PRESS RELEASE

Hysterical Drive To Pull Sweden and Finland into NATO

April 8, 2014 (EIRNS)—The two Scandinavian countries do have limited cooperation with NATO, but have so far shown no serious attempt to change their neutral status into an Alliance membership. Interested circles have, however, misused the Ukraine crisis in recent days to whip up hysteria in the mainstream media over an alleged "Russian threat", with the support of some leading politicians. Russian air exercises near the Baltic island of Gotland have been misrepresented as rehearsals for an attack on either the three Baltic states and/or an invasion of Gotland and Sweden itself.

Dick Zandee, defense expert at the government-linked Dutch Clingendael Institute for International Relations, is quoted by German news agency Deutsche Welle as saying that the Gotland affair has been blown out of proportion by the Swedish press, and that the argument that Russia planned to invade the three Baltic states from Gotland, was nonsensical, since Russia could more easily attack directly from its land borders to these states.

Speaking to Deutsche Welle, Christopher Chivvis of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore recommends that Finland follow the Swedish example of increasingly taking part in NATO operations just below full Alliance membership, and that the two countries’ cooperation with the Alliance be intensified through the Nordic Defense Cooperation, in which Norway, Denmark, and Iceland are already involved.