Suecia (Continuación)

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Did you know that the famous IKEA meatballs are actually Turkish? The legend goes that the meatballs (as well as stuffed cabbage) were actually brought home to Sweden by King Charles XII, who took refuge in the Ottoman Empire for several years after losing a battle with Russia in the early 18th century. The final battle was in Poltava, which is now in central Ukraine, and the Swedish monarch’s opponent was none other than Peter the Great, the tsar who seized parts of Ukraine from the Ottomans and is apparently an inspiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This history, along with the fact that Turkey has long been a champion of NATO enlargement, should make Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more lenient on Sweden and Finland’s bid to join the alliance during this week’s NATO summit in Madrid.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Social Media Takedown Is a Blessing in Disguise for Sweden

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On a warm day in late May, life was humming along, punctuated by fika breaks, with pastries, coffee and conversation, when Sweden found itself thrust into the center of a global Twitter storm. Usually known for its generous social safety nets, latte papas and midsummer frolics, the Scandinavian nation was trending — and not in a good way.

The critical gaze of social media users around the world was suddenly trained on the curious Swedish tradition of not automatically offering food to guests — including children invited over for play dates — while the host family sits down to eat. It started with a Reddit user who described a memory of being left in a friend’s bedroom while the family ate dinner, and it escalated into Swedengate, a hashtag and multilayered takedown of a nation more accustomed to praise than mockery.…  Seguir leyendo »

¿Qué supone ahora para la OTAN la entrada de las antes neutrales Suecia y Finlandia?

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La invasión rusa de Ucrania iniciada en febrero está produciendo unas sacudidas en el entorno de seguridad europeo cuyo alcance total solo se vislumbrará cuando la niebla de la guerra se haya disipado. Lo que ya se sabe es que la guerra ha hecho anidar entre los europeos una sensación de inseguridad compartida.

La solicitud de acceso a la OTAN avanzada por Suecia y Finlandia es una manifestación de la inquietud con que dos naciones nórdicas geográficamente próximas a Rusia contemplan la guerra. La preocupación de estos dos países por el comportamiento ruso no es nueva, pero renace ahora con fuerza para operar un cambio histórico en unas culturas estratégicas basadas en la neutralidad, llevándolos a llamar a la puerta de una organización en cuya periferia han permanecido durante décadas.…  Seguir leyendo »

Finlandia y Suecia, ante un nuevo orden internacional

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Finlandia, dispuesta a acabar con la finlandización, y Suecia han oficializado su deseo de formar parte de la OTAN. Este es el hecho, hasta hace unos meses inimaginable.

¿Por qué entrar en la Alianza Atlántica si ambos países están en la Unión Europea, cuyo Tratado (art. 42.7) obliga a los Estados miembros a ayudar, con todos los medios a su alcance, a un país que sea objeto de agresión armada?

¿Por qué entrar en la OTAN ahora cuando la Unión acaba de aprobar la llamada Brújula Estratégica, que confirma el concepto de autonomía estratégica europea en asuntos de defensa y seguridad?…  Seguir leyendo »

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Las guerras modernas se libran simultáneamente en tres planos distintos pero interconectados, el del campo de batalla, el interno y el externo. Y si algo nos ha enseñado la historia reciente es que resulta muy complicado lograr el éxito en los tres planos al mismo tiempo.

Por ejemplo, a Estados Unidos le fue muy bien en el campo de batalla al inicio de su invasión de Irak en 2003, pero ya había perdido el plano externo al no conseguir el apoyo internacional y acabó perdiendo en los otros dos planos, pues el aumento de sus dificultades en el campo de batalla provocó el recrudecimiento de las divisiones internas, antesala de sus actuales titubeos estratégicos entre el repliegue y la redefinición de sus intereses.…  Seguir leyendo »

La inesperada transformación geopolítica de Europa: cómo la guerra de Rusia contra Ucrania ha hecho que la OTAN renazca en el norte

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El pasado 18 de mayo, Finlandia y Suecia presentaron de manera simultánea y oficial la carta de intenciones en la que indicaban que van a solicitar el ingreso en la OTAN. Cuando se ratifique la admisión de los dos países —cosa que todavía puede tardar—, todo el norte de Europa, desde el mar de Barents hasta el Báltico, será una zona cohesionada de defensa de la OTAN. Y Rusia tendrá que afrontar la nueva realidad de una frontera directa con la Alianza que será el doble de la actual. Esta es la consecuencia geopolítica más tangible y duradera, hasta ahora, de la invasión injustificada de Ucrania.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Finlandia y Suecia anunciaron que solicitarán su ingreso a la OTAN, pero es más probable que unirse a la alianza debilite su seguridad, y la de Europa, en vez de fortalecerla.

