No to War – No to NATO* Statement on NATO troops in Finland and Sweden
Finland and Sweden are about to sign a new cooperation agreement with NATO this week. It is called a “Host NATO Support” and allows the NATO Response Force to enter Sweden and Finland at their request. This pushes Sweden and Finland even closer to full NATO membership.
Even during the height of the Cold War, Finland and Sweden remained neutral. Now, without public discussion and debate, they are moving further from neutrality into a much closer relationship with the NATO alliance.
It is likely that the driving force behind this new development is the crisis in the Ukraine.
This is also heightening tensions in the Baltic Region. In these countries the majority of the people have rejected NATO membership and still does. If Finland and Sweden does join NATO it will lead to increased polarisation between Russia, Finland, Sweden and other EU member states.
NATO is exploiting the situation in the Ukraine in order to continue its eastward expansion up to the Russian border and to apply pressure to European governments to increase their military spending to 2% of GNP.
It has also been proposed that NATO establishes an eastern headquarters in Poland.
All of these actions are also applying pressure to other EU states that are not members of NATO.
No to War, No to NATO is against escalating violence and calls for peaceful resolution of conflict through inclusive dialogue. We need deeper cooperation and more discussion in the world to ensure true global security.
We call on Finnish and Swedish leaders
to reject the idea of host nation support.
Agreed on the annual meeting of the international network “No to war – no to NATO”, Newport September 2nd, 2014
*The international network Not to War – No to NATO was founded in Stuttgart in October 2008. More than 650 organizations from over 30 countries signed the establishing call, the “Stuttgart Appeal“. Besides others the network conducted international protests (with international congress, demonstration, camp village and actions of Civil Disobedience) against NATO at the Strasbourg / Kehl Summit in April 2009, Lisboa Summit 2010, Chicago Summit 2012 and Newport Summit 2014.