It’s only now joining NATO, mainly because of the Russian dictator that Assange played the stooge for. It would have been a lot harder for the U.S. to extradite him from Sweden than it has been from the UK (which hasn’t been a simple process, either).
If he’d faced justice for his alleged sexual assaults in Sweden he would have likely spent a few years in prison there and then continued wandering the world through whatever countries would still allow him in. He wouldn’t be anything close to the martyr that he and his fans like to portray him as, just another creepy and entitled rapey techie.
