The history of Sweden has encompassed diverse events over the course of this century. Our country has changed positively to work towards the well-being of everyone; this is so not only in the economic or the political area, but also in other areas including security and defence.
Since a short war against Norway in 1814, Sweden has not been involved in any wars. The country has always pursued a policy which held non-alignment in peacetime and neutrality in wartime as essential for Swedish citizenship, in order to maintain a strong national defence. Our army forces have positioned themselves neutral at all times (including in both World Wars), and we have sought to improve relations with other countries as a priority for our kingdom.
When Sweden joined the EU in 1995 and the Schengen cooperation in 2001, this meant open borders and mutual collaboration. This is the spirit we encourage you to implement as one of the high-rated countries regarding immigration and taking in people seeking asylum.
Swedish foreign policy seeks to focus on trade. We will enhance and conclude more bilateral agreements over military trade with NATO member states, China and the Philippines. In this way, Sweden will enhance its security over partnerships with different countries stemming from trade agreements. In the past, Sweden has sold submarines to China, provided military weapons to NATO member states under trade agreements and cooperated with European countries for enhanced welfare in the European Union.
Observing what has happened in Ukraine with the annexation of Crimea, Sweden wants to secure greater protection for its citizens. The only way to achieve this is through NATO and the United States of America, and allowing them to carry out more exercises in the Baltic Sea. At the same time, Sweden wants to achieve a neutral partnership with the Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China, leaving open possibilities of cooperation in the future.
A priority of Sweden, as the second largest country in the European Union in terms of the acceptance of refugees, is to achieve better coordination with Germany as the target country of the refugees. Those asylums have been examined, need to be returns their mother country as soon as possible.
Even though the Convention Status of Refugees of the United Nations Refugee Agency is set up to define and deal with many cases of refugees flexibly, with global developments and different factors, more and more new unsolvable cases are emerging in various corners of the world. We have to stand up for security, safety and freedom. Sweden strives for nonalignment and a policy of cooperation. In our foreign policy, we build security together with countries and organisations and our first priority is defence.
The international community has to cooperate with the Russian Federation in dealing with terrorism and in economic terms. However, as long as the current policy of Russia towards Ukraine, Crimea and around the Baltic remains unchanged, we have to view this relationship negatively. Moreover, Sweden will not tolerate any attack on its members in EU or on Nordic countries. Security in our neighbourhood has deteriorated in recent times. Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea, the situation on the EU’s southern border, the attempted coup in Turkey and the ongoing war in Syria – all of these issues require strong and joint action, in both the EU and the UN.
Russian military aircraft operations are provocative and unprofessional, which is easily increasing risk of conflicts. Western Europe, including Sweden, are on a daily basis of cyber operations, disinformation and other specific operations from the Russia. Sweden wants to cooperate with NATO and provide them with more space for their military training in the Baltic Sea to support security in North-East Europe, and tries to engage more with the Action Readiness Plan. Furthermore, Sweden advocates for joint & strong action in the European Union.
Additionally, Sweden wants to engage with the European Union to equip its intelligence agents for countering Cyber Attacks on the Baltic states and to achieve more prosperity. In these years, the victims of the crisis in Syria cause thousands of refugees to cram into Europe in search of asylum. This issue of border security should be discussed and every country should pay attention to it. The EU has put a lot of effort into the protection of border security and has also contributed over €3.2 Bin since 2011. However, countries in Europe over time will become unable to control this crisis and the human rights of refugees has become the urgent issue that every country has to be concerned about. Sweden takes humanitarian action and neutral security as our obligations.
With regard to Sweden’s neutrality, we can see that terrorist organisations such as the terrorist Islamist group DAESH have developed a new apparatus to gain more power and presence in the Middle East. The most important problem facing the international community is to save those people who directly suffer the ravages of war.
Sweden is superpower in humanitarian means, and superpower will remain. We are providing and we will provide more humanitarian aid to the European Union and to the Middle East as superpower.
As a country dedicated to promoting humanitarianism, Sweden believes that, to create more peaceful and reliable border security in EU and to deal with the problem of refugees appropriately, we should cooperate on achieving a policy to control the number of refugees. This means supporting our allies which are engaged in Syria, the Middle East and in Africa, cooperating on more stability from these regimes, and establishing the rights of people in the Middle East to develop themselves in a free country; this is incumbent upon countries who are participating in the Resolute Support Operation, which also seeks at the same time to achieve greater stability in the European Union.
Topic: Border Security, Country: Sweden
Team: Lin, Pin-LO, Wang, Shi-Yun, Guillermo Bascuas Escarti, Adam Kubina and Cheng, Hui
References
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