Admission into NATO without a Membership Action Plan: Sweden’s Discreet March Towards NATO Membership

Abstract

This paper analyzes the intentional, and incremental, path that Sweden took to ascend to NATO without the aid of NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP). It also uses a constructivist framework to rebut the narrative that Sweden sought to join NATO based upon of fear of Russian aggression. To analyze this, the first consideration taken is whether Sweden had met the minimum qualifications for NATO membership at the time of its application and analyze three cases of how comparable nations entered NATO. As the paper dives deeper, it will use the lens of constructivism to analyze how Sweden signaled its future intentions to align with NATO as well as how and why participating in military interventions overseas drew them closer to NATO.