It all looks rosy now, but remember just a few years ago when Turkey shot down a Russian jet on the Syrian border and almost led to NATO involvement?
Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine and it didn't lead to NATO involvement? We have direct evidence that a European country can be attacked without NATO immediately jumping in to help. If Russia "only" wanted the Eastern "wilderness" of Finland, do you think the other European powers would immediately send in their own troops?
There's a reason that the smaller European countries that border Russia haven't been attacked and absorbed yet, and that's because they're NATO members.
Being a NATO member clearly has more upsides than downsides.
Well, there is the Mutual Defence Clause (article 42.7 of the Treaty of the European Union): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/mutual_defence.ht...
So while the exact action is not specified there, an attack on Finland might already very well mean that some NATO states (and by implication all of NATO) would get involved in the situation you're describing.
That depends where you send them, as Article 5 has geographical constraints specified in Article 6 (there is no general exceptions for troops being attacked after being voluntarily sent “somewhere”.)
Moreover, even without triggering Article 5, an attack on NATO member troops in the Euro-Atlantic region but outside the territory specified in Article 6 would probably be a trigger for regional security consultations under Article 4, which have produced more NATO interventions than Article 5.
Article 42.7 “leaves more room for interpretation than one might expect for a clause in a legally binding text” [1].
If Finland and Sweden turned down NATO membership and then suffered territorial degradation, I doubt the U.S. would step in. That, in turn, might motivate EU members to exercise their opt outs or neutrality caveats, or find that all that can be done within their power is send non-lethal aid.
[1] https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-alliance-neutrality-op...
I suspect that when the rubber hits the road nothing would happen, are Western European countries going to get into a potential nuclear exchange with Russia defending an EU member that's got a carve-out allowing them not to do the same for them?
That doesn't apply for Finland in the same way, but I'd still expect more of a "thoughts and prayers" response from the EU than anything else.
1. https://ecfr.eu/article/commentary_article_427_an_explainer5...
Invasion would become way to costly for a demographically challenged country.
In reality of course the the non-EU NATO members will probably decide to get involved one way or the other, but they are not legally bound to it.
This is true, but there are no limitations on the circumstances of the attack. For instance, if the US was fighting a low-grade global war with an Afghanistan-based terrorist network that has not previously attacked the US anywhere covered by Article 5 because of the geographic constraints of Article 6, and in retaliation for the acts of the US in that war that global terrorist network attacked, say, New York and D.C., then Article 5 would apply, there is no “well, you chose to fight them for other reasons before they attacked you” exclusion.
Now, if Russia only retaliated against French troops in Finland, Article 6 would geographically exclude Article 5 applicability.
There's an argument that EU is the aggressor for the purposes of Article 5 if it comes to the aid of a non-NATO member. The USA and other non-EU members would have the option to sit that one out, if they wanted. Alternatively, they could offer support to only NATO members.
This is probably part of what's spurring NATO membership. I bet most Fins and Swedes thought that the USA would deploy forces the event of a conflict. Now they see that American policy will be aid only, regardless of the death and destruction.
There is no such thing as “an aggressor for purpose of Article 5“; and the only case to be made for an “aggressor” status that would obviate Article 5 commitments is an aggressor under international law (that is, someone engaging in aggressive war in violation of the UN Charter, North Atlantic Treaty, and customary international law.)
Participating in individual or mutual self-defense action outside the scope of NATO doesn't void Article 5 (we know, because it didn't, despite definitely being part of the scenario, in the only actual Article 5 invocation in history.)
Finland probably doesn't want to find out the hard way how the USA is going to decide to roll here. Being a NATO member removes all doubt as to what happens.
I think US right now, especially if this announcement is true is the main european Enemy, US is expanding it's world oversight by expanding NATO on European borders at expense of European stability, this is due to the shallowness of european leaders
It's US wagering European lives for its interests
No.
I remember when Ukraine tossed out a Russian puppet and Russia nearly immediately invaded and has been continuously at war with Ukraine since.
When was this time that Russia wasn't a threat and Ukraine was having trainings with NATO?
Sept 2021: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukraine-h... https://www.army.mil/article/250444/us_nato_ukraine_enhance_...
But one training can still be seen as a threat on the border of a superpower? IS Army.mil news credible enough for US people outside the reach of russian propaganda? Does it reply your question when was US training on the border of Russia? Can we accept US as a enemy of europe? Or better, can we accept the fact that US is only giving important to ITS own interests without care of the safety of anyone else? (makes sense, it should be european leaders representing europeans interests), but someone should be able to say, european leaders currently suck, damaging their people in order to represent US interests in ukraine
It does not count as a time when Russia was not a threat.
Yes, NATO conducted trainings with Ukraine during the ongoing war started by Russia.
