[…] QUESTION: What do you see as Sweden’s role within NATO?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Important. I mean, Sweden’s been an incredible addition to NATO. Understand that a country that basically had to fend – defend itself for a very long time, but it has a robust and mature manufacturing sector, industrial sector, technology sector. So look, this is not a criticism, so I don’t want you guys to read into this as like I’m criticizing some country, but generally the additions to NATO have been countries that join because they were in a weak position, and so they join because they needed the collective strength of an alliance. But when we added the two countries – Sweden being one of them – these are two countries that brought to the table capabilities that NATO didn’t use to have, and with whom we’ve already had long-term defense agreements for a very long time and cooperation.
So they were an – Sweden was an incredible addition. It made the Alliance much stronger, no doubt about it. And especially now, when we’re talking about – one of the things we talk about is the defense industrial base. I mean, Sweden had a mature defense industrial base that it now brought into NATO. So the opportunity to – we already work on aircraft together and so forth. The ability to build on that is extraordinary, and that’s one of the things we want to be able to do, and beyond defense, on other areas that touch on defense but maybe are not defense directly. Läs referatet