Israel, Sweden and the US prepare for more—and wider—war

(Originally published Oct. 17 in “What in the World“) U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a new $425 million in weapons for Ukraine.

The new shipment, announced between a phone call between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a trip to Germany to talk Ukraine, includes air-defense and air-to-ground missiles, armored vehicles, and more.

Israel launched airstrikes across Lebanon, outside Beirut, and on a southern city that killed at least 25 people. Israeli forces are, meanwhile, de-mining parts of the Golan Heights, in what analysts say may be an expansion of its ground war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Sources that include a Syrian soldier and a UN peacekeeping official told Reuters that the Israelis have also been shifting the fence that marks the demilitarized zone between Israeli-occupied Golan and the rest of Syria eastward to clear more room for military operations.

Sweden will boost defense spending 10% next year to 2.4% of its GDP to confront the threat of Russian attack. Sweden became the newest member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization earlier this year after agreeing to Turkey’s demands that it tighten restrictions on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Washington also helped sweep aside Turkey’s objections to Swedish membership by expediting the sale of F16s to Turkey.

Among the items on Stockholm’s shopping list: armored vehicles, missiles and artillery, helicopters and, of course, some of its own Saab Gripen fighter jets.

While Russia certainly scares Sweden and its European neighbors, former U.S. President and re-election candidate Donald Trump positively terrifies them. NATO members have been concerned that Trump, if re-elected, wouldn’t have the kind of advisers to again talk him out of withdrawing from NATO and pulling U.S. troops out of Europe. After spending a record $259 billion on defense in 2022, European nations likely spent $291 billion on weapons in 2023. But the prospect of Trump’s reelection may force NATO members to go even further and consider whether they need to replace the U.S. nuclear umbrella with one of their own.

Denmark, for example, has more than doubled its defense spending in the past decade, putting it in third place behind Ukraine and Poland in terms of accelerating military spending, according to the latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. With threats from Russia and former U.S. President Donald Trump rising, Copenhagen announced in August that it would boost its defense budget by roughly 50%.