What you need to know about Finland, Sweden and NATO
By Joshua Berlinger, CNN
Finland is about to join NATO while Sweden is about to follow.
Here’s what you need to know about how the war in Ukraine brought the two Nordic states closer to the US-backed alliance, and what comes next.
Why have not Finland and Sweden already joined NATO?
While other Nordic countries such as Norway, Denmark and Iceland were original members of the alliance, Sweden and Finland did not join the pact for historical and geopolitical reasons.
Both Finland, which declared independence from Russia in 1917 after the Bolshevik revolution, and Sweden took neutral foreign policy positions during the Cold War and refused to join the Soviet Union or the United States.
For Finland, this proved more difficult, as it shared a massive border with an authoritarian superpower. In order to maintain peace, the Finns adopted a process called “Finnishization”, in which the leaders occasionally agreed to Soviet demands.
The balancing acts of both countries ended in practice with the collapse of the Soviet Union. They joined the European Union together in 1995 and gradually adapted their defense policy to the West, while avoiding joining NATO directly.
Each country had different reasons for avoiding signing the NATO Pact together with the EU.
For Finland, it was more geopolitical. The threat to Russia is more pronounced thanks to the two countries’ divided 830 km long border.
“Finland has been the vulnerable country, and we have been the protected country,” former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a joint interview with Finland’s former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb.
While Sweden is an independent nation, Sweden’s geography places it in the same “strategic environment” as its liberal democratic neighbors, Bildt said. Finland and Sweden have had a close partnership for decades, with Stockholm seeing its decision to refrain from joining NATO as a way to keep the heat away from Helsinki. Now, however, Sweden is learning to follow Finland’s lead.
“We share the idea that close cooperation will benefit both of us,” said current Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson at a press conference last month together with her Finnish counterpart, Sanna Marin.
What does NATO membership mean?
The reason why most countries join NATO is because Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which stipulates that all signatories regard an attack on one as an attack on all.
Article 5 has been a cornerstone of the alliance since NATO was founded in 1949 as a counterweight to the Soviet Union.
The purpose of the Treaty, and Article 5 specifically, was to deter the Soviets from attacking liberal democracies that lacked military strength. Article 5 guarantees that the resources of the entire Alliance – including the massive US military – can be used to protect any individual member nation, such as smaller countries that would be defenseless without their allies. Iceland, for example, has no standing army.
Bildt said he does not see new large military bases being built in any of the countries if they join NATO. He said joining the alliance would likely mean more joint military training and planning between Finland, Sweden and NATO’s 30 current members. Swedish and Finnish forces could also take part in other NATO operations around the world, for example in the Baltic states, where several bases have multinational troops.
“There will be preparations for unforeseen events as part of discouraging any adventures that the Russians might think of,” Bildt said. “The actual change will be quite limited.”
Why does Russia hate NATO?
Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the alliance as a bulwark against Russia, even though it had spent much of the post-Soviet years focusing on issues such as terrorism and peacekeeping.
Before Putin invaded Ukraine, he clarified his conviction that NATO had come too close to Russia and should be withdrawn to its borders in the 1990s, before any countries either bordering Russia or ex-Soviet states joined the military alliance.
Ukraine the desire to join NATOand its status as a NATO partner – seen as a step towards final full membership – was one of the many complaints Putin cited in an attempt to justify his country’s invasion of his neighbor.
The irony is that the war in Ukraine has actually given NATO a new purpose.
“Article 5 is back in the game, and people understand that we need NATO because of a potential Russian threat,” Stubb said in an interview with CNN before the invasion.
Why the war in Ukraine changed everything
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the last straw for Sweden and Finland.
If the Kremlin were willing to invade Ukraine, a country of 44 million people, a GDP of about $ 516 million and an armed force of 200,000 active troops, what would stop Putin from invading smaller countries like Finland in Sweden?
“Everything changed when Russia invaded Ukraine,” Marin said in April. “The way of thinking of people in Finland, even in Sweden, changed and changed very dramatically.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, public support for joining NATO in Finland has increased from around 30% to almost 80% in some surveys. The majority of Swedes also approve of their country joining the alliance, according to opinion polls there.
“Our NATO membership was decided on February 24, at 5 o’clock in the morning, when Putin and Russia attacked Ukraine,” Stubb said. “Finland and Sweden would not have joined without this attack.”
Officials in both Sweden and Finland have also expressed frustration that, before the war in Ukraine, Russia tried to demand security guarantees from NATO that the alliance would stop expanding to the east. Such a concession, however, would in practice have given Russia the power to dictate its neighbors’ foreign policy by removing their ability to choose their own allies and partners.
Russia, Sweden’s defense minister Peter Hultqvist told CNN, wants “real influence in the security elections in Europe.”
“They want influence over the countries in the neighborhood. And that is totally unacceptable for Sweden.”
What comes next?
Finnish leaders announced their intentions to join NATO on Thursday. Sweden is expected to follow suit, potentially already on Monday, according to Bildt.
Finland said it hoped to apply for membership “without delay” and complete the necessary steps at national level “within the next few days.” It will include a vote in the Finnish Parliament, which will ultimately vote on the decision to join.
NATO diplomats told Reuters that ratification of new members could take a year, as all 30 current members’ legislatures must approve new applicants. Both countries already meet many of the criteria for membership, which includes have a functioning democratic political system based on a market economy; treat minority populations fairly; undertake to resolve conflicts peacefully; the ability and willingness to make a military contribution to NATO operations; and to engage in democratic civil-military relations and institutions.
As two flourishing liberal democracies, Sweden and Finland meet the requirements for accession to NATO – even if Turkey, for example, could make the process more difficult for future members. That country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that he did not view both countries’ accession to NATO as “positive” and accused them of hosting Kurdish “terrorist organizations”.
In the meantime, both countries will have to rely on their current allies and partners for security guarantees, rather than Article 5. Sweden and Finland have received assurances of support from the US and Germany should they be attacked, while the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed mutual security agreements. with its Finnish and Swedish counterparts this week.
How has Russia reacted?
Russia criticized the decision. Its foreign ministry said in a statement that Finland had adopted a “radical change” in foreign policy that would force Russia to take “retaliatory steps, both of a military and other nature.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “NATO expansion does not make the world more stable and secure.” He added that Russia’s response would depend on “how far and close to our borders the military infrastructure will move.”
Russia currently shares about 755 miles of land border with five NATO members, according to the alliance. Finland’s accession would mean that a nation with which Russia shares a 830 km long border would be formally militarily connected to the United States.
This would not only be bad news for the Kremlin, but the addition of Finland and Sweden would benefit the alliance. Both are serious military powers, despite their small population.
Bildt and Stubb, the previous Swedish and Finnish premieres, however, believe that Russia’s response so far has been relatively subdued.
– The Kremlin sees Finnish and Swedish NATO membership as a Nordic solution, and in that sense not a radical threat, says Stubb. “We are not so worried.”
Stubb and Bildt said they believe Moscow will ultimately see the two countries as reliable neighbors, despite their decision to join a Washington-backed alliance.
– That Finland and Sweden are part of the western world does not come as a surprise, says Bildt.
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CNN’s Luke McGee, Nic Robertson and Paul LeBlanc and Reuters contributed to this report