Today on the homepage, I have an Impromptus column. It includes politics, policy, music, tennis, ping-pong — the basics of life. Try it here. I have done a podcast with Perry Link — which I have split into two: here and here. Professor Link is the China scholar who is, among other admirable things, a friend to dissidents.
With a co-author, Wu Dazhi, Link has written a biography of Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese democracy leader, who died in prison in 2017. Link and I discuss Liu Xiaobo in our first podcast, or first installment. Then, in the second, we discuss life as a China scholar — that is, Professor Link’s own life and work.
I will have more to say in a coming print piece, too.
Here in the Corner, I would like to say something about Sweden. Apparently, that nation, along with Finland, will join NATO. Who did this? Who is responsible? Vladimir Putin.
In 2017, I traveled to Sweden to investigate Swedish defense policies. The subsequent report was titled “Sweden, Jolted Awake: The defense posture of a ‘peace nation.’” Peter Hultqvist, then the defense minister, told me, “Step by step, we are developing our military capability.”
Here is an excerpt from my report:
When the Cold War finally ended, many countries took a “holiday from history.” Many countries indulged in a “peace dividend.” Sweden overindulged. They simply gutted their military. The army went from 500,000 to 15,000. The civil-defense system was abolished. The purpose of the military would no longer be the defense of the country: It would be occasional participation in international peacekeeping operations.
“We concluded that nothing nasty could happen here in Sweden,” says General Neretnieks — “not in the foreseeable future and not ever, more or less.”
That was Karlis Neretnieks, a retired general and prominent defense intellectual.
And then? “Then Putin happened.” That’s the way another policy expert, Katarina Tracz, put it to me. She was alluding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014. But she also made clear that Putin had been “happening” all along.
I wrote the following:
In 2007, the Kremlin launched its cyberattacks on Estonia. In following years, there was further harassment of the Baltic republics, in the form of buzzing planes and the like. Then came what is known in Sweden as “the Russian Easter.”
Actually, it was Good Friday, in 2013. On that day, Russia rehearsed strikes on Sweden. These strikes were later revealed to be nuclear strikes. And Sweden had no pilots scrambling up to meet the Russian planes. Instead, NATO planes, from the Baltic Air Patrol, had to do it. This was embarrassing to Sweden.
And jolting, very much so.
But the real jolt came in 2014, when Putin annexed the Crimea and started war in eastern Ukraine. Swedish minds were seriously concentrated, as was every other mind around the region. As Neretnieks says, suddenly peacekeeping operations in Africa did not seem so important.
Maybe another excerpt or two:
A blunt question: Is there a true Russian threat to Sweden? Is such talk fanciful? Paranoid? Putin has said that “only a sick person” would imagine that Russia would attack Sweden. No one in this country believes that Putin will attack directly. No one believes that Putin wants to plant his flag atop Stockholm Palace. But most people believe — indeed, understand — that if Putin moves on one of the Baltic states, Sweden will inevitably be dragged in.
The defense minister, Hultqvist, says, “I don’t talk about threats. I talk about reality. I talk about things that we have seen”: the annexation of the Crimea, the war in Ukraine, the simulated attacks, including nuclear attacks, etc.
In Stockholm, there was a new statue, sculpted by Peter Linde. “It is a lovely work,” I wrote,
depicting a lovely young woman. According to an accompanying sign, she is calling for “peace and disarmament on earth.” A lovely sentiment, to go with a lovely statue. Underneath the woman is the word PAX (“peace”). The statue was put up by the Swedish branch of Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an international organization that, in 1985, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking of Latin, there is an old expression: Si vis pacem, para bellum (“If you want peace, prepare for war”). A cliché, and possibly an annoying one, but no less true for that.