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Comment by brabel | Hacker News Reader

That was immediately after getting formal guarantee by the UK that in case of an attack, the UK will immediately defend Sweden (which weakened the need to join NATO substantially).

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This is misleading. I believe the wording was "help"/"assist", not "defend" and I do not believe anything has been formalised?

Misleading how? It's exactly what the swedish news are saying: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/sensationellt-uttalande-o...

"Sverige ingår i samma familj, så vi skulle hjälpa Sverige. Vi skulle göra allt vi kan, både militärt och på andra sätt” "

"Britternas, nu officiellt uttalade militära stöd till Sverige..."

Do you see anything about a signed agreement anywhere? All you have there is one sentence uttered by a British minister at a press conference, and for all you know, "military" assistance could mean exactly the same as for Ukraine: sending weapons.

Misleading exactly in the way I said: the wording used is “help”, not defend, and nothing is formalised. Ukraine is getting “help” as well, but it is not exactly NATO article 5 protection.

Pretty much. There is definitely no "formal guarantee", just a sound bite from a press conference:

https://www.thelocal.se/20220304/britain-promises-military-a...

Was this the same kind of agreement as this one made with Ukraine when they got rid of their nuclear weapons?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

I'm all for the UK stepping up to give Ukraine more assistance but it's not (yet) justified by the Budapest memorandum; it only guarantees assistance in the case of attack by nuclear weapons.

Read the the agreement again. It only mandates that the countries that signed the agreement wouldn't be the ones to attack Ukraine - it didn't include any obligation to defend them.

> It only mandates that the countries that signed the agreement wouldn't be the ones to attack Ukraine

Shows exactly how much international agreements are worth: One of the countries that signed the agreement was Russia.

The UK said the same to Australia. No one came during after the bombing of Darwin , in fact it was AU troops that ended up helping out the empire.

Also, I think the Swedish military would likely be a very formidable opponent to anyone trying to invade Sweden. The tricky part would be if Russia simply fired rockets or missiles into Sweden (but I don't see any point to them doing that).

> Also, I think the Swedish military would likely be a very formidable opponent to anyone trying to invade Sweden.

Muahahahahaa... Maybe as recently as the late 1970s or even, at a stretch, early-to-mid 1980s. But after that, newsflash for you: Sweden pretty much got rid of its erstwhile impressive defense.

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