With Finland and Sweden in NATO, the United States can finally turn to the Pacific
The operative word at last week’s NATO summit in Madrid was “more”. More members (Finland and Sweden), more preparedness (a sevenfold increase in the size of NATO’s readiness force), more spectators (Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand), more challenges (adding China and climate change to NATO’s new strategic concepts) and finally more US troops in Europe.
In the midst of all this “more”, both supporters and opponents of a larger US commitment to Europe have spoken of a possible Finnish and Swedish membership as if it were just another step in the alliance’s established expansion process. But adding the two Nordic nations to the bloc could be an opportunity for much more: These countries could fundamentally transform NATO in a way that extends Washington’s global freedom of action. Whether the United States will take this opportunity is another matter.
A few foreign policy realists and advocates for US restraint has opposed including Finland and Sweden in the alliance on the grounds that this would further expand the United States’ already unsustainable commitments to Europe and its potential conflicts. They are wrong: Adding Sweden and Finland will actually make it less likely that Americans will die when they fight for these countries – and also reduce the odds that Americans will die for NATO’s most likely flashpoint: the Baltic states.
The operative word at last week’s NATO summit in Madrid was “more”. More members (Finland and Sweden), more preparedness (a sevenfold increase in the size of NATO’s readiness force), more spectators (Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand), more challenges (adding China and climate change to NATO’s new strategic concepts) and finally more US troops in Europe.
In the midst of all this “more”, both supporters and opponents of a larger US commitment to Europe have spoken of a possible Finnish and Swedish membership as if it were just another step in the alliance’s established expansion process. But adding the two Nordic nations to the bloc could be an opportunity for much more: These countries could fundamentally transform NATO in a way that extends Washington’s global freedom of action. Whether the United States will take this opportunity is another matter.
A few foreign policy realists and advocates for US restraint has opposed including Finland and Sweden in the alliance on the grounds that this would further expand the United States’ already unsustainable commitments to Europe and its potential conflicts. They are wrong: Adding Sweden and Finland will actually make it less likely that Americans will die when they fight for these countries – and also reduce the odds that Americans will die for NATO’s most likely flashpoint: the Baltic states.
Although Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are keen and serious NATO members, they are also uniquely difficult to defend, sandwiched between Russia, its ally Belarus and Russia’s military enclave on the Baltic Sea, Kaliningrad. Military analysts have repeatedly identified the defense of the Baltic states as NATO’s main military challenge. A 2016 Rand Corporation study found that Russian troops would enter the Estonian and Latvian capitals in a maximum of 60 hours.
A Swedish and Finnish NATO membership would change the Baltics’ security challenge overnight. The Baltic Sea would immediately become one NATO Lake; all Russian hope for naval control would be gone, with the Swedish island of Gotland as a particularly formidable barrier for Russian air and naval forces.
A strategically sound and cost-effective defense of the Baltic states should not put NATO brigades in a prominent place that can be easily cut off and surrounded. Instead, it should rely on deterrence, which requires a credible commitment to a counter-offensive that would repel and destroy invading Russian forces.
Finnish and Swedish ground forces, even if they took time to mobilize, could be collected and deployed much faster than Western European armored brigades. They could also advance on a whole new axis of attack: St. Petersburg, Russia, is less than 110 km from the Finnish border. A Finnish and Swedish NATO membership would thus enable a determined US president to deny misguided Baltic requests for a forward-stationed US garrison by pointing to a boost in the conventional deterrence of new NATO members.
European NATO members’ free ride – or getting their security cheap – has upset US presidents since then John F. Kennedy. Only nine NATO members currently meet the Alliance’s stated goal of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense. In harsh military terms, most NATO members are not war horses show ponies.
That can not be said about Finland and Sweden. Even though Sweden has not yet reached the 2% threshold, both countries have done so increased dramatically their defense spending in the last decade. If they joined the alliance, Finland and Sweden would be immediate security contributors, not security consumers. This statement could not be made credible to any new member since the end of the Cold War.
