The price of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: Sweden and Finland join NATO
It now seems likely, if not inevitable, that Finland and Sweden will join NATO. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed opinion in both countries and have started a political process which may result in the Alliance’s first significant enlargement since several Baltic and Balkan countries joined in 2004. For their part, NATO seems open and even eager to begin the process. How did we get here and where are we going?
History
Finland and Sweden each found their own way to neutrality. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden has tried to avoid deep entanglement with the European balance of power policy. Sweden avoided involvement in the First World War and again in the Second World War, despite threats from both the Western Allies and the Axis. Sweden commitment to neutrality is deeply held, although the scope of its relationship with NATO has grown over the past three decades.
Finland, for its part, was in the Russian Empire after Russia’s victory over Sweden in the Finnish War of 1809. Finland, founded as a Grand Duchy, enjoyed almost independence for much of its time as part of the Russian Empire. Late during World War I, when Tsarist Russia disintegrated, Finland declared its independence. The Russian Baltic Fleet was chased from its moorings on an outrageous voyage through icy seas. Finland briefly elected the German Crown Prince as its own monarch, an arrangement that ended when Germany soon capitulated to the Entente. For the next 20 years, Finland would enjoy independence and a prudent peace with the Soviet Union, before the Russian invasion of 1939 began the Winter War. A defeated Finland joined Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, but Soviet forces eventually prevailed and forced Finland to capitulate in 1944. Finland was allowed to retain its democratic institutions but suffered sharp restrictions on its foreign policy, restrictions that only really ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The change
Neutrality works well as long as norms against territorial wars of greatness hold. When these norms fail, countries must look for other options. Russian diplomacy on this question has been characteristically unhelpful, with military and political threats that push Finland and Sweden even closer to NATO.
Both Finland and Sweden have worked extensively with NATO over the past two decades. Their military institutions are already committed and accustomed to partnering with NATO countries, and their equipment is certainly much more compatible (not to mention effective) than that of the latest waves of NATO candidates. Sweden and Finland have long shared a cooperative relationship on the nature of Scandinavian neutrality, to the extent that observers have previously expected NATO membership to come for both or not at all. Therefore, it is little surprise to see countries moving forward in locked step.
Assets or liabilities
As the Economics Shashank Joshi has pointed out, Finland’s accession to NATO would in one fell swoop double the alliance’s land border with Russia. This would make Russia’s position in the far north much more vulnerable than it is today. Sweden’s accession would make the island of Gotland an alliance responsibility and severely curtail the potential for Russia’s naval maneuver in the Baltic Sea. Both Sweden and Finland have large modern armed forces, in Sweden’s case with the support of one of Europe’s largest and most sophisticated defense industrial bases. Swedish DIB is already closely integrated into the trans-European defense network, but direct participation in the NATO alliance could only deepen that integration.
Every problem is a possibility, and some analysts have pointed out that adding Finland and Sweden to the alliance’s portfolio gives Russia more territory to threaten. With the Russian military’s performance in Ukraine so far, however, it seems that Finns and Swedes are stuck on the “asset side” of the accounts. Finland’s decision to acquire 64 The F-35As significantly increase Russia’s vulnerability on its northern flank, as the Panthers can Threaten Russia’s air defense network in a way that conventional fighter bombers cannot. The prospect of staging other NATO aircraft to Finnish airports during a crisis also poses a significantly greater risk to Russia.
Finally, Finland’s full accession to NATO gives much greater access to Russia’s north than it currently has. NATO can already benefit from Norwegian Arctic territory, but access to Finland has the potential to give NATO a much clearer picture of Russian military dispositions in the north, especially the bases of the Russian northern navy and of Russia’s ballistic missile fleet.
NATO here we come?
At the same time, Finland’s and Sweden’s decisions to join NATO are significant and not surprising. Whether Moscow foresaw the move as a consequence of its invasion of Ukraine is unclear, but despite some threats from the boiler, it has not reacted as aggressively as it did to the comparatively much less likely accession of Ukraine. Russia may have “praised” Finnish and Swedish accession as an unfortunate but necessary cost of waging its war against Ukraine, or it may have expected the two countries to be deterred by Moscow’s military power and the obvious will to use it. It may be true that completing Scandinavian Flush will bake in one degree of long-term perspective confrontation with Russia, but at this point it is difficult to imagine that the future of the relationship will be much darker.
It is difficult to avoid the end result: Putin’s invasion has made Russia less secure and less secure in ways that not even a decisive victory in Ukraine can cure.
Now a contributing editor from 1945, Dr. Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at Patterson School at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Farley is the author of Founded: The case for the abolition of the US Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), den Battleship book (Wildside, 2016), and Patent for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Dissemination of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020).