The Great Game #3 - Ulf Kristersson, the Swedish Circus Artist
The Great Game #3 - Ulf Kristersson, the Swedish Circus Artist
Why is Turkey stalling the inclusion of Finland and Sweden into NATO? How long will they hold up the ratifying process? And should the Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson, apply for a gig at Cirque du Soleil?
Welcome to your weekly ‘Great Game’! The piece is written on the back of Denmark’s utter fiasco at the World Cup, so we thought we’d do the natural thing and take a swing at a Swedish guy this time around…
The NATO conference on Tuesday and Wednesday saw foreign secretaries from the 30 member states convene in Bucharest to negotiate additional support for Ukraine. So far, outcomes of the talks have been uncontroversial: NATO has pledged to help Ukraine rebuild energy infrastructure to prepare for the long winter ahead thereby granting one of Kyiv’s two wishes. Fresh provisions of IRIS-, Hawk- and Patriot-missile systems have yet to be confirmed. Overall, the talks have left a lot to be desired in terms of actual news value. So, I have let my eyes stray briefly away from the headline act in Bucharest and focused my attention on the much more intriguing shadow conference taking place between Turkey, Sweden, and Finland.
While NATO foreign secretaries discuss security concerns in the Caucasus and Balkans, top diplomats from Turkey, Sweden and Finland are meeting up in another part of town to continue the negotiations of Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO.
Rise of the Turks
In the last edition of the Great Game, I wrote about the rise of the Turks - in particularly Turkey - on the world stage. I argued that the war in Ukraine has left a power vacuum in Russia’s former sphere of influence, which Turkey has used to consolidate power in the Black Sea Region and the Caucasus. We have seen examples of this in the grains deal in Ukraine, Turkey’s military interventions in Syria and their very overt support for Azerbaijan against Armenia. Turkey’s blockage of NATO enlargement is no exception. Erdogan is not one to push around, as we discussed last week.
For Erdogan, the negotiations with Sweden and Finland are reminiscent of a kid who was bullied in school finding himself on the hiring committee of a job that all his former bullies have applied to. Sweden and Finland are part of the gang that has left Turkey out in the cold from the EU. The denial of EU membership is still viewed as a grave injustice in Turkey as well as a personal embarrassment to Erdogan. Permissive attitudes towards Turkey’s security concerns about the PKK have added fuel to these grievances.
Oh how the tables have turned
For Erdogan, the current NATO negotiations are a way to restore national pride and convey an image of strong political leadership. Why is this important? Strong leaders are popular in democratic and non-democratic countries alike. Yet, the perception of strong governance might matter more in Turkey than elsewhere. Traditionally, Turkish nationalism has been predominantly state-centric in contrast to other former Ottoman states, where religion to a larger extent has been a competing source of legitimacy. If leadership in Turkey is weak, it not only strengthens opposition, but it also wears down national coherence (for anyone interested in reading more about the political implications of Turkish nationalism, I recommend the works of Kristin Fabbe).
When the general secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, travels to Istanbul to move enlargement negotiations along, or new Swedish PM, Ulf Kristersson choose Turkey as the destination of his first non-EU state visit, it’s feathers in Erdogan’s cap. Dragging out negotiations means more airtime for Erdogan at the helm. Whatever concessions he can get from Sweden and Finland in the process is a bonus but not the primary aim.
Cirque du Soleil
No one has done more to appease the capricious Turkish president than Ulf Kristersson. The newly elected Swedish PM is bending over backwards to an extent that one can expect a call from Cirque du Soleil at any minute. Kristersson jumped hoops from the very minute his right-wing government was announced: “My government was elected just a few weeks ago on a mandate to put law and order first,” Kristersson said during a joint news conference with Erdogan. “And this includes countering terrorism and terrorist organisations like the PKK in Sweden.”
Obviously not one single Swede voted for Kristersson because he would persecute kurdish separatists in Gothenburg. The law and order in Sweden is all about the perpetual gang wars between different immigrant clans in Malmoe in particular. But it’s a convenient stage setting for Kristerssons acrobatic act.
What does the very accommodating attitude of the Swedish government mean for their position both internally and among fellow European nations? If Kristersson gets the job done, then probably very little. 74% of Swedes approve of NATO's leadership. The current protests in Sweden against Turkish cooperation will be incomparable to the widespread satisfaction that will emerge if Sweden remains apparent pro-Ukrainian without the guarantees of the defense alliance.
When will Turkey fall in line?
One can speculate that the reason why Kristersson is willing to put his non-existing reputation on the line to this extent, is because he knows deep down that Erdogan will come around. I share his confidence. Turkey can milk the airtime for a good while longer but the addition of particularly Sweden into NATO will strengthen the military capabilities of the alliance significantly. Meanwhile, Turkey stands to benefit from Finland’s 1340 km. border with Russia drawing the focal point of a potential war North. Unsurprisingly, the negotiating parties in Bucharest are “positive” about the possibility of further progress in discussions.
So what is our assessment? We expect Turkey to fall in line rather quickly. They have proven their point and gotten quite solid concessions from especially Sweden, so the only hold-up is likely that Turkey wants full NATO backing to whatever status quo emerges from the Syrian and Kurdish debacle. If Turkey ends up enlarging their occupation zone, they need complete NATO backing.
What does this mean for the Russo-Ukrainian War? Well, not much in the short term. The Russian military districts facing Scandinavia have been severely depleted to reinforce the Donbass push and Russia clearly sees no risk of NATO adventurism in the Baltic Sea Theater. Finland and Sweden is de facto under NATO military protection and even if they wanted to, Russia cannot do anything about it. In fact, the Russian threat to Scandinavia is possibly at its lowest since the end of the Winter War in 1939-40. Long-term, the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO of course reinforces Russia’s complete isolation in the area and cripples the cross-border trade with Finland.
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Thanks for the analysis. I also don´t think that Russia currently is a match for the EU/NATO in a direct confrontation ground war, but is that status changing with all the new military technologies introduced in Russia?
I´m curious what you make of Russia's newly developed and delivered strategic weapons, like the satellite weapon and the Belgorod?
If you combine three facts, you can see that the new Satellite weapon could be used for very bad burnt soil tactic 1) satellite weapon successfully hits Russian satellite and creates a debris 2) the problem of self accelerating destruction of satellites due to debris 3) that the agency observing space debris was almost overwhelmed by the debris from the old Russian satellite that was targeted by the new weapon.
A Belgorod Submarine is a powerful and with it's Poseidon torpedo it´s also a strategic weapon.
Regarding more conventional forces, I´m under the impression that Russia has very little of their relatively newly developed Armata tank, hypersonic missiles, Merkuriy littoral combat ship and Sukhoi-57. But if they somehow manage to change their old gear faster than EU does, then this could maybe alter the power balance in Russias favor?