The Finns and Swedes are among the very few European soldiers who pride themselves on both military quantity and quality. Unlike almost all of NATO, Finland and Sweden have military conscription, which provides both a huge trained reserve and a society engaged to the national defense. (Sweden restored conscription in 2018 after an eight-year hiatus.) The Finnish military has a wartime force of 280,000 soldiers and a reserve of almost 1 million people. A 2015 survey of 64 countries found that the Finns were most willing to defend their country by any European nation under investigation, with the Swedes not far behind. The Finnish and Swedish populations have a skin in the game in a fundamental way, which could serve as a benchmark within NATO once the two countries are part of the alliance.
Both countries also line up with pioneering equipment and capacity. With 1,500 artillery and rocket systems, Finland has one of Europe’s strongest artillery forces – a key to modern warfare, as the battle of exhaustion in Ukraine’s Donbas has once again proved. Swedish fighter jets and diesel-electric submarines are some of the most advanced in the world. In December 2021, Finland announced that it would order 64 US-manufactured F-35 fighter jets – in relation to the population, corresponding to 3,840 F-35s to the United States.
The most important thing is that Finland and Sweden join NATO for purely security reasons – not, as in previous rounds of NATO expansion, as an entrance into the transatlantic community or the validation of political reforms. A Finnish and Swedish adoption would strengthen NATO in harsh terms and restore its role as a fundamentally military-oriented alliance against an overriding security threat. It would mark a long-awaited return to NATO’s core and core mission.
With the blunting of the Russian conventional military power in Ukraine and Moscow’s generational task of supplying and modernizing its chaotic military, it has become clear that European security can be an almost entirely European responsibility. Given the scale of China’s challenge in the Pacific and the United States deteriorating position There, European security must rather be a European responsibility. Washington’s nuclear umbrella will remain, but the burden of conventional deterrence and war in Europe should rest on European NATO members. Finnish and Swedish NATO membership can be a decisive step towards making the alliance self-sufficient and paving the way for a responsible US withdrawal from the current US military position in Europe.
The European defense of Europe made possible by Finland and Sweden is the solution to the strategic dilemma facing the United States. Although there has been talk of turning NATO into a threatening competition with China – of which adding Beijing to the strategic concept is the latest manifestation – this effort is doomed to crack along a thousand lines. The military structures are simply not in place for a two-theater operation, and there is no political will in Europe to be a junior partner in the US fight against China.
The latest, most violent phase of Russian revengeism has increased Europe’s perceived security needs. Despite Russia’s military struggles since February, the United States is facing increasing calls to defend Europe directly, especially in the Baltics. Doing so would require considerable resources: A study showed that the job could be done with seven brigadesone-fifth of the entire active U.S. Army.
This is not just a problem with force structure or military spending. The commitment to bear the majority of the burden in combating both the Russian and Chinese militaries prevents military doctrine, arms procurement, training, and many other aspects of defense from coherence around a single, specific strategic problem. At the height of the Cold War, it was the special thing about the Soviet threat as one continental power which guided the U.S. Army and Air Force to create and implement the transforming AirLand Battle doctrine. China’s challenge to the United States is primarily marine and of a completely different nature.
The Biden administration seems to be hoping that a pivot to Europe will now somehow later support a pivot back to Asia. On the same day as the Finnish and Swedish accession progressed after Turkey’s consent, the White House announced spread of more American troops to Europe and the construction of a new corps headquarters in Poland. There are probably less than what the eye sees over these moves, but the additional fighters to be repatriated in Spain and the F-35 fighter jets stationed in Britain are exactly the types of weapons that the Pacific Theater requires. It is an odd paradox: At the same time as NATO’s European side is growing dramatically in size and readiness, the United States has chosen to do more in Europe, not less.
Since the end of the Cold War, despite headaches and even threat, no American president of any party has been able or willing to insist that Europe be defended primarily by Europeans. The addition of Finland and Sweden to the alliance could enable a major – if delayed – US strategic reorientation to the Pacific. The NATO summit in Madrid indicated that this was currently unlikely. But it is not too late for a visionary American administration to seize the geopolitical opportunity that this unique moment offers for the transatlantic alliance.