On March 7, after a long period of attempts, Sweden was allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), becoming the 32nd member and breaking the country’s decades of neutrality. 

Sweden will prove to be an extremely important strategic asset to NATO especially with Russian aggression. On March 11, Sweden and Finland held their biggest joint military exercise in decades demonstrating the quick military integration Sweden will make into NATO.

The primary advantage of Sweden joining NATO is the extremely strategically important island of Gotland. The island, which lies in the middle of the Baltic Sea, is the key to air and naval superiority in the Baltic Sea. St. Petersburg, the biggest trade port in Russia and a cultural capital, lies in the Baltic Sea. Gotland ensures that if a conflict between Russia and the west was to ever start, Russia would be cut off from a very large portion of its trade.

Sweden has been waiting for a full year for its membership to be approved by the country of Turkey which had been denying Sweden entrance into NATO due to Turkey suspecting Sweden of harboring Kurdish terrorists.

Sweden and Finland together hosted a recent NATO training exercise involving 20,000 soldiers from 13 countries, taking place in northern Norway. The naval, air, and land exercise was hosted to prepare forces from NATO countries for cross-border operations within the arctic circle. The Norwegian military said the exercise was intended to demonstrate “a unique level of cooperation and interoperability as they cross borders on land, sea and air”. This is one of many recent large NATO training exercises as French President Emanuel Macron reiterates that French troops being deployed to Ukraine is a possibility.

Sweden will without a doubt prove a very important ally to the West in the near future; as Russia wages war, the strategic value in Sweden will prove essential.