Vladimir Putin has achieved what Dwight Eisenhower, JF Kennedy, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton could not: convince the majority of Finns that, for their own security, they must join the NATO Atlanticist alliance, led by Washington from World War II and constantly expanding ever since.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 1,340 km of border Finland shares with western Russia seems like a lot to protect alone. 76% of the population already supports NATO entry compared to 53% in February and 21% in 2017. “Before, proposing NATO entry would have been electoral suicide; now it is essential,” he said. a deputy from the right-wing nationalist party The Real Finns.
Sanna Marín, the young Social Democratic Prime Minister, announced today, in an appearance with President Sauli Niinisto, the intention of the coalition government to request incorporation into the alliance. After giving time for “parliament and the whole of society to decide their position on the matter (…) Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay”, she announced herself in the statement. “Finland joining NATO will strengthen Finland’s security and Finland’s presence in NATO will strengthen the entire defense alliance,” she said.
It is taken for granted that the parliament will probably approve the request next Tuesday. It is possible that there will not even be a vote, since none of the 200 deputies will want to present a counter proposal. Despite being establishment parties, the SPD and the center had always defended the non-alignment of Finland, whose equidistance from the West and the USSR was considered a cunning policy during the cold war.
Now almost all the deputies who leave the imposing seat of the Eduskunta parliament – a building more Soviet than most – are Atlanticists. Even Jussi Saramo of the Alliance of the Left, who has 16 deputies and is one of the five members of the coalition government, already defends joining NATO. “Sweden’s decision to join has also been decisive,” he says. It is estimated that half of the deputies of the left – historically very opposed to NATO – will vote in favor.
Magdalena Andersson, the Swedish Prime Minister, another Social Democrat, has decided to accelerate Sweden’s entry into the alliance so that the two countries support each other. In the case of Sweden, its entry into NATO is even more shocking. Sweden has maintained a policy of neutrality for nearly 200 years and the stance of pacifist Olof Palme’s party has always been one of non-alignment. Putin’s war in Ukraine has convinced Swedes that Washington’s embrace is better than being homeless in times of arbitrary invasions and indiscriminate killing.
“What has changed in public opinion is the feeling that the rationality of the Russian leadership cannot be trusted,” said Tuomas Forsberg, an analyst specializing in security and geopolitics at the University of Helsinki.
Even the young mavericks of Helsinki, seen hanging out in the bars next to the American Clarion Hotel in the harbor, are already NATO supporters. “I think going in is the wisest decision,” said one. “If Ukraine had been in NATO, they would not be in the situation they are in right now.” This is the argument of the hawks in Washington, which, thanks to the invasion, is now common sense even in Helsinki.
Conspicuous by their absence here are the Finns who in the decades of pragmatic “Finnishization” would have turned this statement upside down; that it is reckless to take a military alliance to the borders of the adversary.
The irony is striking given Putin’s insistence that the Ukraine invasion is the result of NATO enlargement over the decades since the fall of the USSR and his refusal to rule out Ukraine being next. “NATO’s ninth enlargement since its founding in 1949 will be known as Putin’s Enlargement; without the offensive against Ukraine it would never have happened,” center-right former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb told the Financial Times.
Warnings from some hawks in Washington and London that Russia may take advantage of the waiting period until the other members approve the Finnish request to respond militarily seem exaggerated. The Russian army is already bogged down in eastern Ukraine. The Russian defense minister’s announcement that final NATO entry would force Russia to put nuclear weapons on the border is “symbolic,” Forsberg said. “It is difficult to imagine that they use nuclear weapons 150 kilometers from St. Petersburg,” he adds. “They don’t have the resources to respond, there may be some airspace intervention or destruction of GPS systems in maritime traffic, but Finland is prepared.”
That yes, the fears served so that on Wednesday the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, made a Churchilian visit to Stockholm and Helsinki to announce the British support.
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