I think the issue is that US has been involved in the political environment of a EU bordering country, without any opposition from European leaders.
No, I asked, and I will quote directly, “When was this time that Russia wasn't a threat and Ukraine was having trainings with NATO?”
That was the claim: that NATO conducted multiple trainings with Ukraine when Russia was not a threat, and that this was the casus belli for Russian aggression. Leaving aside that this would not be legitimate casus belli in any case, it is simply factually false: all the NATO trainings occurred during the war, after Russian aggression against Ukraine began. There cannot retroactively justify the aggression.
Wrong. NATO had at least one Partnership for Peace exercise in Ukraine in October 2002, a few hours drive from L'Viv.[1]
And just to be specific; this doesn't justify any aggression on Russia's behalf, sovereign nations are free to decide who to ally with.
This is absurd. US has been the guarantor of European peace and indenpendence after the second world war.
European union basically started as a Washington think tank project.
Yes, US wants to advance it's own interests. No, it does not make US enemy of "Europe". Which is a silly way to put it. "Europe" is not a single polity or a state (not yet at least). It is still a collection of independent nation states. Most of which want to be aligned with US.
Nobody is forcing them to be aligned with US.
China or Russia would be happy to welcome them into their fold of corrupt autocracy.
Europe and US are strongly aligned economically, culturally and politically, while the world around them turns authoritarian.
Sure, they sometimes play against each other.
But, US and the nations of Europe are first and foremost allies.
Nor would they get denazified™ if they decide to align closer to another power.
But the current EU started after the second world war.
The entity considered the progenitor of EU is the European Coal and Steel community
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...
This was peak cold war and US influence in Europe was non-neglible to say the least.
While the reporting around the subject is a bit hyperbolical, strong Washington backing was always a cornerstone of the project
https://web.archive.org/web/20220130132451/https://www.teleg...
Yanukovych left Kyiv on Feb 21nd 2014, was ousted as president by the 22d and fled to Russia by the 26th. [0, 1]
Russia invaded Crimea with boots on the ground by Feb 22-23d. [2]
I wager people who still accept the NATO pretense never checked the timelines of how this started in the first place.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War#2014_Russi...
This is about Russia attempting a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
This is not the first time Russian state attempted such a thing. Holodomor was an engineered famine with the intent of destroying Ukraine. And now they are at it again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Generally as a state Russia is just horrible to all of the nations at it's borders it feels it has enough force to subjugate.
They are not idiots - they realize NATO would never invade Russia.
However, what NATO would have done, is give Ukrainian so much force projection capability within their territory Russia could never threaten them militarily again.
This about a narcissistic bully wanting to subjugate as many people by fear under it's thumb as possible.
Not everything is a US plot. Countries join NATO by their own volition. Because they want to.
East European countries wished to join NATO. Exactly because they knew what Russia is - like we all do now, based on the events in Ukraine.
Finland would be in more danger if it joined NATO, not less.
What nonsense is this.
Russians respect force. The more the better. NATO gives Finnish Defense Forces enough credibility to deter any Russian aggression specifically targeting Finland for the next 50 years at least by making the cost of invasion psychologically and analytically too high.
Yes, because Turkey is in NATO and Ukraine isn't. It has nothing to do with Ukraine being in Europe. Not all of Europe is in NATO, and not all of NATO is in Europe.
What about the NATO planes above Ukraine..?
That's not the same situation at all. Turkey is a member of NATO. Ukraine is not.
Has anything... happened, since then?
While the biggest party still hasn't voiced their support, they aren't completely against it and there seems to be hectic discussion behind closed doors.
You can argue that this is always the case to some degree, and it's better NATO has some say rather than Putin and Russia just rolls over you.
Hawaii isn't even covered under NATO, even if someone attacked the US:
There are a lot of conceivable scenarios where the US would not make the case and even where the other members might disagree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty#Article_...
> Article 6 states that the treaty covers only member states' territories in Europe and North America, Turkey and islands in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer, plus French Algeria. It was the opinion in August 1965 of the US State Department, the US Defense Department and the legal division of NATO that an attack on the U.S. state of Hawaii would not trigger the treaty, but an attack on the other 49 would.
A similar scenario with Taiwan would not mean "Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too" as you asserted; they'd have the option to join in if they saw fit.
I'm not saying it would be a verbal and written requirement to participate, and yet, they might have to for other political reasons, like a supply of additional defensive equipment or maintenance programs. For instance, some countries did participate in wars on the side of NATO even though they are not even a part of the alliance. All at the expense of human lives and taxpayers' money [1][2].
Before you say that the US interventions are not NATO interventions, could you name at least one instance from this list [3] where the US was not an active participant of and was actually disapproving of other members' actions? I'm asking because there's a valid growing sentiment with an element of truth in it that NATO without the US is not a potent alliance.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Mechanized_Brigade_(Ukrain...
