Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by c-smile | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

c-smile

"The threat from Russia prompts a bill to raise defence spending by 40% in five years"

For those of US who are geographically impaired: Russia and Sweden have no common borders.

View on HN

Stockholm is ~300mi from both St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. That's cheap cruise missile range.

And we’re connected in a way via the Baltic Sea.

Also, the pipelines Nord Stream (2011) and Nord Stream 2 (incomplete) run through Sweden's EEZ. These pipelines deliver Russian-produced natural gas to Germany. Sweden was uneasy about the pipeline, speculating and believing Russia's own suggestions that this would motivate a Russian naval presence, but couldn't find a lasting legal reason to not grant approval.

It shouldn't have to be explained at all. It makes perfect sense that the US spends money to protect itself from adversaries it shares no borders with for example. The above argument makes no sense, objectively.

I mentioned it as a bit of context since perhaps not all HN readers are familiar with the geography of the area in question. People here are from all around the world so I don’t expect every reader to be familiar with Sweden, Russia and the Baltic Sea.

For example, some reader might think ”okey but to reach Sweden, Russia will first have to go through Finland or Norway”. Nope. They simply have to send their military fleet over the sea.

Case in point: A lot of Sweden’s military resources during the WW2 and cold war was focused on the island of Gotland, home to less than 60000 persons. If Russia would attack Sweden it would make a lot of sense to first gain control of Gotland and then use that as a base for taking Stockholm, the capital.

"It shouldn't have to be explained at all"

Why not? People shall chew that gum without any criticism?

Otherwise you will have another round of believing in Lebensraum because that corporal did say so ...

Or, more relevant, it's 150 miles straight line across international water from Kaliningrad to Gotland, which is the most likely initial target for an invasion. So Russia can easily get ships and planes to Sweden without crossing any other countries waters or entering their territorial waters.

Sweden doesn't seem to be investing in anti-SEAD. I don't understand how these investments would help against such a threat profile.

If to follow the logic then Finland or Norway are closer to Russia (have common borders) so they shall increase its spending 10 times more. Or what?

Why not just to say "we have outdated forces, let's make them better". Why they need so cheap excuse?

> If to follow the logic then Finland or Norway are closer to Russia (have common borders) so they shall increase its spending 10 times more.

Finland probably already has higher spending than Sweden, at least that is my guess based on talking to Finnish friends.

Norway should IMO increase its spending to avoid repeating the blunders from 1930ies.

Finland actually spends less than Sweden: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Data%20for%20all%2...

Are you sure? the document you linked to shows that Sweden spent 1.1% in 2019, up from 1.0% in 2018 and 2017. While Finland spent 1.5% in 2019, up from 1.4% in 2018 ans 2017

You’re correct. I see now that I was looking at the wrong year, probably because I was visually scanning the document but didn’t notice that the column headings changed.

Wow, thanks, that was completely unexpected!

Neither does Japan and North Korea but this still happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_North_Korean_missile_test...

It's not like Russia and Sweden have ever fought each other in historical wars, like a Great Northern War.

Or Russisn troops trampled Swedish soil

Or Swedish boots Russian soil. Baltic Sea history is bloody and theres no way to deny it.

No doubt. But it might be less well known, because Swedish offensive wars in continental Europe during the 1600's - early 1700's are kind of famous, but Russian "visits" to Sweden later on probably less so.

Not in Finland. We're quite aware...

Yet they fought a lot in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_between_Russia_an...

Swedes and Russians have a history of war (something like a dozen conflicts) against each other going back many hundreds of years.

They are not officially part of NATO so they have to mind themselves.

So all that tremendous force of "a more respectable 72 artillery pieces" are supposed to help them to do what exactly with Russia? Laugh to death?

And by the way, how exactly that artillery is supposed to be used against Russia? What's the doctrine?

Finland has quite good artillery force and they will receive the first hit.

Yeah, let's just say nothing that Sweden could possibly field would deter "the threat from Russia" if such a thing wasn't a fruit of someone's perfervid imagination in Sweden. Which it is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com