Putin wanted less NATO at its border. Finland and maybe Sweden give him more
If you talk to someone in Western diplomatic circles – especially in the security, intelligence and defense sectors – what is about to unfold in the next few weeks in Scandinavia is one of Russia’s worst nightmares.
The inclusion of Finland and possibly Sweden in NATO, the political and military source of all that is bad for Moscow, will stretch the alliance significantly from the Arctic Ocean all the way to the Black Sea, pushed all the way to the border.
This is the kind of scenario that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to avoid.
Back before unleashing the terror of a complete invasion of his immediate neighbor, Putin tried to push back against NATO expansion, demanding that Ukraine never join the Western military alliance. In December last year, he went further and insisted that the North Atlantic allies withdraw from Eastern Europe back to their lines before the 1997 expansion.
To make his point, Putin rattled the nuclear sword.
It is safe to say that when he did, and with all that happened, he freaked out his other non-aligned neighbors; northern nations that for decades have been proud of, and built some of their political identities around, their studied neutrality.
“Finland’s accession would strengthen security and stability in the Baltic Sea region and northern Europe,” Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s Foreign Minister, said on Thursday. “Finland is a regional security provider and this would further strengthen NATO as a future ally.”
The country is expected to apply for membership next week, which will set in motion a security race against time. A joint statement by the President and Prime Minister of Finland stated that “Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay.”
“Moral risk” for NATO
Although Finland has kept its options open for several years with regard to the possibility of joining NATO, the invasion of Ukraine set in motion a tectonic change in public opinion. That was the game changer.
“February 24 – it was the changing moment. It was the change of game,” said Terhi Suominen, Secretary General of the Atlantic Council of Finland.
The support for joining the alliance was traditionally around 20 percent of the population, the events of last winter acted like lightning.
“And then the support for NATO membership has grown dramatically, and in fact it is tripling right now. So we have 76 percent for a NATO membership,” she said.
Suominen said that joining the alliance is an issue on which both the left and the right of the political spectrum agree.
A senior NATO official, speaking on the background, said that the membership process will be accelerated to some extent and that the alliance is trying to remove as many obstacles as possible. In the end, it may take up to the end of the year as each of NATO’s 30 members must ratify the entry of countries into their parliaments.
It is the transition period before Finland is fully covered by NATO’s one-for-all, all-for-one security guarantee that worries many experts.
Michael J. Williams, professor of international relations at Syracuse University, calls the interim period “the moral hazard” of the alliance.
Countries have the support of NATO members
Would the alliance go to war to protect a country – or two countries – that wants to join but has not yet been accepted as a full member?
“The challenge is that if they say they will join the alliance, there will be a gap,” Williams recently told CBC News. “The ability of the Russians to attack between when they apply and when they join is worrying.”
This concern was raised in part on Wednesday when Britain signed defensive pacts with both Finland and Sweden promising Britain to come to their aid in the event of an attack, and vice versa.
There are concerns in both Scandinavian countries about the possibility that one or more existing NATO members would wait with approval. But an alliance official, who spoke about the background, said that the diplomats from both Finland and Sweden have worked with the various delegations in Brussels and received a lot of support.
It is not as if any of the countries are unknown to NATO. Each contributed troops to Afghanistan in a support role.
Williams said that the fact that Finland publicly declared its intention means that Sweden is not so far behind, even though Stockholm has publicly shown more reluctance.
Steve Saideman, who holds the Paterson chair in international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, says both countries have advanced military, civilian control over their military and stable democracies.
“Both of these countries are not just facing them [NATO] standards, but exceed them, “he said.” The challenging part is that Finland adds something that no other NATO country has, apart from Turkey, which is a very long land border with Russia, and to deal with the political dynamics and the window. between applying for membership and becoming a member is sensitive. “
If Sweden chooses to join, Williams said that he thinks it may have more political soul-searching to do than Finland. Stockholm has declared itself neutral since the early 19th century and maintained that position even through the existential conflicts of the last century.
“They were neutral during World War II,” Williams said. “So we’re talking about a very long, deeply embedded culture of freedom of alliance.”
Both Williams and Saideman say that the two Scandinavian countries add significant conventional force to the alliance.
Suominen said her country takes the defense very seriously because it was invaded by the former Soviet Union in the early 1940s.
What both countries gain from joining NATO, in addition to the security in the alliance’s Article 5 self-defense clause, is access to advanced cyber and hybrid warfare defense, Saideman said.
The question of how Russia will react is hotly debated, now that Finland has signaled a clear direction.
Russia criticized Finland on Thursday, saying it would be “forced” to retaliate if the long-neutral country joined the alliance.
Saideman said Russia could not afford to fight another neighbor.
“They have everything they can handle to have a war with Ukraine,” Saideman said. “It’s not that they can engage in really large-scale aggression against Finland or Sweden because they simply do not have the capacity right now. They can not even attack the country next door successfully.”