Why is it in the News?

Turkey’s parliament ratified Sweden’s Nato membership bid recently, clearing the biggest remaining hurdle to expand the Western military alliance after 20 months of delay.

News Summary:

• Turkey's parliament ratified Sweden's NATO membership bid recently, clearing the biggest remaining hurdle to expand the Western military alliance after 20 months of delay.
• Sweden and Finland applied to join in May 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
  • The two countries feared for their security.
• Finland - which has a 1,340km land border with Russia - became a Nato member in April 2023.
• Turkey had been blocking Sweden's application because it said the country had refused to hand over members of militant groups such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
• Sweden's bid for membership was finally approved by the Turkish parliament on 23 January.
• Now, Sweden only needs Hungary's parliament to approve its membership.
• For a nation to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the consent of all current member countries is required.
• Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952.

Why does Sweden want to join NATO?

• Sweden has not fought a war in two centuries, staying neutral through the two World Wars and the Cold War.
• In recent years, while it joined the European Union and collaborated with NATO, it showed no intention of actually joining the military alliance its powerful neighbour, Russia, is hostile to.
• However, this neutrality had to be abandoned after Russia invaded Ukraine.
• With public opinion increasingly in favour of joining NATO, both Sweden and Finland applied for membership in 2022.
• While Finland’s bid was cleared, Sweden ran into stiff opposition from Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
• Once a country is a NATO member, an attack on its territory is considered an attack on the US-led alliance, and all 31 members are obliged to defend each other.

Why was Turkey opposing Sweden’s bid?

• Turkey had accused Sweden of going soft on groups it sees as terrorists, such as the Kurdish militant outfit the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
  • Quran-burning protests held in Sweden, which its government says are protected under freedom of speech laws, further soured its relationship with Turkey.
• Erdogan had also linked Turkey’s support to Sweden with the US agreeing to sell 40 F-16 fighter jets to Ankara. While the US had not said the deal would depend on Turkey’s Sweden actions, the sale is expected to go through now.

What will Sweden bring to NATO?

• Once Sweden becomes a member, almost all of the Baltic Sea coastline, except that in Russia’s control, will become NATO territory.
• This will provide the alliance with strategic bases close to Russia, make supply lines more streamlined, and make it easier to defend assets in the sea.
• Sweden’s military, though numerically small, is modern and experienced in past NATO missions. Importantly, it has advanced aircraft and submarine capabilities.

What is NATO?

• Established in the aftermath of World War II, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance between 28 European countries and 2 North American countries and is headquartered in Belgium.
• It implements the North Atlantic Treaty, which is a system of collective security, where its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party.
• The most recent member to be added was Finland on 4 April 2023.
• Since its founding on April 4, 1949, the admission of new member states has increased the alliance from the original 12 countries to 30.

Background:

 In the event of a possible attack by Germany, a Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance was signed by France and the United Kingdom in 1947.

• Later next year, the alliance was expanded to include Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, in the form of the Western Union.
• In 1949, talks for the new military alliance which would include North America resulted in the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty.
• The Treaty included the members of the Western Union and the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
• In May 1955, West Germany was permitted to rearm militarily, as they joined NATO, which was a major factor in the creation of the Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact, delineating the two opposing sides of the Cold War.
• In October 1990, East Germany became part of the Federal Republic of Germany and the alliance, and in November 1990, the alliance signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) in Paris with the Soviet Union.
• The treaty mandated specific military reductions across Europe, which continued after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in February 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which removed the de facto main adversaries of NATO.
• The Treaty was largely dormant until the Korean War initiated the establishment of NATO to implement it, by means of an integrated military structure, which included the formation of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in 1951, adopting the Western Union's military structures and plans.

 What is the Purpose of NATO?

• According to NATO, its purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.
  • By political, it means the organisation promotes democratic values and enables members to consult and cooperate on defence and security-related issues to solve problems, build trust and, in the long run, prevent conflict.
  • Militarily, NATO says it is committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes, and if diplomatic efforts fail, it has the power to undertake crisis-management operations, under the collective defence clause - Article 5 of the Washington Treaty or under a United Nations mandate, alone or in cooperation with other countries.
• Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the September 11 attacks, after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan.

The Role of NATO in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict:

 Among the 30 countries in the organisation, Ukraine is not a member, even though it has included three former Soviet republics -- the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

• In 2008, NATO appeared to open the door to membership to two more former Soviet republics when its heads of government declared that Georgia and Ukraine "will become members of NATO."
• Neither has formally received eventual membership, with a lack of consensus among members.
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine never join the alliance as he seeks to limit NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe.
• Days before Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, he in a televised address linked the current crisis directly to Russia's Nato demands, which include a guarantee that the organisation stop expanding to the East and pull back its infrastructure from Eastern European countries that joined after the Cold War.
• If the conflict goes beyond Ukraine and impacts Nato members, it could lead the organisation to invoke its mutual self-defence clause, i.e.,  Article 5 of the Nato treaty.