia too has an interest in using our territory. From that presumption, it becomes a race for Swedish territory. Traditionally, this has been the strongest argument for Swedish neutrality policy. But then we need to be able to control our own territory, and we can hardly do that at present date.

The Americans can unload on the Swedish west coast, including at Landvetter Airport, and transport the materiel on land to the north, east and south. The notion that the Americans may wish to win a minor stalemate in the Baltic Sea can be the main reason why the island of Öland actually would turn out to be a very strategic island for both the US and Russia. The Americans therefore need many allies in Sweden. They need large sections of the population and defense organisation to be NATO friends.

The Balkans and Camp Bondsteel have become extremely important for the US northern European strategy. It is no secret that NATO has been on a charm offensive against several countries in the Balkans in 2016.

The Russians need Visby Airport on northern Gotland, which is favoured by Gotland being an island. Visby is the largest resort on Gotland and is located on the island’s west coast.

Each country has unique conditions in unique times. Sweden and Finland have been warned in disguised terms to join NATO. Our situation can be likened to a trust exercise where a person closes his eyes, crosses his arms and falls back towards a person who is supposed to catch him in his fall. Will the US catch us in our fall backwards, or will we hit the ground without any possibility of cushioning our fall?

On the other hand, Sweden participates in the recurring international joint ventures Baltops, Northern Coasts and the Archtic Challenge Excercise, where participants from several countries in Europe and the US participate. We are already participating in the RFP (Reserve Forces Pool) within the framework of NATO Response Forces. Archtic Challenge Excercise is led rotated by Sweden, Finland and Norway. Baltops is led by the United States for best interoperability of the exercise.

Homework:

Do you think that Sweden and Finland should seek to be invited to the NATO Membership Action Plan and join the NATO alliance simultaneously in the near future? Please motivate your standpoint.

Will the US catch us in our, albeit somewhat cussioned fall to be honest, you think?

Roger M. Klang, defense political Spokesman for the Christian Values Party (Kristna Värdepartiet) in Sweden