Sweden negotiates with France and the United Kingdom to expand the nuclear umbrella to its country and calls for creating “a European NATO”

One of the most proactive figures on this matter is the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristerssonwhich says it is “very critical” of the Trump Administration’s intervention in Venezuela and, above all, of its rhetoric in Greenland. The Scandinavian leader aspires, why not, to articulate “a European NATO”, a network of alliances within the framework of NATO where Europeans can guarantee their own security without depending on who is the tenant of the White House.

“There are people who, when they think of NATO, think of the United States, but I think of Denmark, Finland, Norway, the three Baltic states, Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom. Our whole part of the world is linked to close NATO cooperation,” Kristersson declared during an interview with STV public radio broadcast on Sunday night, in which he announced his desire to “build our European NATO.”

The Swedish Prime Minister assured that “all allied countries are convinced that Article 5, that of all for one and one for all, remains very, very strong”, but acknowledged during the interview last Sunday that “we would all like a United States whose actions were different.”

Significantly, the remarks come from the leader of a country that avoided membership in NATO until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s so-called “special military operation” altered Stockholm’s order of priorities.

Kristersson himself was in charge of negotiating his entry into the Alliance. The process was not easy. The leader of the Moderate Party had to negotiate face to face with the president of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdoganand with its Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orbánone of the Trojan horses of Vladimir Putin within the Alliance.

In the interview with public radio and television, Kristersson commented that, although Sweden does not have atomic weapons, the Nordic country participates “in all discussions, also in Europe, that have to do with nuclear weapons” since its entry into NATO in March 2024. “Not so that they are used, but because as long as dangerous countries possess nuclear weapons, solid democracies must also have access to them,” he clarified.

The leader of the Moderate Party also confirmed that he is discussing with France and the United Kingdom the deployment of atomic weapons on their territory. “We are now having ongoing talks with both France and the United Kingdom. They are not very precise yet, and the [armas nucleares] French are exclusively French, but France also shows a willingness to dialogue with other countries,” he explained.

A spokesperson for number 10 Downing Street confirmed to the newspaper The Telegraph that the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had discussed with his Swedish counterpart the possibility of extending the “nuclear umbrella” to his country. The conversations are embryonic. No one is still talking about specific agreements, calendars or joint projects. There are many intermediate phases left.

It is true that, from the outset, the French president Emmanuel Macron has shown willingness to deploy French nuclear weapons in other European countries.

Kristersson wanted to send a message of calm. It does not consider it necessary to deploy nuclear weapons on Swedish territory. Nor maintain a permanent presence of foreign troops.

His position received, among others, criticism from Kerstin Bergeåpresident of the pacifist NGO Svenska freds, the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society. The activist warned that “participating in the normalization of nuclear weapons rather makes Sweden a target in a possible nuclear conflict.”

Kristersson noted in the interview that, to date, he had seen “no need to deploy nuclear weapons in Sweden in peacetime, in the same way that you can have foreign forces in Sweden in peacetime.”