Sweden's NATO Membership Is Two Years Old. The Domestic Politics of Paying for It Are Just Beginning.

Sweden has met NATO's 2 percent GDP defence spending target for the first time since 1985 — but the budget required to sustain it has produced the sharpest political conflict inside the governing coalition since Sweden's accession, with welfare cuts that the Social Democrats say prove that NATO membership comes at the direct expense of the social model that made Sweden worth defending.

The arithmetic of Sweden's defence spending commitment was always going to require a political confrontation. When Sweden formally joined NATO in March 2024, its defence budget stood at approximately 1.4 percent of GDP. Reaching 2 percent — the alliance's benchmark — by 2026 required either an increase in total government spending, a reduction in spending elsewhere, or both. The Swedish government chose a combination: a modest increase in total expenditure, funded partly by debt, combined with reductions in social welfare programmes that were described in the budget documents as "efficiency improvements."

The specific reductions have given the Social Democrats — now in opposition — a politically concrete argument that they have deployed with considerable effectiveness. The 2025 budget reduced housing benefit payments by 12 percent, reduced the replacement rate in the unemployment insurance system from 80 to 75 percent of previous wages, and eliminated a programme providing free dental care to adults over 65 that had been introduced in 2023. The aggregate saving from these three measures was 14.7 billion kronor — approximately $1.4 billion — which the government cited as part of the fiscal headroom required to meet the defence commitment.

The Social Democrats have calculated, correctly, that the optics of this exchange — dental care for the elderly traded for fighter jet procurement — are electorally potent. Their framing: NATO membership is being paid for by the people who can least afford it, while the security benefits accrue to the country as a whole. The government's counter-framing — that the defence investment protects the social model by ensuring Sweden is not subject to the kind of external coercion that destroyed social models elsewhere in Europe — is analytically coherent but less viscerally compelling than a dentist's appointment cancelled for budget reasons.

Within the governing coalition, the Sweden Democrats — who supported NATO accession as a nationalist security measure — have expressed discomfort with welfare cuts that conflict with the social conservatism that distinguishes them from the liberal right. Two Sweden Democrat MPs voted against the housing benefit reduction in a parliamentary committee, a procedural rebellion that the party leadership managed without a formal confrontation but that signalled the limits of coalition discipline on this issue.

A YouGov poll conducted in April 2025 found that 61 percent of Swedes support NATO membership, down from 73 percent at accession. The same poll found that 58 percent believe the costs of membership have been distributed unfairly. The two findings are not contradictory — they suggest a public that supports the strategic decision but not the political choices made in its implementation.

"We joined NATO to protect Sweden," said Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson. "The question the government has not answered is: which Sweden? The Sweden where a 70-year-old can go to the dentist, or the Sweden where she cannot?"