NATO membership - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

NATO declares Ukraine is on an ‘irreversible’ path to membership

Caitlin Doornbos | New York Post — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 20:38:42 +0000

WASHINGTON – Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to NATO membership after Russia’s war on Europe’s largest country brought Kyiv and the security alliance closer than ever, member nations said in the 2024 NATO Summit’s official declaration.

“Ukraine’s future is in NATO. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the alliance,” the declaration said. “As Ukraine continues this vital work, we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”

The summit’s official statement came out as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited congressional leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday.

Though Ukraine is not yet a NATO member, Zelensky made the trek to Washington for the event, which has largely revolved around helping Kyiv win its fight.

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Source: https://nypost.com/2024/07/10/world-news/nato-declares-ukraine-is-on-an-irreversible-path-to-membership/

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Canada’s NATO membership on the line as allies become ‘frustrated’ and ‘disappointed’

ISABELLE DURSO | The Express — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 23:18:30 +0000

Canada has failed to hit domestic military spending goals and fallen short in funding new equipment, frustrating allies in the White House and around Europe.

Canada has become an outlier among the 32-member NATO alliance in recent years, and it seems the country may not be able to hold out for much longer.

Ottawa has failed to hit domestic military spending goals and fallen short in funding new equipment, frustrating allies in the White House and around Europe.

This week, members are expected to gather in Washington for the NATO summit, where they will likely press Ottawa to come up with cash while warning of what could happen if former president Donald Trump wins the election in November.

Max Bergmann, a former State Department arms control official, said to Politico: “What’s happening now that everyone is spending more, the fact that the Canadians aren’t even trying has become obvious.”

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Source: https://www.the-express.com/news/politics/142519/canada-membership-nato-summit-washington

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Hungary ends block on Sweden joining NATO, after months of delays and diplomatic wrangling

Kim Hjelmgaard | USA TODAY — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 17:01:06 +0000

Hungary was the last major hurdle to historically neutral Sweden joining NATO. Russia has long opposed the expansion, and says it will respond if the alliance establishes a military presence there.

Hungary’s parliament voted Monday to ratify Sweden’s bid to join NATO, ending months of delays and diplomatic wrangling following the Scandinavian country’s security policy shift in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The vote was the last major hurdle to Sweden joining the military alliance. It passed 188 to six.

Historically neutral Sweden applied to join NATO at the same time as Finland, in May 2022. Finland became NATO’s 31st member in April. Sweden’s application was held up by objections from Turkey and Hungary.

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/02/26/hungary-parliament-approves-sweden-bid-join-nato/72742933007/

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Turkey’s parliament agrees to hold a long-delayed vote on Sweden’s NATO membership

AP News — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 17:27:31 +0000

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish legislators scheduled a long-delayed vote Tuesday on Sweden’s bid to join NATO, in a step that could remove a major hurdle for the previously nonaligned Nordic country’s entry into the military alliance.

Turkey, a NATO member, has been dragging its feet on ratifying Sweden’s accession for more than a year, accusing the country of being too lenient toward groups it regards as security threats. It has been seeking concessions from Sweden, including a tougher stance toward Kurdish militants and members of a network that Ankara blames for a failed coup in 2016.

Turkey has also been angered by a series of demonstrations by supporters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Sweden as well as Quran-burning protests that roiled Muslim countries.

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Source: https://www.aol.com/news/turkey-parliament-agrees-hold-long-154403249.html

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Sweden edges closer to NATO membership

Charlie Duxbury — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 06:04:40 +0000

Parliament voted in favor of the NATO option — allowing the country to join the alliance in future.

In August, Sweden deployed troops to its Baltic island of Gotland following a security scare triggered by Russian warships | Tom Little/AFP via Getty Images

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STOCKHOLM — Sweden is rethinking its security, and whether it really is safest outside NATO.

Two years out from the next election, debate over whether to join the Western defense alliance is intensifying, setting up a left-versus-right clash on the question in 2022.

