The Bells are Ringing Again, and This Time Sweden is Inside the Alliance

On August 25, CIA Director John Ratcliffe landed in Moscow. He met Russian officials, warned them against attacking NATO, raised Moscow’s support for Iran, and flew home. Allies and Kyiv were briefed before and after. It was the first trip of its kind since the former CIA Director William Burns made the same flight in November 2021, fifteen weeks before Russia crossed into Ukraine. As one former CIA operations officer put it, the fact that a director gets on a plane at all suggests the threat behind the trip was judged credible.The warning had gone public three weeks earlier. US intelligence assessed that Putin could order a limited attack on a NATO member, most likely against the Baltics or Poland, at some point between this autumn and 2029. The assessed purpose is to test Article 5’s, and to fragment the alliance by proving it lacks a response.The location for that scenario is Sweden’s front yard. Gotland sits in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Sweden’s air and naval reach covers the sea lines that would carry reinforcements to the Baltic states in the first week of a crisis, and Swedish territory is key for air superiority.In 2022, Sweden’s intelligence failures were Sweden’s. The...