{"id":4266,"date":"2018-10-03T23:06:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T23:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/?p=4266"},"modified":"2018-10-03T23:06:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T23:06:20","slug":"russias-growing-threat-to-north-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/2018\/10\/03\/russias-growing-threat-to-north-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"RUSSIA\u2019S GROWING THREAT TO NORTH EUROPE"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Source: Economist<\/p>\n

SOME states soothe their citizens in troubled times. Others prefer not to sugar-coat things. \u201cA larger European conflict could start with an attack on Sweden,\u201d warned the most recent report of the country\u2019s defence commission. Electricity would be limited. Calorie intake would fall. Tens of thousands might be wounded. This was not idle talk: in June, all 22,000 Swedish volunteer soldiers were called up for the largest surprise exercise since 1975. For the first time in almost 30 years, the government has written to millions of households exhorting them to prepare for the worst. \u201cWe will never give up,\u201d warned leaflets decorated with vivid tableaux of burning buildings and rolling tanks.<\/p>\n

Sweden\u2019s aim is to hold out for three months, until help arrives. These twin tasks\u2014becoming \u201cindigestible to Russia\u201d, as one analyst puts it, and ensuring that the cavalry shows up\u2014will be high on the agenda of whichever government emerges from the hung parliament produced by the election of September 9th. Sweden may not be a member of NATO. But under Stefan Lofven, Sweden\u2019s Social Democratic prime minister for the past four years, it has manoeuvred as close to the alliance as it is possible to get from the outside. By deferring the question of outright membership, anathema to the left, he created political space to tighten Sweden\u2019s triple embrace of America, NATO and its neighbours. A landmark \u201chost nation\u201d agreement with NATO was steered through parliament in 2016. America\u2019s potential wartime role in Sweden was once a state secret; now contingency plans can be made openly.<\/p>\n

Read more at: https:\/\/www.economist.com\/europe\/2018\/10\/03\/russias-growing-threat-to-north-europe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: Economist SOME states soothe their citizens in troubled times. Others prefer not to sugar-coat things. \u201cA larger European conflict could start with an attack on Sweden,\u201d warned the most recent report of the country\u2019s defence commission. Electricity would be limited. Calorie intake would fall. Tens of thousands might be wounded. This was not idle… Continue reading RUSSIA\u2019S GROWING THREAT TO NORTH EUROPE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-and-strategy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4267,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4266\/revisions\/4267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/dcss\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}