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The table of NATO leaders looked a bit more crowded this week when they convened in Washington for their annual summit. It now included a seat for Sweden, the alliance’s newest member, which decided to join after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shattered the illusion that Europe could forever remain at peace.
As the NATO summit wound down on July 11, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson sat down with TIME to discuss the future of the alliance, the threats from Russia, and what it means to join the world’s most powerful military club.
The following transcript of the conversation has been edited for length and clarity by TIME.
TIME: Before joining NATO, Sweden had a roughly 200-year tradition of neutrality and non-alignment. It remained neutral in World War I and World War II. Why was the risk to Sweden so severe in the spring of 2022 that you decided to break with that tradition and apply to join the NATO alliance?
Prime Minister Kristersson: There were two fundamental reasons behind our neutrality. During the Second World War it was pragmatic: Let’s try to stay out of this war and see whether it works or not. It obviously did. It’s a long philosophical discussion whether it was honorable or not to do that. But still.
After the war, the one top reason for not even discussing whether to join NATO was actually because of Finland. Finland was extremely pressurized from the Soviet Union, and in Sweden the general opinion was that it would be an unkind act toward Finland if Sweden also became a NATO member, going the same way as Norway and Denmark.
Slowly but surely, this turned into some kind of ideology: ‘We are neutral. We are not really the West.’ The Social Democratic Party made a big thing out of being neutral, and they stopped any discussion about changing it. People in the foreign office told me later that you couldn’t even discuss whether it would be a new pragmatic solution to become a member of NATO.
Did Sweden see any risks or…
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