Impact of Sweden's NATO Membership on Alliance's Military Strategy in the Arctic regarding Sweden's Contributions to cold-Weather Operations

Sammanfattning

This study aims at exploring the impact of Sweden’s NATO integration on the alliance’s Arctic strategy from the perspective of operational preparedness, technological compatibility and environmental friendliness under the lens es of Realism and Liberalism. This research applies Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) and involves the collection of primary and secondary data from official NATO and Swedish government reports, scholarly articles, and think tank publications. The results indicate that Sweden’s strategic location in the Arctic region, strong military might, and focus on environmental protection effectively strengthen NATO’s strategy to deal with threats from Russia and China, as well as enhance Arctic monitoring and preparedness. However, issues emerge from Sweden’s neutral tradition and the compatibility of Sweden’s environmental concerns with the militaristic approach of NATO. Using the realist and liberal approaches, the study examines Sweden’s role to identify the impacts of the country to NATO, as well as identify the possibilities for NATO to incorporate sustainability in its Arctic strategy. It thus makes policy recommendations for how NATO can best incorporate Sweden’s strengths while navigating the challenges of regional security and environmentalism.