Last year, Sweden and the United States strengthened their defense cooperation, granting access to military bases. Coupled with recent U.S. agreements with Finland, these moves deprived the two countries of the status of buffer zones between the NATO alliance and Russia.
Jan Oberg, director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, said that Sweden’s decision to join NATO may compromise the security of local citizens.
Finland and Sweden, “instead of keeping out of war, being a potential mediator and supporting disarmament and de-nuclearization, will be frontline states drawn into a crisis/tension situation much more easily and early than otherwise,” Oberg said in a recent interview with Xinhua.