The fact that Finland and Sweden join NATO could put Trump’s GOP in the hot seat
The latest big news: When Finland has leaned into the prospect of joining NATO in recent weeks, Sweden’s Social Democrats, who have long opposed NATO membership, have a statement indicates that they are re-evaluating that position.
Of course, joining NATO is not just a matter of Finland and Sweden simply deciding to join; it also about whether current members would agree to this. The conventional wisdom is that both countries would be welcomed with open arms. In the United States, it would require at least two-thirds of the Senate to vote to ratify its membership.
But exactly how that debate goes down could be quite interesting – especially in light of the GOP’s small but significant Trump era’s drive for more skepticism towards NATO. And the threatening unknown would be Donald Trump himself weighing into the process – and not necessarily for.
The last two major NATO expansions came in 1999, when Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined, and in 2004, when seven former communist countries and Soviet republics joined. The latter was completely uncontroversial, with the Senate voting 96-0 to ratify their membership. But the former presents some important lessons about how an addition of Finland and Sweden could be developed – and who can resist it.
The vote ended up being strongly positive, 80-19, but there was a lot of uncertainty in the beginning. Throughout the debate, senators from both parties were concerned that the move would be seen as provocative by Russia. They warned that Russia sees NATO’s expansion as an “iron ring” around its borders.
“I think this symbolically replaces the iron curtain that was established in the late 1940s, which turned west, with now an iron ring of nations facing east toward Russia,” Senator John Warner (R-Va.) Said during the debate on the subject. “This is causing a lot of concern to this senator.”
Warner proposed an addendum that would have blocked all new NATO admissions for three years, and it received 41 votes – including many proponents of the expansion under discussion.
In the years that followed, many prominent foreign policy observers questioned the wisdom of the expansion, which we summarized last month:
… You do not have to look far into the past to see studied minds warn of a situation much like the one we are in today. Former Clinton administration Secretary of Defense Bill Perry said in 2016 that Putin was largely to blame for Russia’s aggression in Crimea but that “I have to say the United States deserves a lot of the blame” for supporting NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe. George Kennan, a former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, called it a “tragic mistake” after the 1998 Senate ratified NATO’s expansion, even though Russia was still picking up pieces from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Late. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (DN.Y.) warned at the same time, “We have no idea what we are getting into.” Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski argued relatively recently that Ukraine should not join military alliances and instead stick to a Finland-like approach of remaining neutral while cooperating with the West in other ways.
All this plays into the threatening debate about Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO. Expanding the alliance has been a matter of consensus – and even unanimous in 2003-04 – but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brings, in strong relief, the prospect of a perceived provocation that critics had warned against.
Recognizing Finland and Sweden would be a strong rejection of Putin, but it would undoubtedly also be provocative. Russia has clarified its strong opposition, saying that NATO “continues to be a tool for confrontation” and that Finland would face “serious military and political consequences” if it joined.
Although the concern for provocation has historically been bipartisan, the question today seems to concern how Republicans can react.
Just last week, more than 30 percent of House Republicans voted against a token measure confirming support for NATO. Their reasons were varied and often not entirely obvious, but it followed years of the GOP’s leaning towards NATO skepticism – with some not-so-mild pushes from Trump.
Trump claimed support for NATO, but he regularly attacked other countries for not paying enough, and there are plenty of reports that he wanted to leave the alliance entirely during his second term. It is a prospect that remains real and important if he is elected in 2024. And it can also color his stance on NATO expansion, especially since much of this long process can play out when he is a formally declared 2024 candidate.
Add to that Trump’s regularly Putin – friendly comments, and it’s not hard to see him adopt an opinion that is more in line with Putin’s wishes – and in line with some of the skeptics of the 1998 NATO expansion.
Despite all of Trump’s comments about NATO over the years, he was not generally asked about NATO expansion. During the 2015 campaign, he offered one indifferent response about Ukraine’s potential membership.
“I would not care,” Trump said. “If [Ukraine] goes in, great. If it does not work, fine. “
In early 2020, Trump had the opportunity for further NATO expansion – but into the Middle Eastrather than Eastern Europe. (There did not seem to be much, or any, follow-up to this proposal.)
Republicans questioned Trump’s NATO skepticism during his presidency. 2018, Senate voted 97-2 to confirm support for NATO when Trump attended a summit in Brussels – a fairly direct message to Trump just before his summit, as well as what became his infamous press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. In 2019, only 22 House Republicans voted against a bill that would have prevented Trump from unilaterally withdrawing from NATO.
Given these votes, and given that this would be in the hands of the Senate, where Republicans have been more inclined to beat Trump on foreign policy, it is not clear that Trump could prevent his party from signing that Finland and Sweden joins NATO. Nor would he necessarily try. But for a guy who made questioning NATO a business card – and whose views on the subject were often outside the party’s mainstream – it would be an important development that could result in a troubled dynamic in his party.