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After falling throughout the 1990s and the start of the millennium, Swedish defense spending has stabilized at 1.1 percent of gross domestic product. The government now wants to reverse the trend and is targeting an increase of more than 30 percent by 2020.
The minority government can push through compulsory military service without the backing of parliament since the initiative doesn’t require a law change.
In an interview Thursday with the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper, Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom described a potential military build-up by the U.S. and talk by Donald Trump of
nuclear rearmament as “very worrying.”
“If countries such as the U.S. increase military spending, there is a risk that other countries feel forced to follow,” Wallstrom said. “It feels like this takes us back many, many years in time. It feels outdated and counterproductive in our time.”
Trump has proposed
raising U.S. defense spending by $54 billion, or 10 percent above the current defense budget cap, and to oversee “one of the greatest military buildups in American history."
In a further sign of discord toward the new U.S. administration, the Swedish government has decided to raise the amount of foreign aid for sexual and reproductive health and rights by 200 million kronor ($22.1 million). The move comes after Trump decided in January to reinstate a policy that blocks U.S. taxpayers’ dollars from funding abortions abroad.
"When they go low, we go high," Swedish Development Minister Isabella Lovin tweeted Thursday, citing former First Lady Michele Obama.
