The United States and NATO, history’s largest security powers, receive lessons in the moral courage and strategic vision of smaller non-NATO countries that are very vulnerable to Russian retaliation. In the same way, the EU’s economic power package is slow on Ukraine’s application for membership.

Ukraine’s epic resistance to Vladimir Putin’s sadistic attack has cost enormous human, material and economic costs. The Ukrainian people persevere, belatedly fortified by significant but still inadequate Western weapons. The equipment capacity of the United States and NATO seems limited in holding back a total occupation of Russian forces, but not driving them out of Ukraine altogether and inflicting a potential regime-ending defeat on Putin.

Now, two of Russia’s neighbors, Finland and Sweden, are waking up neutral throughout the Cold War and after Cold War periods to Putin’s crime in Ukraine and are seeking open NATO membership.

Putin has responded with his typical brutal hot. His acolyte, Dmitry Medvedev, said: “It will no longer be possible to talk about any non-nuclear status in the Baltic Sea.” Nor does Nordic democracy seem to be intimidated. Whether the Biden administration, NATO and the EU will be equally steadfast remains to be seen.

The development comes at a critical time of strategic rethinking of both Washington, and completes its long-delayed National defense strategyand Brussels, where NATO will announce its new Strategic concept in June. It becomes even more important in the existential competition between democracy and autocracy, emphasized by President Bidens Summit for democracy.

In recent decades, two concepts of strategic deterrence against aggression have emerged from US practice and policy as leaders of the free world. For countries considered critical to US national security, Washington has long-standing treaty commitments that it will defend. It includes all NATO countries – “every inch”, says Biden – and the United States’ five allies Asia-Oceania: Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Other democracies that are considered important to US interests, but that lack formal military commitment, may or may not be directly defended. Taiwan endures a US policy of strategic ambiguity. For more than two decades, Ukraine was in that company, wondering if the world’s leading democracy would help defend it against its powerful autocratic neighbor, in addition to providing the necessary training and limited self-defense weapons.

Ukraine’s heroic president, Volodymyr Zelensky, soon learned of the bad news as Russia’s invasion approached. Biden effectively announced a new category of democracies threatened by a hostile nuclear power. Because U.S. intervention could lead to a direct conflict that could “mean World War III,” America and NATO will stay out of the fight, Biden has said, and even the quality and delivery speed of additional defensive weapons must be severely curtailed to avoid “provoke” the attacker. Taiwan, in a roughly parallel situation, has reason to worry about Biden’s recently declared standard. China is likely to assume that Washington will follow the “Ukraine option” with Taiwan.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has shown receptivity to the inclusion of Finland and Sweden and promised an accelerated accession process. “All NATO allies will welcome them,” he said. “… [T]hey can easily join this alliance if they decide to apply. ” But the next NATO meeting when membership would be considered is not until June 29, and Putin has shown that he can move quickly when he considers his ambitions threatened and sees an opportunity for a preventive move.

Putin may well consider a lightning strike into Finland and / or Sweden, not necessarily to take Helsinki or Stockholm or overthrow the governments, but only to hold a piece of their territory enough to ignite a conflict and effectively disqualify them from NATO. -membership. The unwritten catch-22 NATO rule that caught Ukraine in a legal limbo for 20 years could do the same for the two Scandinavian aspirants now. No country in a conflict situation can expect to be admitted as long as the conflict exists, as it would automatically bring the fighting to NATO under Article 5’s collective defense mandate.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, at a press conference with Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, said that her country’s desire to join NATO is precisely to get allies if Russia were to attack. “[I]If Finland were a NATO member and became a target of military violence, it would defend itself with the support of the Alliance. “

But Stoltenberg sees NATO’s primary goal of not defending countries striving to join NATO, such as Ukraine, without avoiding conflict. Reflects Biden’s comment, he said“NATO’s primary responsibility is to protect and defend all Allies, and to prevent this conflict from escalating into a full-blown war between NATO and Russia. … NATO will not be directly involved in the conflict. NATO allies will not send troops or capabilities into Ukraine. “

It is NATO’s Achilles heel that Putin has successfully used to conquer Georgian and Ukrainian territory. Washington, London and Moscow all guaranteed Ukraine’s security when they gave up their nuclear weapons in 1997. In 2008, at Washington’s insistence, NATO declared that Georgia and Ukraine were safe to join, but within months Putin suddenly arrived. invaded Georgiawhich in practice condemns its accession to NATO.

After seeing Western passivity, Putin unleashed violence among Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, which worsened Kiev’s NATO prospects. 2014, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, exclude Ukraine’s NATO prospects despite ongoing lip service to its “open door” policy.

Finland and Sweden are now testing NATO’s convictions. Putin knows from experience that a conflict with the new aspirants would be the surest way to deter NATO from letting them in.

To reflect NATO’s position, Biden has stated two apparently firm intentions: First, he will not send a single US soldier or pilot to defend Ukraine even against genocide – as he sees it, it would risk World War III. Second, America will not give “a single inch” of NATO territory to Putin’s aggression, despite the same risk of potential escalation into nuclear war.

Regarding the situation between Finland and Sweden, US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said last week, “I can not imagine a situation where there would be a huge opposition to this idea.” But the White House has not commented, no doubt because the administration is considering the same choice that its three predecessors avoided over Georgia and Ukraine: whether to confront Putin.

If Biden postpones the US decision until Putin attacks Finland and Sweden, he can rely on NATO’s policy of offering countries an open door to apply but a closed door to admission. Once again, the overly cautious approach of the United States and NATO will invite, not deter, Russian aggression – as well as China’s against Taiwan.

Joseph Bosco served as China’s Country Secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia – Pacific Head of Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Defense Department discussions on US responses. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.