[safgasCVS]

Lemme be the guy who farts in the elevator. Sweden has managed to avoid entangling itself in military conflicts around the world for centuries and by joining NATO it’s got itself security but at the expense of potentially involving itself in conflicts regardless if Swedes want to be involved or not. Anyways it seems popular in Sweden but the naive lefty in me still thinks it’s a shame at the collective high-fiving

[tshaddox]

> potentially involving itself in conflicts regardless if Swedes want to be involved or not

The Riksdag voted 269–37 to pass the NATO accession bill, and my understanding is that this is representative of the majority of the Swedish population.

Since NATO’s rules regarding military conflict are a rather conspicuous part of NATO membership, I’d hazard to say the Swedes are being quite explicit about the sort of involvement they desire.

[Hamuko]

Wikipedia would suggest that the Kingdom of Sweden has involved itself in multiple military conflicts in the past century or so, including NATO ops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Sweden#...

[droopyEyelids]

Possibly.

Article 5 only says every other member "will assist" with "such action as it deems necessary"

International law is in many ways a ghost of what we think of as law. There are no enforcement mechanisms. If Sweden failed to involve itself and the USA/NATO wanted to push the point, we'd just apply trade pressure & sanctions to them. But we could and would do that same thing without Sweden being in NATO. (That's how we established the 'coalition of the willing' for the Iraq invasion, and how UN votes are organized)

[ProjectArcturis]

Why should we celebrate neutrality in the face of evil? Surely Sweden would be more proud of its history if it had fought against the Nazis rather than helping them. WW2 would have been shorter as well.