Finland, Sweden and our new fragmented world
“There is one before and after February 24.” This is what Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said when she announced Sweden’s intention to apply for membership in NATO last week. Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin expressed a similar sentiment when she announced her country’s NATO application. “Our security environment has changed fundamentally,” she told parliament.
All this is true. The Kremlin’s decision on February 24 to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has proved to be a particularly groundbreaking event. In a very real sense, there is one before and one after Putin’s aggressiveness.
Beforetensions between the Western powers and Russia were high, but seemingly manageable. Beforethe risk of a military fire was latent, with NATO and Russian forces often waging war in their mutual borderlands, but the prospects for a real war seemed remote. BeforeSweden and Finland, while working close to NATO, would never have considered joining it.
To do so at that time would have toppled Sweden’s centuries-long freedom of alliance, a position that its proponents claim spared their nation’s involvement in a conflict for more than 200 years. This policy lasted during two world wars and the Cold War. And in the case of Finland, joining NATO would have been seen as an unnecessary provocation against neighboring Russia, with which the country shares a 1,300-kilometer border. Neutrality was, after all, a price that Finns had long been willing to pay the Soviet Union and later Russia in exchange for their independence.
But after February 24 everything changed. Deep-rooted national prospects have evaporated almost overnight. Support for NATO membership in Sweden, which has always been a minority position, has increased by almost 60 percent benefits it now. In Finland, the turnaround has been even more dramatic. Support for joining NATO, which had fallen as low as 20 percent in the months before Russia’s invasion, is now almost 80 percent.
And it is Russia’s leadership that has done this. It is the Kremlin that has changed the national views of Finland and Sweden. The terrible decision to visit destruction in a sovereign country has fueled the insecurity of these two nations and played on their fears to such an extent that a hitherto distasteful position has become desirable almost overnight. NATO membership now makes sense to them in a way it has never done before.
The Kremlin, as usual, now plays the role of the wronged party. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has spoke darkly to have to take retaliation, both of a military technical and other nature, to stop threats against [Russia’s] national security arises ”. And it has warned of “far-reaching consequences”, of the possibility of deploying nuclear missiles at their western borders and of withholding energy supplies to Finland (which has already begun to be done). Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov even complained that “NATO expansion does not make our continent more stable and secure”.
The Kremlin now seems to be living in a world of almost absurd double standards. It seems to believe that it should be able to wage war with impunity. That it should be able to march hundreds of thousands of troops into a neighboring country without the slightest consequence. That it should be allowed to bomb cities and towns without suffering any repercussions.
And yet some other nations would react, defensively, to Russia’s act of aggression, as Sweden and Finland are now doing by applying for NATO membership, then, as Moscow sees it, they must be held accountable for their actions. They have to take the consequences. They must endure the aftermath.
Russia’s leaders seem to be constantly denying their own role in a conflict they themselves have initiated. In fact, Putin and his cronies can often blame the world, and NATO in particular, for a war waged by their own army. They think they should not bear any responsibility for their own aggression and its consequences. But as Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said in response to Putin’s threat after Finland signed a security pact with Britain: ‘You caused this. Check in the mirror. ‘
But at the same time, there is nothing to celebrate in NATO’s expansion, despite its cheerleaders best try. Should Finland’s and Sweden’s applications be successful – and given Turkey’s objections, it’s not a clear deal yet – then we’ll see a missile-edged border dividing west from east. This will consolidate and give institutional and military shape to a geopolitical antagonism that NATO has already done so much to evoke.
NATO, a Cold War hangover created for Europe “to keep the Russians out, the Americans inside and the Germans down”, remains a chunting tool for America’s now dwindling global hegemony. In search of a purpose after the expiration of its old Soviet opponents, NATO arbitrarily intervened abroad and ruthlessly expanded throughout Eastern Europe in the 1990s and 2000s. It has not been a source of security but of instability for much of the post-Cold War period. In fact, the expansion itself, motivated by a response to the security problems of Eastern European nations, has helped to create threats rather than protection against them. Above all, it effectively alienated Russia for decades and helped conjure it up in the Western imagination as the adversary it has since become.
None of this is to excuse Russia – the Kremlin is solely responsible for the barbarism in Ukraine. But NATO’s expansion in Europe is not helping. This corresponds to a projection of US power, no matter how incoherent it may be, in an increasingly explicit anti-Russian form – hence the speech by the US Secretary of Defense. Lloyd Austin to use the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia. NATO’s expansion can only fill up with the fire that is already burning in Ukraine. And this risks turning the Ukrainian people’s struggle for their freedom into something else – a struggle between the US-led Western world and Russia for geopolitical power and influence, with China watching and waiting.
This new fragmented world will soon become too apparent in Finland. Before February 24, its long border with Russia was sometimes marked by little more than a yard fence designed to control wildlife, not hold back soldiers. High-speed trains linked St. Petersburg to Helsinki and Finns and Russians enjoyed each other’s great nations as tourists rather than combatants. Since February 24, everything has needed to change. NATO’s planned presence will make that fence a militarized barrier between East and West.
One can certainly understand why Finland and Sweden have decided to take this step. But there is nothing to celebrate with the fragmented, antagonistic new world that their ascent to NATO represents.
Tim Black is one pointed columnist.