On the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, as European statesmen grappled with the harsh geopolitical winds blowing through the continent, one country was undergoing a profound transformation: the Kingdom of Sweden. For over two centuries, the Swedes have walked the careful path of neutrality and military non-alignment between West and East. Now, nearly a year after officially becoming a member of NATO in March 2024, Sweden has reached its Rubicon, and crossed it. This epochal shift in the country’s relations with Europe – and the world – represents nothing less than Sweden’s own ‘Zeitenwende’ – an historic ‘turning point’ presaging the end of one era and the beginning of another.

The term ‘Zeitenwende’ (literally, ‘times-turn’) was used by Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany in an address to the Bundestag on 27 February 2022, three days after Russia launched its full-on invasion of Ukraine. The Chancellor spoke of the invasion as a ‘watershed’ moment separating the time before from the time after – an abrupt punctuation point dashed into the continuum of historical events. Vladimir Putin’s aggression provided the prompt for a set of policies designed to modernise the German Bundeswehr, boost defence spending and help redress the threat posed by Russia to the security of Europe. It was not explicitly stated, but it was clear that the preceding era of ‘Wandel durch Handel’ – of ‘change through trade’ – was over.

If the generational shift ushered in by the Russo-Ukrainian War has had a profound impact on German politics and society, its effect on Sweden has been no less significant. But in order to understand why, it is necessary to go back not to 2022 or 2014, but to 1809. In the winter of 1808-09, Russian armies had overrun the Grand Duchy of Finland, forcing the Swedes to give up this prized possession, which would from then onwards be ruled by the Russian Romanovs. From this disastrous defeat emerged a new foreign policy consensus: Sweden would maintain a strict neutrality, hoping thereby to insulate itself from the dangers of entanglement in continental alliance systems. It would trade its Nordic imperium for stability, and would remain on peaceful terms with its domineering Russian neighbour.

This policy of neutrality proved crucial during the Cold War, when Sweden and Finland (independent since 1917) stayed outside of the NATO alliance formed in 1949. Through neutrality and military non-alignment, both countries sought to avoid a potential invasion by the Soviet Union. It was during the Cold War that Swedish prime ministers such as Olof Palme projected an image of their country as a ‘moral superpower’: a country aligned with none, but friends to all; an honest diplomatic broker using the tools of social democracy and development aid to elevate living standards and pursue world peace.

The neutrality paradigm broke down with the fall of the Berlin Wall: Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995, a move that explicitly aligned both countries with the West economically and politically. In this context, Stockholm also began to cooperate ever more closely with European NATO countries on foreign policy and defence, even as Sweden retained its militarily non-aligned status on an official level.

It was Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, that finally brought Sweden into the NATO alliance. After it became clear that Finland, the country with which Sweden is closest when it comes to defence cooperation and strategic planning, would seek NATO membership, Stockholm joined its neighbour. The two countries applied for membership in May 2022, with Finland being admitted as the 31st member of the transatlantic alliance in April 2023, and Sweden as its 32nd in March 2024.

The significance of this move cannot be exaggerated, and it is clear that Sweden now intends to play an energetic part in the alliance. Like Germany, but perhaps even more so, Sweden is now grappling with how to adapt its long-held and deeply ingrained political identity to a new world.

The importance of this moment is recognised by none other than Stefan Löfven, who served as Sweden’s prime minister between 2014-21. When I interviewed him on the first day of the 2025 Munich Security Conference, he stated unequivocally that ‘everything has changed with Putin’s attempt to invade Ukraine’. Löfven, an old-school Social Democrat who entered politics through Sweden’s metalworkers union, was inspired as a young man by Palme’s vision of his country as a good neighbour in Scandinavia and a moral force in international affairs. Now, he acknowledges, we are living in a different geopolitical environment:

I was a very strong defender of the non-alignment policy, and I do still believe that it brought some kind of stability to the northern parts of Europe. But things have changed. We need to stand up against Russia and Putin (…) We need many countries to have a moral compass, but right now we just have to defend ourselves. We need to strengthen our military capability in Sweden and in Europe, and we must to do more, because that is how we can reach a long-term and sustainable peace later.

Above all, Löfven emphasises, ‘we need deterrence’. He urges his country to think not only about an end to the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, but also about how to build a new European security order. He wants to see Sweden playing an ‘active’ role in bringing together a ‘coalition of the willing’ within the EU and NATO.

Sweden brings valuable expertise to the transatlantic alliance. It has long pioneered a model of ‘total defence’ – a combination of civil resilience and military readiness, which aims to make the country prepared to respond to a variety of threats, ranging from conventional fighting to hybrid warfare. At a time when Russian-sponsored sabotage is on the rise, other countries in NATO will want to learn from Sweden’s example.

If this moment represents a Swedish Zeitenwende, then it might be tempting to cast Löfven in the role of a Swedish Angela Merkel: as a well-intentioned but short-sighted manager of coalitions who played at consensus politics while Europe became more and more complacent about its own security. However, when I asked Löfven whether he wishes that his government had done more to boost the country’s military strength while he was in power, he robustly defended his record. He points out that during his time as prime minister, he increased defence spending and reactivated the country’s dormant military conscription programme.

Indeed, boosting Sweden’s military capacity appears to have become a bipartisan issue. It was under Löfven’s social democratic successor, Magdalena Andersson, that Sweden finally decided to apply for NATO membership. Following elections in September 2022, Sweden has been governed by a minority administration led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s Moderate Party. Kristersson’s government – a coalition of the Moderates, Christian Democrats, and the Liberals – plans for Sweden to spend 2.6% of its GDP on defence by 2030. During a panel at the Munich Security Conference on European support for Ukraine, Kristersson indicated that Sweden would like to see Ukrainians ‘entitled to make their own security decisions’, citing ‘the decision Sweden and Finland made after the full-scale invasion: to have the right to make your own security policy decisions for the long term.’ He did not entirely rule out putting Swedish troops on the ground as part of a joint European presence to enforce a peace deal.

Sweden’s own Zeitenwende may ultimately drift into the inertia that has plagued some German policymaking. After all, it is difficult to transform deeply ingrained political instincts overnight. What is clear, however, is that the age of the ‘moral superpower’ has passed – at least for now. This does not mean that Sweden cannot pursue soft power in shrewd ways, nor that it cannot continue to play a positive role as an honest broker in international diplomacy. Nonetheless, it means that Sweden, like all of its European neighbours, will have to focus more of its energies on deterring aggression close to home. These are times of hard power and harsh men, and with such winds blowing across Europe, a country can no longer afford to rest on moral power alone.