Finland and Sweden, two neutral Nordic states, are so alarmed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine that they are seriously considering joining NATO this summer.
Russia has warned them not to do so and has threatened them with “a military technical response”.
So we ask ourselves, in general terms, if Europe would be a safer or more dangerous place in case one or both countries joined NATO.
NATO (Treaty Organization North Atlantic) is a defensive alliance of 30 nations founded shortly after the end of World War II.
It is headquartered in Brussels but is led by the world’s leading military and nuclear power: the United States.
Finland and Sweden are modern and democratic countries that meet the criteria for membership of NATO.
The general secretary of the organization, Jens Stoltenberg , has declared that he would welcome them with open arms and that their accession would be processed with the greatest agility.
Retired US Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who commanded all US ground forces in Europe has no doubts about the benefits that this would bring to the West.
“The joining of Sweden and Finland to NATO is something great, a very positive advance. They are two very strong democracies and the armies of both countries are very good, capable and modernized, with outstanding mobilization systems”.
In the case of Finland, a form of military integration is already under way. British tank crews recently carried out exercises with a Finnish armored brigade, as well as US, Latvian and Estonian troops, as part of NATO’s so-called Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF). The UK Ministry of Defense indicated that the aim was to “deter Russian aggression in Scandinavia and the Baltic states”.
So what would be the problem if one or both countries wanted to join?
What is NATO and how does it help Ukraine?
Russia, and more specifically its president Vladimir Putin, does not see NATO as a defensive alliance, quite the contrary. He sees her as a threat to his security.
The Kremlin watched in dismay as NATO steadily expanded eastward, closer to Moscow, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
- What is NATO and why Russia distrusts the organization in the conflict in Ukraine
When Putin was a young intelligence officer in the KGB, the Soviet state security apparatus, Moscow controlled all Eastern European countries, with Russian troops stationed in most of them.
Today almost all of those countries have opted to look west and join NATO. Even the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were once – against their will – part of the Soviet Union, have joined the alliance.
Only 6% of Russia’s extensive borders border NATO countries, but the Kremlin feels surrounded and threatened.
Shortly before sending his troops to Ukraine on 24 in February, Putin demanded that Europe’s security map be redrawn. NATO troops, he insisted, must withdraw from all these Eastern European countries and new members must not be allowed to join.
But in the end their invasion has produced the opposite result.
For decades Finland and Sweden have maintained and reinforced their status as neutrality.
Although culturally on the western side, they have so far acted cautiously to avoid alienating their giant nuclear-armed neighbor Russia.
The invasion of Ukraine caused both countries to make a radical rethinking of their position.
Both the government and the citizens began to wonder if, after all, they would not be safer “under the umbrella”, protected by NATO’s collective protection commitment known as “Article 5”.
This considers an attack on one of the members as an attack on all.
A survey A recent study in Finland showed that the 62% of its citizens are in favor of joining.
The Arguments For
From a strictly military perspective, the addition of the substantial armed forces of Finland and/or Sweden would greatly boost NATO’s defensive capability in Northern Europe is considerable, where Russian forces outnumber it massively in quantitative terms.
Finland, highlights Ben Hodges, would contribute fighter planes F, while Sweden has Patriot missile batteries and has reinforced the military presence on its large Baltic island of Gotland, whose airspace was recently breached by Russian warplanes.
The forces The armed forces of Finland and Sweden are experts in arctic warfare and are trained to fight and survive in the frozen forests of Scandinavia.
When Russia attacked Finland in World War II, the Finns fought fiercely against the invaders, inflicting heavy losses on them.
The idyllic Finnish city at the forefront of tensions between Russia and NATO
Geographically, the Finland’s incorporation would fill a huge void in NATO’s defense, doubling the length of its borders with Russia. Security and stability in the Baltic Sea, Hodges assures, have drastically improved today.
From a political point of view, it would underpin the cohesion of the West for mutual defense, sending a signal to Putin that practically all of Europe is united against his invasion of a sovereign country, Ukraine.
The arguments against
The risk is that such a significant expansion of NATO at the gates of Russia alarms and infuriates the Kremlin so much that it responds with some kind of measure violent.
The “military technical measures” with which Putin threatened if these nations join NATO were interpreted by experts in two ways: a reinforcement of Russian borders, bringing troops and missiles closer to the West, and possibly an increase in cyberattacks in Scandinavia.
Staying neutral has been very convenient for Sweden over the years. Giving up that neutrality should not be taken lightly.
And there will also be an economic cost to Sweden’s domestic arms industry if the country is forced to buy weapons from NATO instead of its own.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov emphatically warned that the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO “will not bring greater security for Europe”.
Vladimir Putin likes to publicly recall a moment of his youth in which he cornered a rat in a room and it turned to attack him.
Putin and his advisers already blame NATO, with some justification, for foiling their plans to seize Ukraine.
If they decide, in this case for no reason, that the sudden expansion on their northern flank presents an existential threat to Russia’s security, it is not known exactly how Moscow might respond.
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