There's a new guy at my work who I think is a hindu

[snowyowl]

And the significance of Sweden for me is their neutrality through the 20th Century, neutral in 2 world wars & the cold war. Haven't had an empire since probably the Vikings?  And your GDP per head is higher than ours. Liberal-ish politically.  Gotta say there's a lot going for Sweden, no wonder people want to emigrate there. 

[Blackhawk]

2 hours ago, snowyowl said:

And the significance of Sweden for me is their neutrality through the 20th Century, neutral in 2 world wars & the cold war. Haven't had an empire since probably the Vikings?  And your GDP per head is higher than ours. Liberal-ish politically.  Gotta say there's a lot going for Sweden, no wonder people want to emigrate there. 

I disagree about the neutrality. There's nothing nice about being neutral, it's the opposite. In WW2 Sweden helped Hitler. And 17 neutral countries (including all our then-neutral neighbor countries) got invaded in WW2, so neutrality doesn't save you. It was other things that saved Sweden. One of them was that Sweden helped Hitler. (Not a conspiracy theory.)

Human rights and democracy must be defended. And no western country can do it alone. Together is strong. Unity over separation.

During the cold war Sweden had a secret alliance with US (this is not a conspiracy theory. It's not a secret anymore). And now Sweden is a member of EU, so Sweden officially isn't truly neutral after it joined EU in 1995. Officially Sweden is just "militarily unaligned".

Sweden should stop being a fool, and selfish, and join NATO.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia:

"If we want to improve the security of the Baltic Sea region, there is a lot we can do, the most obvious steps for that needs to be taken not by Estonia but they need to be taken in Stockholm and Helsinki." (He of course meant that Sweden and Finland should join NATO).

Edited August 15, 2021 by Blackhawk

[snowyowl]

@Blackhawk  ok, so it sounds like the neutrality is a sham. I would like to see Sweden join NATO too, also Ireland who in practice shelter under protection of NATO countries around them, but don't take the responsibility and cost of full membership. If they did did come under a military threat who would they look to for help. 

[Blackhawk]

55 minutes ago, snowyowl said:

@Blackhawk  ok, so it sounds like the neutrality is a sham. I would like to see Sweden join NATO too, also Ireland who in practice shelter under protection of NATO countries around them, but don't take the responsibility and cost of full membership. If they did did come under a military threat who would they look to for help. 

Yes exactly.