Swedish pseudo-neutrality

The issue
The end of the Cold War saw the Swedish Armed Forces were slashed as several air bases were deemed unnecessary and closed and fell from 400 fighters in 1994 to 150 in 2005.

The Soviet's Operation Northern Norway was a plan to conquer and annex northern in an East/West war and this fightened Sweden.

Former nukes
After World War II, Sweden considered building nuclear weapons to defend themselves against a possible offensive assault from the Soviet Union. They had almost got tangled up in the the Soviet Union invasion of Finland in November 1939 and feared a repeat of this later on. From 1945 to 1972 the government ran a clandestine nuclear weapons program under the guise of civilian defence research at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOA).

By the late 1950s the work had reached the point where underground testing was feasible. The option to continue development of weapons was abandoned in 1966, after about 10 years work. After Sweden's subsequent signing of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 began the wind-down of the program, which finally concluded in 1972.

The Swedish Government sought to develop tactical nuclear weapons to be used against advancing Soviet forces and/or any militarily significant targets in in neighboring countries, in the event of war. All targets included places on the Baltic Sea such as the docks Riga in Latvia or enemy air bases like Chernyakhovsk air base in Russia's Kalliningrad Oblast.

This is opposed to strategic nuclear weapons which are designed to be used against enemy cities, large factories and other larger-area targets to damage the enemy's ability to wage war and kill thousands of civilians in the proses.

They wanted 19-20 of them for this purpose.

In the parallel universe
Sweden was asked to join NATO by the USA after the 2nd August 1990 to 28th February 1991 war in Iraq, but they declined the offer.

Also see-

 * http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2007/issue3/english/history.html
 * http://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_publications/NATO_member_and_partner_countries-2011-
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_nuclear_weapons_program