Finland and Sweden’s transition to NATO – PRIO blogs
Russia’s war against Ukraine is having repercussions in northern Europe as well. Finland and Sweden will, despite their long-standing policy of military freedom of alliance, most likely submit their applications for NATO membership before the summer.
In the light of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war and both countries’ close existing partnership with NATO, this move does not come as a surprise.
But many experts had not anticipated such a rapid policy change. If they had imagined how this would happen, they would have expected Swedish opinion to change first, followed by the Swedish political leadership, then the Finnish political leadership and finally Finnish opinion.
In fact, the sequence took place in reverse. Finnish public opinion changed dramatically almost overnight during the week that the war broke out at the end of February.
Finland: Dramatic change in public opinion
For 30 years, Finnish public opinion on NATO membership had been fairly stable: in various but regular studies since the end of the Cold War, never more than 30 percent and often even less than 20 percent of Finns had favored NATO membership. . In January 2022, 28 percent of those surveyed supported the idea of Finland’s membership in NATO, while the proportion of indefinite had increased. In the survey conducted in February, the figure for joining NATO was 53 percent, while in a survey in March it was 62 percent. At the same time, the proportion of opponents of NATO membership had fallen to less than 20 percent.
Due to this dramatic change in public opinion, political leaders had to react. Nevertheless, in February, President Sauli Niinistö did not believe that any quick decisions regarding Finland’s NATO membership were in sight. But as public opinion became louder and clearer and more and more politicians also began to argue for Finland’s membership in NATO, the president started what he called “a process”, without publicly revealing its ultimate goal. He visited Washington and met with President Joe Biden and he spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and with the heads of other important NATO countries, as well as with Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson. In Finland, an informal and ad hoc core group of party leaders was formed to coordinate the domestic process.
An important part of the process was that the government prepared a report on the changes in Finland’s security environment, which was submitted to the Riksdag in April. The report implicitly but not directly recommended Finland’s membership of NATO. If the political reception seemed favorable, another much shorter report with proposals for membership applications would follow. In April, a majority of Finnish members of parliament had already publicly announced that they would support Finland’s membership of NATO. Prime Minister Sanna Marin, along with leading Social Democrats, has not yet revealed her position, but all indications are that it would be a surprise if the party did not also support NATO membership.
Sweden: Finland’s decision matters
In Sweden, Prime Minister Andersson stated only in March that Sweden’s offer of NATO membership would destabilize the situation in the Baltic Sea region. She then claimed that Sweden’s membership in NATO was not ruled out as an opportunity, and shortly afterwards, when she met with Finnish Prime Minister Marin in mid-April, she indicated that Sweden could really apply for it if Finland did the same. The Swedish government began preparing its report to the Riksdag. However, the internal debate within the Social Democratic Party was seen as the key in Sweden’s decision-making process. Although the party’s old guard has traditionally strongly favored Sweden’s military freedom of alliance policy, the country’s close ties to Finland had also been more important to the Social Democrats than to the other parties.
A plurality of Swedish public opinion had supported Sweden’s membership of NATO in most polls even before the Ukraine war. When the war started, the change of opinion was not as drastic as in Finland. In March, 47 percent of Swedes supported the idea of NATO membership and 33 were against; but if Finland were to join, a clear majority of Swedes answered that they would be in favor of joining NATO. In April, 53 percent of Swedes supported NATO membership. These figures were important in Sweden also because the parliamentary elections were to be held in September.
The importance of public opinion
This change in Finland’s and Sweden’s attitudes towards NATO membership shows how much security policy is also governed by public opinion. Changing a policy that has not fundamentally failed is always difficult: the slogan “if it is not broken, do not fix it” guided Sweden’s and Finland’s policy towards NATO membership during the post-Cold War period. Given that public opinion seemed relatively stable, the political leaders did not want to initiate an uncertain process.
A cognitive shift in attitudes toward NATO membership needed an emotional push. Russia’s wars in 2008 and 2014 had caused only a slight change in public opinion. 2022 was different. Russia’s war against Ukraine was unprovoked and large-scale: in Finland, the 1939 winter war analogy was immanent and became much stronger than in 2008 or 2014. Perhaps the long pandemic had also increased the feeling of unrest and insecurity in society.
In addition, before the war, Russia had demanded that NATO put an end to its open door policy not only towards Ukraine but also with regard to Finland and Sweden. This was the moment when the President of Finland realized that the previous policy of only retaining one opportunity to join NATO would not work. The alternative was always seen as a strategic barometer: if Russia did not question Finland’s right to join NATO in principle, there would be no concrete need to join NATO. The alternative of joining NATO was seen as a kind of deterrent that had now failed. For many people, an application for NATO membership was a demonstrative statement against Putin’s attempts to define new spheres of influence.
Putin’s war against Ukraine led to a change of opinion against NATO membership in Finland and Sweden. This is the easy explanation, but we should qualify it in terms of counter-facts. Had Putin not demanded that NATO close its open door policy with regard to Finland and Sweden as well, and had Russia just launched a ‘special operation’ instead of a destructive full-scale war, the dramatic change in public opinion and thus also the change in public opinion among political leaders would have been unlikely.