Social media and public concern are turning public opinion on Russia

When the people's voice turns the tide in security policy

Is a neutral Ukraine at peace preferable to a country where bombs continue to fall? The question is appearing more and more often in Swedish social media feeds and in topics of conversation back home. In Ukraine too, people are tired of the war and 70% want peace now as soon as possible through negotiations. Where just a year ago it was taboo to talk about compromise, discussions about peace, détente and neutrality are now spreading. People's protests online, in debate forums and on the streets are starting to change the tone.

---

Idealism and realism – two paths to peace

In foreign policy, it means idealism the belief that international agreements, values, and organizations can create peace through cooperation and the rule of law. Idealists trust the US, the EU, and NATO and believe that democracy can spread goodness even if it often requires war.

Realism is based on the opposite view. Realists believe that each state primarily defends its own interests. Respect for countries, especially the need of great powers for security in their immediate vicinity and political survival, is essential to creating peace on earth. A realist does not see the world as it should be, but as it is. If we want peace and democracy, we must instead create a global Green New Deal.

Sweden's neutrality during the Cold War was a realistic project: to avoid becoming a battlefield between the great powers. After the fall of the Wall, idealism took over. EU and NATO membership became signs of moral conviction rather than military necessity. But now, after years of war in Ukraine, doubts are starting to grow – both among experts and in the public.

---

When idealism became war politics

The idealistic belief in “spreading democracy” has often ended in disaster. In the 2000s, the United States launched the doctrine of preventive war, formulated by Paul Wolfowitz and the circle around the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC).

PNAC was behind much of George W. Bush's foreign policy. Wolfowitz argued that the United States must use its military superiority to prevent the emergence of new great powers. It was the beginning of an era of "democratization by bombing": Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria.

The researcher Nicholas Charron stated that the idea was to “widen the gap between the strength of the United States and other countries” and thereby secure access to gas and oil. The United States would become the most powerful actor in the Middle East – even without UN or NATO approval.

We know the result: ruins, corruption, new dictatorships and growing refugee flows. PNAC was closed down in 2006 when the Iraq war became too unpopular, but the ideas live on.

---

The return of realism – from right to left

When the author Lena Andersson in SVT said that Ukraine should perhaps do what Finland did during the Cold War – accept its geographical location to save lives – it sparked outrage. But also reflection. More and more Swedes are now asking the same thing: what values ​​are really worth dying for?

The researcher Johan Wennstrom at the Swedish National Defense University criticizes Sweden's "self-sacrificing idealism" and believes that the country is now placing soldiers abroad on Russia's border, which threatens Sweden's authenticity. Even bourgeois thinkers who Carl-Vincent Reimers at Timbro has begun to question liberal foreign policy: isn't a neutral Ukraine in peace better than a pro-Western country in ruins?

This time, however, it is not just researchers who are driving the shift. It is people in the feeds. TikTok, X and Facebook are filled with peace campaigns and posts that call for diplomacy instead of eternal armament. Many see how the war economy is devouring resources from climate, healthcare and education.

---

From Ukraine to Washington – the West's double standards

The United States has used freedom rhetoric to justify war for decades. But its history shows the opposite. The West created the dictatorships in Iraq and IranThe invasion of Libya shattered a society with reasonable welfare and social institutions.

Libya had done little harm to the outside world since the 1989 airstrikes and had one of the highest living standards in Africa. When the country began planning its own currency for Africa – a gold-backed African dinar – it was attacked in 2011 by the US and NATO. The result: chaos, slave markets and sexual violence against migrants in prisons approved and used by the EU.

This is what the real outcome of idealism looks like.

---

Russia: from the West's failed shock therapy to dictatorship

Russia also has no moral interpretative precedence. The attack on Ukraine was a violation of international law. But the West bears responsibility for having created the conditions that made it possible.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, the West introduced “shock therapy” – rapid privatization, mass unemployment and hyperinflation. Millions of Russians died in poverty. It was in that chaos that Vladimir Putin was able to seize power.

Later, the West refused to let Russia become a partner in security policy. The US promises not to expand NATO eastward were broken time and again. In Moscow, NATO expansion into Ukraine was interpreted as an existential threat – just as the US saw Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962.

Putin's invasion can never be defended. But the West also didn't understand what it was playing into.

---

When reality intrudes

Ukraine has long been divided on NATO. Before 2014, only 20–30 percent of the population wanted to join, mostly in the western parts. Many eastern and southern Ukrainians saw NATO as a threat.

That changed only after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in Donbas. Support for NATO then rose to over 60 percent. But the differences within the country remained, as did corruption and oligarchy.

The problems in Eastern Europe are not much different between Western-controlled countries like Poland, Romania and Hungary versus Russia. All are mostly against LGBTQI and for patriarchy. All have corruption, class divisions, right-wing extremism and oligarchic rule.

---

Public protests reduce the risk of world war

Stefan Lofven at Åland 2022 said he did not believe that a NATO border close to Russia would increase security, he was mocked. Today the quote is shared as a warning that came true.

People have begun to see the pattern: every time a great power tries to dominate the world in the name of democracy, new disasters follow. That is why a new peace movement is now growing, often led from below by young peopleThey don't want to live with the threat of nuclear war, inflation and environmental destruction.

When people start speaking, power listens. And every vote for de-escalation reduces the risk that the world is stumbling into a third world war. Survival requires welfare and green transition across the globe.