Sweden Officially Joins NATO, Becomes 32nd Member

• Sweden officially joins NATO, country’s prime minister confirms.

Sweden on Thursday became the 32nd member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the handover of documents at a ceremony in Washington, a historic move that Secretary of State Antony Blinken said marked a “strategic debacle” by Russia.

“Good things come to those who wait,” Blinken said as he accepted the accession documents from Sweden’s prime minister, following ratification by the 31 other alliance members.

“I think if you step back and think of where we were three years ago, none of this was foreordained,” Blinken said of Sweden joining NATO.

There is “no clearer example than today of the strategic debacle that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has become for Russia,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere.