Concise news summaries, often with the benefit of at least 24 hours of hindsight
A delegation of more than 100 representatives from Sweden, led by the country’s king, wrapped up a three-day visit to Poland on Wednesday that was focused on deepening security and economic co-operation between the two countries.
The visit comes as Stockholm and Warsaw are assembling defence forces that Moscow would think twice about tangling with. Both have shown that they can keep low-intensity harassment in the Baltic in check, but the bigger concern is whether they would be able to prevent a Russian land grab, and whether they could do so independent of American help.
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A Polish-Swedish partnership is a match made in military-industrial heaven. Concerned that it does not have the modern kit needed to pose a credible deterrence, Poland is spending half of its defence budget—per capita the largest in Nato—on new equipment. That is more money than it can spend at home, and it has made Poland one of the biggest markets for Swedish arms exporters.
Saab’s sales of big-ticket items account for much of that, but there is plenty of potential for smaller firms to get in on the act, according to Business Sweden, a lobby group. It reckons that there are some 380 companies—many of them small and medium-sized—involved directly in arms production, and that vastly more making the civilian technologies that go into weapons. Modern warfare is good business for ploughshares that can be used as swords.
The eight Nato countries bordering the Baltic Sea, together with Iceland and Norway, have pledged to open their borders to each other’s citizens should they be forced to flee in the event of a disaster. The agreement is an extension of a patchwork of arrangements among some of the countries in the region and will make it possible to co-ordinate responses and establish uniform procedures for doing so.
The bear not in the room is Russia. The Kremlin has repeatedly said that it does not intend to invade Nato countries, but western intelligence agencies have advised their governments to be ready for everything from small-scale shenanigans to an outright invasion. Military collaboration has long been a way to signal to their populations that they are doing what they can to prevent such things from happening. Now, civil-defence agencies are showing they will be taken care of in the event they do.
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The leading opposition party standing in Denmark’s general election on 24 March is suggesting that the 61 billion kroner (€816 million) in subsidies pledged by the Danish state last month to build Bornholm Energy Island would be better spent supporting the development of atomic power.
The proposal, put forward by Alex Vanopslagh, the leader of the Liberal Alliance, calls for taking a total of 120 billion kroner in subsidies for renewable-power projects and using the money fund construction of as many as eight atomic-energy plants over the next 15 years.
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Though Bornholm Energy Island, which encompasses two offshore windfarms and an onshore power converter, is a Danish project, Germany is its biggest benefactor: in exchange for footing 70% of the bill it will get most of the power the windfarms generate.
The setup is one that the Danes worked hard to sell to Berlin, and would make it hard for Mr Vanopslagh to make good on his proposal without Denmark losing face. This is something he is well aware of, suggesting the purpose of making it has more to do with promoting his party’s position that Denmark should overturn its ban on atomic energy than it does with sinking an energy island.
Denmark has reactivated an air-force squadron that will operate four long-range drones to support surveillance of its interests in the Arctic, the North Atlantic and the Baltic.
The decision to purchase the American-produced MQ-9B SeaGuardians was announced last year, as was the three-year wait to have them delivered. But building up a drone corps in Denmark will take time as well; the air-force announced yesterday that it will need to hire and train a hundred or so people—many of them civilians—to keep the drones up and running.
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The drone purchase is being made with the blank cheque the government gave the military last year, when it ordered it to procure the materiel it deems necessary to scale up its capacity as quickly as possible. Drones, it appears, fit that bill nicely: the SeaGuardians join four saildrones that were sea-trialled in June in preparation for surveillance operations in the Baltic. Compared with crewed systems, the drones are cheap and quickly rolled out.
The saildrones are also American-made, however—a fact that does not sit well with those who would prefer that the military start buying more of its kit in Europe. Other European armies are stocking up on American arms too, though: Germany, Belgium and Poland are all buying SeaGuardians. The saildrones’ producer, for its part, has chosen to set up a European sales office in Copenhagen. Denmark is unlikely to be the last country American drones take over.
When it comes to corruption rankings, there are the Nordics and then there is everyone else. Again this year, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden ended in a log jam at the top of the Corruption Perceptions Index, an annual ranking of perceived corruption in the public sector. Germany rounded out the top 10. The Baltic states (Estonia: 12; Lithuania: 28th; Latvia: 37) are showing that despite some setbacks (including the resignation of Lithuania’s prime minister last year amid a corruption scandal), that they, too, take corruption seriously.
Transparency International, which has produced the report each year since 1995, cautions against easing up against corruption, even in the Nordic countries, but, in the Baltic region, the trends at least are with them: countries with the best records are generally democratic and highly digitalised.
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That will show the path for Poland (52). To be sure, it has shown improvement since PiS, an illiberal regime that dismembered the country’s civil-society infrastructure, was voted out of office in 2023, and it finds itself solidly in the top third of the table.
Progress, though, has been modest, due to what has been deemed insufficient efforts to undo the damage done by PiS. Russia (157) finished level with Chad, Honduras and Zimbabwe. An outlier in a sea of outliers.