One of Putin’s legacies will be NATO membership for Sweden and Finland
4 April 2023, 09:17
Yesterday was a great day for Finland and the Atlantic Alliance - and a bad day for Vladimir Putin.
Emerging slowing from its Cold War neutrality, Finland over the past 3 decades has integrated into Western Europe by joining the EU and NATO’s Partnership for Peace, where their hard work in exercises and substantial participation in NATO operations earned them the enhanced Partner position, which allowed them to take part as observers in Alliance conferences and summits, but without a vote.
Beginning today that will change. Finland will have a vote on NATO actions and will bring common sense and practicality to Alliance proceedings. When cool hands are needed in a crisis, the Finns will provide that.
They will also provide a topnotch military, ready to take part in Alliance operations with professionalism, savvy, and some of the most advanced weapon systems in the West including the F-35.
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Well known to the US and UK militaries from years of exercises, the Finnish military will be welcomed as comrades in arms on the ramparts of NATO as well as around the NATO table in Brussels.
For Putin, his Northwestern flank is locked up, bordered by five Nordic NATO nations (once Sweden enters) instead of by two neutral nations. One of Putin’s most sensitive military areas is the Russian Northern Fleet, headquartered on the Kola Peninsula above Norway and Sweden.
Home to Russian nuclear-armed submarines, naval aviation, and some of Putin’s more advanced weapon systems, like hypersonic missiles, having NATO that much closer to his second-strike nuclear capability will give his military planners a challenge.
Unlike the Cold War, where the Soviets could assume neutral Finland and Sweden would not pose a problem to counter Soviet adventures in the Baltic Sea and in the Arctic, that assumption no longer holds.
Having the Baltic turn into a NATO lake is yet another setback of many that Putin has caused for Russia since his second invasion of Ukraine.
One of Putin’s legacies will be NATO membership for Sweden and Finland, a legacy that we can be proud of, and one that Putin and his successors will have to live with well into the future.