La neutralidad estratégica protegió de la guerra a la independencia y libertad suecas durante 200 años, y a la independencia finlandesa desde 1948. ¿Qué justifica ponerle fin?

Los funcionarios suecos y finlandeses señalan dos episodios: en diciembre de 2021, el Kremlin pasó de considerar la neutralidad sueca y finlandesa como algo deseable a, básicamente, exigirla (dio así un mensaje claro y amenazador de que la política exterior independiente es un privilegio y no un derecho para los vecinos de Rusia).…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrators protest outside the Stockholm District Court in Sweden on Nov. 23, 2021, during the war-crimes trial of Hamid Nouri. (Duygu Getiren/AFP/Getty Images)

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A court in Sweden is preparing to issue a verdict in the war crimes trial of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian official who is implicated in the mass execution of dissidents. Seemingly in response, Iran’s judiciary announced last week that it intended to carry out the execution of a Swedish citizen sentenced to death on unfounded charges.

This moment could mark either a horrific escalation in the Iranian regime’s hostage diplomacy strategy — one that puts the life of any innocent foreign national that travels to Iran at grave risk. Or it could provide the clarity that the free world needs to finally come together to disrupt the serial crime of state hostage-taking.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Durante la Guerra Fría, el principio de «no alineación en la paz, neutralidad en la guerra» fue no sólo un componente de la doctrina de seguridad de Suecia, sino también factor de identidad nacional y autopercepción de los suecos. Pero esta tradicional postura sueca de no alineación puede estar a punto de cambiar, ya que es probable que la invasión rusa de Ucrania motive a ambos países a solicitar el ingreso a la OTAN.

El 8 de marzo, dos semanas después de que el presidente ruso Vladímir Putin iniciara su guerra en Ucrania, la primera ministra sueca Magdalena Andersson (del Partido Socialdemócrata) señaló que pedir el ingreso a la OTAN «en la situación actual (…) desestabilizaría todavía más esta región de Europa y aumentaría las tensiones».…  Seguir leyendo »

Putin Is Pushing Finland and Sweden Into NATO’s Arms

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When announcing Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine back in February, President Vladimir Putin mentioned NATO 40 times. It was clear he wanted to present NATO as the devil — but it wasn’t always like that.

I first met Mr. Putin while serving as the prime minister of Denmark in 2002. Back then, he was still willing to engage and work with the West. For some time, Russia even assisted the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

This all changed with the “color revolutions” of the mid-2000s: Seeing democratic movements spring up in Georgia and Ukraine terrified Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Are Finland and Sweden moving toward applying for membership in NATO after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine?

There is no clear answer yet. NATO membership would be a fundamental change for both countries and must be carefully considered. ”Not hesitating, but with care”, as Finnish President Sauli Niinisto has said. Public opinion in both countries has swung heavily in favor of applying for membership of NATO, and the situation in the respective parliaments seems to be moving in the same direction.

The question is tied to a lengthy history. For Finland, which came out of World War II under the heavy shadow of Stalin’s Soviet Union, NATO membership was never an option during the decades of the Cold War.…  Seguir leyendo »

Por qué hay localidades suecas que están prohibiendo el uso de mascarillas

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Hace poco, las autoridades locales de Halmstad, en Suecia, obligaron a una profesora a quitarse la mascarilla. De hecho, prohibieron el uso de mascarillas en todas las escuelas, incluidas la totalidad de las variantes PPE. Las autoridades de Halmstad afirmaron que no había evidencias científicas que apoyaran el uso de mascarillas, y para ello se remitieron a la Agencia de Salud Pública de Suecia. Y es que, en ese momento, dicha agencia alertaba sobre el “enorme riesgo” que suponía que las mascarillas se usaran de forma incorrecta. Posteriormente, sin embargo, estas directrices han sido retiradas.

Para todo el que no esté familiarizado con la respuesta que el Gobierno sueco ha dado a la COVID-19, esta prohibición puede resultar chocante.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘The image of a maskless Rishi Sunak serving meals in a London Wagamama to launch August’s ‘eat out to help out’ initiative has not aged well.’ Photograph: Simon Walker/HM Treasury

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When future historians come to write the story of Britain’s chaotic pandemic response, one question in particular will surely puzzle them: why, as the UK experienced one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks, did so many prominent public figures spend so much of 2020 talking about Sweden?

Almost as soon as Boris Johnson announced a national lockdown in late March, British newspaper columnists and professional contrarians demanded that the prime minister adopt “the Swedish model” – and they were still urging the same in September. We now know with certainty what public health experts have long predicted: a light-touch coronavirus approach does not work.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘We Italians have clawed ourselves out of the tragic pit we were in this spring.’ Military trucks take away coffins in Seriate, Lombardy, in March. Photograph: Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters

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If there ever was an unlikely country to be designated a model of collective civility, that’s Italy. My native land is usually depicted as a beautiful place whose abundance of natural and cultural treasures is entrusted, alas, to its disorganised, corrupt, unruly inhabitants.

