The rumours of the non-debate are exaggerated
Some people claim that our decision to join NATO and to enter into a defence cooperation agreement with USA were made without debate. They are lying.
Spoiler: This is another post translating one of my letters to newspapers. This letter is about the claims that our decison to join NATO and to sign the DCA with USA were made hastily, in secret, and without debate. My letter was published by Sörmlandsbygden 12 June. My Swedish readers may recognise the text as I uploaded a Swedish post about this and other lies about NATO and DCA here. Anyway, here is the English version of the letter.
"The report of my death was an exaggeration", is Mark Twain said to have written in response to his obituary in newspapers. In a similar way, it is claimed in today's newspapers, by people writng op-eds and letters, that the decision about our NATO membership was taken without debate and that the DCA agreement, which is to be considered by the Riksdag in June, has not been debated either. It is hardly possible to find any such article by NATO opponent where claims of non-debate are missing. It is of course complete nonsense. And it is old nonsense.
As Mike Winnerstig shows in Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift (2023/3), the NATO debate was already very lively between 1995 and 2015. Between these years, 641 debate and editorial articles about NATO were published in the Stockholm newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. (Number of articles about NATO in the four papers each year on the y-axis).
Source: Mike Winnerstig (2023).
38 percent positive to NATO in 2015
The debate became more lively already in 2008 after the Kremlin's invasion of Georgia and in 2014 after the Kremlin's occupation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas. In connection with that, NATO opinion swung in favor of NATO.
In the 2015 SOM survey, 38 percent wanted to join NATO while 31 percent opposed membership. In the same year, all four bourgeois parties argued for NATO membership, not just the Liberal and the Moderate parties.
In addition, Sweden's relationship with NATO has been investigated by government committees a number of times over the years. Amongst that by Thomas Bertelman 2013: "Defense policy cooperation - efficiency, solidarity, sovereignty” (Försvarspolitiskt samarbete – effektivitet, solidaritet, suveränitet) (Fö 2013:B) and Krister Bringéus 2016: "Security in a new era” (Säkerhet i en ny tid) (SOU 2016:57).
These investigations received a lot of attention in the media and were widely debated. The Swedish membership of the Partnership for Peace in 1994 was also debated as well as when we received a NATO ambassador in 1998 and a delegation at NATO headquarters in 2008. Over the years, Sweden has also participated in more and more NATO exercises - which has been extensively debated, criticized and exaggerated by NATO opponents.
Against that background, one might think that it would be difficult to claim that there was no debate. But not at all. And it is unsurprising that many of those who claim it also support the Kremlin's genocidal war against Ukraine.