Similar to Switzerland, Sweden’s armed neutrality was located between myth and lifelong lies. Armed to the teeth, non-alignment was often seen as a moral added value. De facto, however, one depended on the protective shield of NATO.
For a good two hundred years Sweden was free of alliances and without war – the second hundred years, so our historiography has it, on the basis of the first – and almost a third of this period of peace fell within my lifetime. But now we are giving up Sweden’s non-alignment in order to become a member of NATO.