And yet everybody these days seems to be lavishing praise on us: the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal are all describing as exemplary the way in which we Italians have clawed ourselves out of the tragic pit we were in this spring, as coronavirus raged and convoys of military trucks had to be deployed to carry the coffins – they were so many.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Durante la crisis epidémica, personas de mi considerable edad se han sentido profundamente humilladas con las brutales medidas de arresto domiciliario tomadas en sede parlamentaria por pueril asamblea de indoctos (dicen que avalados científicamente). Tan mezquinos son que más de uno quiere multar al expresidente Rajoy, al haber roto ejemplarmente, con cívica madurez, el aborrecido y nefasto confinamiento cuando lo que merece es ser homenajeado en España entera por los bien nacidos.

En cualquier epidemia, una sociedad democráticamente madura -libre de supersticiones y terrores infantiles que reclaman la protección asfixiante y liberticida del Estado- aun siendo intervencionista y amparadora de los desprotegidos antepone y estimula la responsabilidad personal.…  Seguir leyendo »

A sign outside a pub in Stockholm, 26 March 2020: ‘The weight of opinion laid emphasis on the view that Sweden was doing the right thing by refusing to engage in a mass lockdown.’ Photograph: Colm Fulton/Reuters

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“Haverist” is a Swedish word meaning “shipwrecked person”. During the course of Sweden’s shambolic response to Covid-19, dissent – whether from epidemiologists or journalists – has often been met with this insult, which implies the critics are fighting a losing battle. It’s telling of the way Sweden has handled its failure.

Through a uniquely slack approach (seen by many as the largely debunked “herd immunity” approach, even if the government denies this), Sweden reached the highest Covid-19 deaths per capita in the world in May. It still circles around the top, with more than 5,200 deaths – five times as many as in Norway, Finland and Denmark combined.…  Seguir leyendo »

A restaurant in Stockholm last Friday. Credit Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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It’s noon here, and from the window of my home office I can see my two daughters playing in the yard at their preschool across the street. I reach for my phone to text my best friend, a nurse who lives in Westport, Conn., to share some family trivia I just discovered. She has been hunkered down in her home with her husband and their two young daughters since March. She’s beginning to wonder what they will lose first — their jobs or their minds.

“Guess what my great-grandmother’s name was? Jósephina Corona. From Italy”, I write. Unlike my friend, I am not forced to stay at home.…  Seguir leyendo »

A makeshift memorial in Stockholm’s Mynttorget square remembers loved ones lost to coronavirus. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

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Sweden has persisted with the strategy of coronavirus mitigation that the UK government eventually abandoned in March. The policy is widely supported by the public, even though the Swedish Covid-19 mortality rate is among the 10 highest in the world, at 240 per million population and steadily rising, and many of the nursing homes in Stockholm are now affected.

The typical explanation for this continued public support is that Swedes are trusting and unflappable. The country’s chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, the public face of the Swedish response to the pandemic, is after all a dry scientist-turned-bureaucrat, not some populist politician trying to whip up nationalist go-it-alone emotion.…  Seguir leyendo »

People walk at a market as the city of Malmo, Sweden, where fences reduce congestion at the stands on April 25. (Johan Nilsson/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

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“Be like Sweden!” — this slogan appeared on a sign last weekend in Minnesota, one of several U.S. states where protesters are pushing governors to roll back lockdown orders. Sweden, unlike the United States and many other countries, has largely stayed open for business. Pandemic experts have criticized this approach, combining a handful of restrictions with strong recommendations for risk groups and anyone feeling sick to self-isolate, and voluntary social distancing for everyone else.

So why does Swedish public opinion continue to show not just high but increasing levels of support?

As of April 30, Sweden ranked among the 10 countries in the world with the highest covid-19 deaths per million people, with a ratio of 244.…  Seguir leyendo »

An older couple eat dinner while keeping distance from the rest of their family in Ostersund, Sweden. Photograph: David Lidstrom/Getty Images

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That coronavirus is colour blind and respects no borders is true enough, although far from being the great equaliser, it forces the poor to bear the brunt. And given the prominent role played by experts in epidemiology who speak in a universalising language of objective science and mathematical curves, attempts at containing or mitigating the spread of Covid-19 sound similar around the world.

Yet the responses differ significantly from country to country, even among richer countries; shaped by historical legacies, political culture and social mores. The Swedish historian Sverker Sörlin, himself a Covid-19 survivor, noted in a recent article that there was never just one global pandemic but many, each shaped by its own national logic.…  Seguir leyendo »