| That means that you are in fact arguing that the government invited Nato to invade Sweden without letting the armed forces know. This is incredibly reckless due to the decentralized nature of the command structure -- why would Nato put their crews in harm's way just to test the Swedish reaction? If exposed, the government officials could actually face charges of treason. Would they accept that personal risk, just to test Sweden's readiness...? Doing these kind of reckless stunts just to get Sweden to side with Nato was definitely not needed. Sweden was already on Nato's side, and everyone knew that. I can imagine Sweden's friends in Nato were invited from time to time to practice together. But that doesn't exclude a presence from the Soviet union, and we have actual proof (not just people saying things) that the Soviets were in fact in Swedish waters. Deep within a military protection area in a hard-to-navigate archipelago on top of it, and possibly with nuclear warhead torpedos! Also when you refer to things such as > Current Defense Minister Bjoern von Sydow said he was surprised, but added, ``I have no reason to question what a former U.S. defense secretary is saying.″ That just means that he can neither refute nor affirm whatever has been said. Ie, he either knows nothing, or can't say anything. The statement gives no information, except that he was personally surprised. A lot of statements from politicians are like this. I'm signing off on this now. I don't understand your interest in this topic nor why it's so important for you to show that it wasn't the Soviet union. The Soviet union is gone, but they were a real threat back then. |
This was Sweden under Olof Palme. They made quite a point of staying neutral and were far from joining the Western Block, let alone NATO. You are making it sound as if they were West Germany.
>That just means that he can neither refute nor affirm whatever has been said.
I agree and wouldnt expect anything else from the current Defense Minister. I would be more interested what the then Defense Minister had to say on the issue.
>That means that you are in fact arguing that the government invited Nato to invade Sweden without letting the armed forces know.
If I had to guess, I would say that the Swedish Government was not informed and the US only said this now to not damage the relationship with the current Swedish government. I would read the comment of the Defense minister the same way. But who knows, maybe some parts of the Swedish Government, having a harder pro NATO stance were involved. But that is a conspiracy theory. But who in the Swedish government knew what is rather irrelevant, as the population of Sweden was confronted with a horde of news reports of Soviet submarines probing the Swedish coastal defenses creating the atmosphere of a dooming Soviet invasion.
>I don't understand your interest in this topic nor why it's so important for you to show that it wasn't the Soviet union
You misunderstand my point, the interesting part is not that the Soviets didnt do it, but that the US and UK manufactured a cold war panic in Sweden, likely to get them to join NATO and drop their neutral stance. Given quite alot of fearmongering in the press yet again, thats a rather important thing to remember. If someone from the Atlantic Bridge tells me that that whale is part of some Russian weapons tests I am a bit skeptic about their motivation. Sure we know Russia does conduct those tests, but we also know that some people really like their anti Russian fearmongering to get people running for cover in the arms of NATO under the command of the big brother overseas. A more sober and realistic reporting would generally be great.