Last Wednesday in Stockholm, the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, countries where neutrality and military non-alliance are deeply woven into their cultures, shocked the world with a joint statement that they are considering an application thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine membership in NATO.
“There is a before and after February 24,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalana Andersson told reporters in reference to Russia’s recent military incursion into Ukraine. “The security landscape has completely changed.”
“We must be prepared for all possible actions by Russia,” said Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, adding that Finland will decide to apply to NATO in a few weeks.
While both countries had already closed their airspace to Russian air traffic, the announcement of NATO membership risked the wrath of the Kremlin, which has repeatedly threatened both of them with joining the 30-strong military alliance.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. (John MacDougall/Pool via AP)
In the last week in Sweden radios, portable generators and camping stoves are flying off the shelves as the 10.4 million residents begin to stock up on canned goods, water, flashlights and matches in preparation for anticipated acts of Russian sabotage. In Finland, where the government has stored enough grain and fuel in strategic reserves for at least five months, they expect more cyberattacks like the ones broadcast on 8 Finnish Parliament via video. Like the Swedes, Finland’s 5.5 million residents believe that Russia will soon target its infrastructure, including the internet and power grid, and Russian airspace violations in both countries are already mounting.
In response to their public expressions of interest in NATO membership, Moscow has renewed its threats of retaliation and the strengthening of nearby ground and air forces, and has stationed “significant naval forces in the Gulf of Finland,” according to Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council. “There can no longer be any talk of a nuclear-weapon-free status in the Baltic Sea [Sea]’ added Medvedev, a threat that has been dismissed as saber-rattling by analysts in the region given the widespread belief that tiny Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, already possesses nuclear weapons.
The story goes on
“When you’re talking about large nuclear weapons, it doesn’t matter whether the bases are literally in the Baltic Sea or the Gulf of Finland, whether in Kaliningrad or 500 miles away,” Charly Salonius-Pasternak, security and defense analyst at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs in Helsinki, Yahoo News said.
The addition of Finland and Sweden to the western military alliance would not only expand NATO territory by 300,000 square miles to the northeast – in blatant defiance of Putin’s calls last December to reduce NATO’s presence – it would also close NATO’s borders Roughly double Russia to nearly 1,600 miles. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who described Sweden and Finland as “our closest partners” in early April, said he expected all NATO allies to welcome them. He added: “We know that if you decide to apply, you can easily join this alliance.”
“These are two really capable military powers, far more capable than the size of the countries would suggest,” Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO, told Yahoo News in reference to Sweden and Finland. And they would also boost military capabilities in the Baltic Sea, home to three small NATO countries, Estonia, Latvia and Estonia, whose defense has always been a problem for NATO, Daalder said.
The likely accession of Finland and Sweden “is a really big deal” both for NATO and for Finland and Sweden themselves, Daalder added.
“Sweden was neutral [militarily nonaligned] since 1814,” he noted. And Finland, which gained independence from Russia over a century ago, “never wanted to be part of any alliance since it became independent in 1917… it wouldn’t have happened without the invasion of Ukraine.”
In fact, the prospect of Sweden and Finland joining NATO was not in sight just three months ago. Finnish Prime Minister Marin said in January that it was “very unlikely” that Finland would join NATO under her supervision, an assessment shared by Sweden’s defense minister. Two weeks ago, however, Marin did an about-face and announced that “Russia is not the neighbor we thought it was.”
Several thousand people gathered on Senaatintori Square in Helsinki, Finland on Monday to show their support for Ukraine. (Alessandro Rampazzo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The fact that “Russia seems ready to invade its non-NATO neighbors under completely false pretenses” sparked a realization among Finns, who have long sought to placate the Kremlin, Salonius-Pasternak said.
Especially when the citizens of Finland, Those who fought against the former Soviet Union after it invaded in 1939, watched Russia’s brutal attacks on Ukraine, something fundamental changed in their logic. After Russia’s atrocities in Bucha became clear to the Finnish public earlier this month support for NATO membership rose to 68 percent. Local thinking, Salonius-Pasternak said, switched from “if we join NATO, Russia might be upset and do something bad to us” to “they might do something bad anyway, so why not seek some form of deterrence that totally affects them.” unavailable is she?”
“What happened,” Salonius-Pasternak added, “was that the Finnish people drew some conclusions that forced the Finnish political elite, and by extension the Swedes, to act.”
Gunilla Herolf, senior associate research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, agreed that Finland is paving the way to NATO membership. “Finland has taken the lead,” she told Yahoo News. “After public support for NATO rose so much in Finland, the people of Sweden began to realize that there was a high probability that Finland would join, and that also boosted public opinion in Sweden.” The two countries did a very tight one Relationship, she added, only intensified in 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
The Swedish army takes part in a military exercise in the Arctic Circle in Norway March 25 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Yves Herman/Reuters)
Herolf expects that Sweden and Finland’s extensive cooperation with NATO, with whom they frequently conduct joint military exercises and with whose forces they have fought in the Balkans and Afghanistan, will help expedite the process of applying for NATO membership.
But there is a risk: while Finland and Sweden are expected to submit an application in the coming weeks, their admission to the military alliance will depend on the unanimous approval of all 30 current NATO members, a process that could take several months.
“This invitation has to be ratified by all 30 current members, and that means the US Senate has to ratify it, and 29 parliaments have to ratify it,” Daalder said. While he doesn’t see any problems, he added: “You never know – maybe a parliament will be dissolved and therefore there is no parliament to ratify it.”
Pending ratification of their membership, Finland and Sweden remain at risk. If Russia were to attack any of them before they were accepted into the alliance, neither could invoke Article 5, NATO’s clause that says an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Another potential snag is the upcoming presidential election in France. Right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen, who is currently at least seven points behind incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, has promised to reduce France’s military involvement with NATO.
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. (Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)
“While the ratification process could be fast among the 30 NATO members, Daalder said, “the problem is that it has to be fast in 30 countries. The real question is, ‘What are you doing in the meantime?’” Once Finland and Sweden are formally invited to apply to NATO, Daalder said, even before their membership is approved by member countries, “the President of the United States should become clear that until such time as these countries are officially part of NATO, we the United States, hopefully with partner countries, have an obligation to defend their security.”
Meanwhile, both Finland and Sweden are bolstering their armed forces and increasing annual spending on civil defense and weapons. The Finnish government ordered 64 F-35s from Lockheed Martin in February at a cost of over $9 billion. Sweden, where the defense budget was around $7 billion in 2021, is expected to bring that amount to around $11 billion, about the 2 percent of GDP required of NATO members.
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What happened in Ukraine last week? Check out this Yahoo Immersive explainer to find out.
