Finland aspiring to join NATO “ready for everything the Russians throw at us”
HELSINKI – With Finland’s bid to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) now a step closer to reality, its top officials and political experts expressed their confidence that it will be able to repel any possible aggressive action from Russia. has strongly opposed its joining the Western security alliance.
Janne Kuusela, Director General of Defense Policy at the Ministry of Defense, told foreign journalists participating in the annual Suomi Correspondent Program earlier this month that “the calculation (gauging Russia’s plans) is a bit more difficult, but we can strengthen our defense.”
“We are not worried, we are not afraid, but there is a big risk involved. They are trying to influence us in some way,” Kuusela said. “[But] we can handle anything the Russians throw at us.”
“It might be nasty, bloody, but we’ll get through it,” he added.
Building 2 on the front
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Finland – which shares a 1,340-kilometer eastern border with its giant neighbor – has begun supporting military and cyber security.
In particular, Helsinki relies on its cyber strategy, which, according to Undersecretary of State Kai Sauer, Russia had used in Ukraine.
“There would be more defense work in the near future,” Kuusela said. “But we hope we never have to use it.”
Finland and neighboring Sweden – countries with a long history of strategic neutrality – applied for NATO membership shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
In case of NATO expansion, Moscow opposed Ukraine’s desire to join the security bloc and warned the two Nordic countries against doing the same.
At first, NATO member Turkey also opposed Finland’s and Sweden’s application.
But last week, its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, finally dropped his objection and signed a tripartite agreement with the Nordic countries.
Public opinion
Finland’s decision to join NATO did not come easily. After Finland gained independence from the then Soviet Union in December 1917, it had maintained a delicate balancing act in its foreign policy – to “keep your head down, but act quickly when a crisis comes,” said political history professor Kimmo Rentola. University of Helsinki.
For decades, the Finns were of the opinion that there was no need to join NATO, because they saw their country as “a provider of security and not a seeker”, said Dr. Iro Sarkka, also from the University of Helsinki.
But “that changed after (Russian President Vladimir) Putin became a NATO membership hunter,” Rentola said. “Practically, Putin decided that Finland and Sweden would give up their neutrality.”
After the occupation of Ukraine, Finland’s support for NATO membership rose to 80 percent in opinion polls – a historic peak that also showed solid parliamentary support for the application, Sauer said.
Ready to fight
Even more impressive, according to him, was the survey result, according to which 81 percent of Finns were “ready to take up arms to defend Finland and participate in common defense”.
Ukraine drove this dramatic shift in public opinion, Sauer said, and it is unlikely that Finland would back down on its NATO application even if Moscow somehow stopped or moderated its actions against Kiev.
“This is a generational experience,” Sauer said. “Political trust is very much in favor of the parties and alliances (that voted for the NATO application).”
Still, “the changes are so fast that it takes time for Finland to make NATO policy”, said researcher Matti Pesu from the Foreign Policy Institute.
As a member of the alliance, Finland was expected to support, among other things, a more ambitious strategy to defend the European Union, Pesu said.
(The Inquirer was the only media outlet from Southeast Asia in this year’s Finland Correspondents program, which also had reporters from the United States, France, Angola, Great Britain, Australia, Turkey, Israel, Poland, Hungary, Tanzania, Uzbekistan and Chile. )
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