The current minority government of Social Democrats and Greens — plus their allies the Left Party — remain staunchly against, citing the value of neutrality in what they see as a polarizing world.

On the other side, four traditionally allied center-right parties — the Moderate Party, the Liberals, the Center Party and the Christian Democrats — are in favor, saying Sweden needs the security of the defense guarantees that NATO membership offers.

The pro-NATO side scored a big win last week when the far-right Sweden Democrats, who are angling for closer cooperation with the center-right bloc in a range of policy areas, reversed a previous anti-NATO stance and backed a motion for Sweden to adopt a so-called NATO option — allowing it to join NATO at some point in the future. Parliament voted in favor of the motion by 204 votes to 145.

“Issues of defense don’t normally sit high on the agenda in elections here, but since the Sweden Democrats have now moved their position, we could well see more interest,” said Allan Widman, a lawmaker with the Liberal Party and spokesman on defense policy.

Adopting a “NATO option” is not a commitment to join — Finland has had such an option since 1995 and remains outside the pact — but is widely seen as a movement in that direction. The government has acknowledged as much by so far refusing to act on it.

Foreign Minister Ann Linde called parliamentary backing for the move “a significant negative event for Swedish security.”

For Sweden, joining NATO would be a big policy shift, as it would end more than 200 years of official military neutrality. The country has not formally taken sides in a war since Napoleon was advancing across Europe, and has over recent years sought to carve out a diplomatic role as an impartial international arbiter while at the same time developing a closer partnership with NATO.

Swedish NATO membership would also shake up a delicate balance of power in the volatile Baltic Sea region, where officially unaligned Sweden and Finland and NATO members Denmark, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states regularly face off against Russia.

In August, Sweden deployed troops to its Baltic island of Gotland after a security scare triggered by Russian warships sailing close to the island.

Russian military jets regularly enter Swedish airspace without permission and many pointed the finger at Russia when a mysterious submarine was detected in waters close to the capital Stockholm in 2014.

Analysts say that last week’s vote in the Swedish parliament on the NATO option likely signals the start of a new phase in the wrangling over full entry into the alliance.

“We can now expect a more comprehensive political debate about an eventual Swedish membership,” Calle Håkansson, an analyst at the think tank the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told public service television.

The arguments of both sides are already clear. The Social Democrats’ resistance is based on a long-held belief that Sweden’s “freedom from alliances,” as the party calls it, has served the country well.

Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist has engineered a range of joint training exercises with NATO, such as the cold weather exercise Northern Wind in Sweden in March 2019, but at every turn, he has sought to underline Swedish independence.

The Social Democrats say that joining NATO would represent unnecessary antagonization of Russia, and risk destabilizing an already tense security situation along Europe’s eastern flank.

“We don’t want to go down a road of security policy experiments or adventurism,” Hulqvist wrote in an editorial in August.

Meanwhile, Widman, of the pro-NATO Liberals, said Sweden’s strategy has left it in a security “no-man’s land,” viewed by Russia as part of the “European security system” but lacking the guarantee of the NATO members’ commitment to mutual defense.

“That is a very dangerous position to find yourself in,” he said.

While public support for NATO membership in Finland has remained low and steady, in Sweden it has been rising.

Research by Gothenburg University’s SOM Institute shows roughly equal support (around 30 percent) for joining NATO as those opposed. In 1994, when the SOM Institute began researching the question, 48 percent said joining was a bad idea versus 15 percent in favor.

How the issue develops will depend on the rival sides’ abilities to convince voters ahead of the 2022 vote. If the pro-NATO side does well at the polls and knock the minority center-left incumbents out of power, they could push for a referendum on the question, experts say.

Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson has previously said that he believes Sweden will be a member of NATO before the decade is out and he called the NATO option vote “historic.” In a social media post, he said it would allow Sweden to “update and modernize” its security stance and tell the world that Sweden is ready to join NATO at a future point of its choosing.

“A government can’t just look away from a parliamentary majority view in a foreign policy or security question,” he said. “We expect the government to get behind the parliament’s security policy line.”

Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-nato-membership-dilemma/

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