On Tuesday, 5 December 2023, Sweden’s Minister of Defense Pål Jonson travelled to Washington to sign a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) developed by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin regarding military cooperation between the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden and the Government of the United States of America.
The two ministers expressed great satisfaction with the agreement at a subsequent press conference. Lloyd Austin has the most reason to be happy. The agreement is entirely designed to serve American war interests. But why was Pål Jonson happy? The way the agreement is worded constitutes a surrender of Sweden’s sovereignty and is almost comparable to an unconditional surrender that turns our country into an American vassal state.
The DCA gives the US access to seventeen Swedish defence facilities, permission to deploy American soldiers and to store vehicles, machinery, ammunition and weapons on Swedish soil. The agreement does not include a ban on nuclear weapons.
Sweden will also provide Swedish soldiers who will be directly under US command. American commanders have particularly emphasized their delight at having access to soldiers trained to wage war in the Arctic and the Baltic Sea.
Several paragraphs in the agreement deal with the favourable rules for Americans stationed in Sweden. They will have the right to move freely on Swedish territory and be exempt from various taxes. They will not be judged in Sweden but in the United States if they commit crimes.
They are given the right to intervene with force in situations that they deem threatening to their activities (this means, for example, that they can shoot at anti-US demonstrators).
Looking in vain for something in the agreement that might benefit Sweden, you find the opposite. Swedish authorities are not allowed to inspect or otherwise control the areas seized by the US, and nothing in the agreement guarantees help from the US in the event of an outbreak of war.
The agreement represents a total change in Sweden’s foreign policy, which has been based on our non-alignment and has spared us the horrors of war for over two hundred years.
The agreement is tailor-made to suit the war hawks in the USA and represents a major triumph for them on their way to the world domination they have been planning since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Until then, the military doctrine of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) was in force. This meant that so-called world peace rested on the mutual threat of two equally powerful superpowers of annihilating nuclear war. The US ruling elite now saw an opportunity to create their world domination.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) think tank, based in Washington, D.C., shaped the plans for this’ benevolent global hegemony’. The motto was: “What’s good for America is good for the rest of the world.” The strategy was laid out in the document Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2000).
It argues for a return to President Reagan’s approach during his time in office: military force instead of diplomacy. In particular, it stresses the importance of investing in “advanced forms of biological warfare that, by being tailored to specific genotypes, can transform biological warfare from a weapon in the hands of terrorists to a politically useful instrument”.
Several notable PNAC participants went on to advise US presidents, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Bolton. One of the founders, Robert Kagan, is married to Victoria Nuland, who designed the war strategy in Ukraine.
In 2001, George Bush II launched the ‘war on terror’, by PNAC’s guidelines. Since then, the US has waged war in several countries on the other side of the world, including Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Uganda, Niger, Syria and Libya. The devastation is enormous. Add to this the US interventions and manipulations in other countries in the form of influence campaigns, creation of armed guerrilla movements, initiation of colour revolutions, etc.
Now, the last major US showdown with Russia is approaching. In his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997), the influential political advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski describes the strategy. In his opinion, Ukraine is the most important piece on the “Eurasian chessboard”.
Brzezinski says that to achieve American hegemony, it is crucial to prevent Moscow from gaining control over the populous Ukraine, its vast natural resources, and its access to the Black Sea. The US supported the 2014 coup d’état in Kyiv, which deposed the country’s democratically appointed and Moscow-friendly president. When Zelenskyj was elected president, he ran on the promise of ending the conflict with Russia.
But this did not happen. Instead, war ensued. Swedish journalists in the mainstream media have uncritically conveyed the American view of the war in Ukraine. They have painted a highly simplified and history-less picture, and important information has been withheld.
For example, they have not told us about the peace treaty that was negotiated under the leadership of then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett just one month after the outbreak of the war and which was accepted by both President Putin and President Zelenskyj. However, the agreement was torn up by US intervention, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the messenger and NATO as the tool.
Because the US wanted the destruction of Russia, the aim was to overthrow Putin, carve up the country into rival smaller states and allow international financial interests to take advantage of the rich natural resources.
War material has been pumped into Ukraine with the help of most European countries, not least Sweden. The country is devastated. Hundreds of thousands of young men dead or badly wounded. An entire generation lost. Millions of women and children were displaced. An irreparable divide has been created between two brotherly peoples. The country that could have provided a neutral buffer zone between East and West no longer exists.
Now, the United States has acquired the opportunity to continue the war by attacking northern Russia via Finland and Sweden. The path to this has been prepared for a long time. In the 1990s, Sweden was persuaded to dismantle its defence system because “the threat has disappeared.”
Once this was done, the old threat picture was dusted off again. A formal war hysteria has broken out in Sweden; it is “serious business”. The poor, naked Mother Svea now seeks help and protection from big, safe Uncle Sam. Just as it was intended and planned!
The DCA is a direct provocation to Russia, particularly due to the absence of a ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons on Swedish soil. This agreement makes the Baltic Sea region a target for Russian aggression. Just like Ukraine was.
There is still a small chance of putting an end to the DCA. The Swedish Parliament must approve Pål Jonson’s signature. The responsibility rests heavily on its 349 members.
By Margareta Skantze, former radio journalist at Swedish State Radio (SR.se)
Related
- Michael von der Schulenburg: How The Chance Was Lost For A Peace Settlement Of The Ukraine War
- Swedish Government: DCA-avtalet
- Swedish Government:: Avtal om försvarssamarbete med Amerikas förenta stater