Hello Everyone,
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has upended 200 years of global pacifism for Sweden, sending the famously neutral country into the arms of NATO.
Last month, as President Vladimir Putin of Russia issued veiled threats about unleashing nuclear war, the U.S. was holding military exercises with Sweden, one of NATO's most recent applicants.
Hundreds of Marines, most from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, joined their Swedish counterparts for maneuvers on and around some of Sweden's 100,000 Baltic Sea islands, many of them uninhabited.
For two weeks, they scrambled up rocks under heavy artillery fire, landed combat boats on shores and crawled on their bellies through forested ravines.
For the Americans, combat in the Baltic Sea is somewhat new territorv and warrants a crash course in amphibious warfare. That encompasses diving into frigid waters, clad in heavy gear and carrying machine guns. It means learning how to remain underwater for long periods of time, before emerging in a burst of attacking machine gunfire.
For the Swedes, the terrain is familiar, but war is not.
The country's last war was in 1814. But the war in Ukraine has brought into sharp relief the limitations of being in Europe and not having the security guarantees of NATO's collective defense pact.
Voted by @ronindboss