{"id":16644,"date":"2024-03-08T00:47:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T00:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/nato-welcomes-32nd-member-expert-warns-bigger-bloc-exacerbates-putins-fears\/"},"modified":"2024-03-08T00:47:04","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T00:47:04","slug":"nato-welcomes-32nd-member-expert-warns-bigger-bloc-exacerbates-putins-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/nato-welcomes-32nd-member-expert-warns-bigger-bloc-exacerbates-putins-fears\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO welcomes 32nd member, expert warns bigger bloc \u2018exacerbates\u2019 Putin\u2019s fears"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Sweden has officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after almost a year of endless wrangling and negotiations, adding another key piece to the defense against Russian interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Sweden is now a NATO member,\u2019 Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote in a statement published on social media platform X.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Thank you all allies for welcoming us as the 32nd member,\u2019 he continued. \u2018We will strive for unity, solidarity and burden-sharing, and will fully adhere to the Washington Treaty values: freedom, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. Stronger together.\u2019<\/p>\n

Kristersson traveled to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to complete the process of joining NATO, where he met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and will attend the State of the Union address as a guest of first lady Jill Biden.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Sweden is a strong democracy with a highly capable military that shares our values and vision for the world,\u2019 the White House wrote of the newest alliance member. \u2018Having Sweden as a NATO ally will make the United States and our allies even safer.\u2019<\/p>\n

As a NATO member, Sweden, with its cutting-edge submarines and Gripen fighter jets, will be a crucial link between the Atlantic and the Baltic states in times of crisis, according to Reuters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Although (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is playing cool, this move almost certainly exacerbates the Kremlin\u2019s fears of encirclement, the fear that is deeply routed in the Russian psyche, because most wars that Russia has fought were in the Western theater operations,\u2019 Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of \u2018Putin\u2019s Playbook,\u2019 told Fox News Digital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finland and Sweden had long resisted joining NATO, with many believing it would not shore up their national security and would in fact enrage Russia, but Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine pushed the two countries to change their minds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finland enjoyed a rather straightforward process, joining the alliance in April 2023, but Sweden faced greater opposition. NATO requires unanimous support from members in order to admit new countries, and Turkey and Hungary did not initially support Sweden\u2019s ascension, citing various concerns and seeming to use the application as a means of handling political disagreements.<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan laid out a series of conditions, including a tougher stance against Kurdish militants and members of a network that Ankara blamed for an attempted 2016 coup. The Kurdish question languished for a year, and Sweden enacted a number of changes to appease Turkey, including an end to an arms embargo and cooperation on fighting terrorism and public demonstrations from the groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hungary, the last member to join the alliance before Finland and Sweden applied, did not look kindly on admitting a country that regularly criticized the Hungarian government and its prime minister, Viktor Orb\u00e1n.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Orb\u00e1n supported Sweden\u2019s admission, but members of his party did not share that enthusiasm. Orb\u00e1n argued that Sweden\u2019s membership \u2018will strengthen Hungary\u2019s security.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pressure from the U.S. and NATO allies on Turkey finally removed Turkish opposition. With no more opposition, Sweden has now joined NATO \u2014 much to Russia and Putin\u2019s frustration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018The new development will likely drive Russia to beef up its force posture in the Western flank and to ratchet up its destabilizing activities in the region, probably in the Baltics and probably will act aggressively in the Baltic Sea,\u2019 Koffler explained, noting that Russia\u2019s border with NATO has now doubled from around 750 miles to approximately 1,600 miles.<\/p>\n

\u2018We are not talking an outright invasion but rather cyber and other special activities, involving intelligence operatives,\u2019 she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sweden has officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after almost a year of endless wrangling and negotiations, adding another key piece to the defense against Russian interests.\u00a0 \u2018Sweden is now a NATO member,\u2019 Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote in a statement published on social media platform X.\u00a0 \u2018Thank you all allies for <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}