Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Monday that he is open to deploying nuclear weapons in Sweden in times of war, at a time when critics are calling for them to be banned on the territory of the new NATO member state.
The Swedish Parliament is scheduled to vote next June on a bilateral defense cooperation agreement (DCA) with the United States that will allow Americans to access Swedish military bases and store equipment and weapons there.
Sweden ended 200 years of military non-alignment by joining NATO in March.
Several NGOs, including the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Association, which campaigns for peace, have called on the government to include in the agreement a ban on the deployment of nuclear weapons on Swedish territory.
The government has repeatedly said that such a mention is unnecessary, pointing to the “broad consensus on nuclear weapons” in Sweden, as well as the parliamentary resolution banning nuclear weapons in peacetime.
But the Swedish Prime Minister believed that the situation should be evaluated differently in the event of war.
“In wartime it is completely different, and it completely depends on what happens,” he told public radio.
The Prime Minister added: “In the worst-case scenario, democratic countries in our region of the world must be able to defend themselves against countries that could threaten us with nuclear weapons.”
He stressed that such a decision would depend on Sweden, not the United States.
He added: “Sweden decides to annex Swedish lands.”
But he added, “The goal of our NATO membership and defense is to ensure that this situation does not arise.”
He added that if Ukraine had been a member of NATO, “it would not have been attacked by Russia.”
The Social Democratic Party, which was in power in Sweden at the time it submitted its candidacy for NATO membership in May 2022, said at the time that it would seek to express “unilateral reservations against the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent bases on Swedish territory.”
Denmark and Norway, members of NATO, have refused to allow foreign countries to establish permanent military bases or nuclear facilities on their territory during peacetime.
