Sweden officially joined NATO last week as the alliance’s 32nd member and the United States’ newest treaty ally. Analysts and commentators have been quick to highlight Sweden’s robust arms industry and the geographic benefits of an allied Sweden. With its control of 109-mile-long Gotland Island at the center of the Baltic Sea, Sweden will help turn the Baltic into a “NATO lake,” protecting the vulnerable trio of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. But Sweden’s greatest potential contribution to the alliance is curiously unsung. The selective conscription system that Sweden reauthorized in 2017 offers a critical example to the many European NATO militaries facing an existential threat at home: the struggle to find soldiers for their shrinking forces.
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