Well, now you're arguing something entirely different - that NATO will rope you in without being a member. Hard to say it's a downside of joining if it happens anyways.
> if NATO gets into a conflict with China over Taiwan, there's a highly chance that Finland and Sweden would have to send their troops to fight and die there too
Nothing in NATO's organization or the Treaty itself supports that assertion; in fact, it explicitly says otherwise.
Yugoslavia was not an Article 5 action, it arose out of Article 4 regional security consultations. It is important to remember that NATO is not, even in theory, a “defensive alliance” it is a regional security organization with a mutual defense commitment.
The Ukraine war changed this calculus by showing that Russia would invade a country that wasn't even being considered for NATO membership.
I mean even NATO hawks believe this so its kind of a ridiculous situation.
The cornerstone of Finnish defence strategy is to make sure, that the cost of invasion is for all sane parties obviously too high. The point is that anyone in Kremlin considering their next foreign adventure looking into FI would go "no way in hell, nope, need another strategy".
Alone the Finnish defense are not sufficient to instill this "cost-plus" model to the adversary's calculations.
Finnish defense forces would incur considerable manpower and material cost to invading army, but in a long conflict their capability would decline. Without military alliance, material transports would be questionable and attrition would soon kick in.
The cost would be high to RU, but without alliance, not blatantly obviously too high.
Before Ukrainian invasion the second part of this "cost plus" model of territorial defence was belief that international community would incur huge economic penalties on Russia, and the fear of this repercussion would be enough to make even the most courageous military gambler to reconsider their options.
Those sanctions? More or less what RU is suffering now. Their effect? Yep. Not very efficient in deterring the attacker.
The invasion of Ukraine basically demolished this second part of the defense strategy. First a single huge blow - no, RU will invade regardless of trade sanctions - and the second blow, continuing - even though sanctions have kicked in, RU still has exports and not all countries oppose it's illegal behaviour. And it still continues the war effort.
FI therefore needs something else to rebuild it's cost-plus model of deterrence. Only thing that can be used to immediately patch it, is NATO alliance.
It's that, or becoming a Kremlin/Beijing puppet.
Let's not exaggerate. There is a large middle ground where Finland bets on that the EU defence clause will deter Russia, that we can build an EU army or that the war in Ukraine will cripple Russia.
But yes, your main point is correct. The Finnish and Swedish defence strategies have been primarily based on knowning that we will lose to Russia but making the invasion too costly for a sane Russian leader to consider an invasion. And Putin's stupid invasion of Ukraine just reduced confidence in the idea that we can rely on a sane cost benefit analysis from the Russian leadership. Which does increase the appeal of a NATO membership.
It's a plausible scenario, but not a sure one.
Finland is capital poor country, it needs foreign investment or else it will stagnate.
Without NATO after Ukraine the investment environment in Finland will likely be perceived as highly unstable.
China, OTOH, is happy to continue investing vast amount of capital in it's Eurasian project / Belt&Road initiative.
Without NATO, Russia being a loyal subject of the CCP after being sanctioned out of the western sphere of trade, Beijing alliance would be irresistible by guaranteeing both capital and security.
Would that be bad? If you like free speech, then yes. If you like high quality institutions then yes.
This is of course again a bit hyperbolic - western capital flight might not happen.
I mean, something has to guarantee that we have no conflicts between now and being an actual member AFAICT. There's talk of "safety guarantees IF we start membership procession" or something, but then there's still a gap where we need to guarantee territorial integrity / "no conflict".
The point being, if we can deter them from attacking us between now and being a member (when attacking us would have higher ROI for Russia, stopping our NATO track) ... we have the deterrence to stop them from attacking us without NATO membership too (since it would be costlier for them in that case relatively speaking, the ROI would be lower).
The Russian military being bogged down in Ukraine. So the trick is having something else in place by the time it extricates itself from Ukraine and starts looking for ways to rebuild it's credibility in the aftermath.
Which is why some previously NATO hesitant places that have shifted are likely to seek to act quickly.
The impacts of those sanctions are frequently not immediate. 3-6 months from now, some of them may have a lot more impact than they're having by now.
If I were Russia, my difficulty with the Ukrainian armed forces might give me pause with the idea that Finland's - with a comparable military budget and similar conscription - would be manageable.
The problem is, 3-6 months of Russia heavy bombing of civilian targets would likely level several major cities in Finland (most smaller than Mariupol) to rubble.
As would the fact that Ukraine's military stood their ground quite successfully.
Switzerland also made concessions to stay out of the war. Germany wanted to invade, but the risk/reward wasn't worth it at that stage of the war.
Spain was in a civil war and I wouldn't call their post war situation a "success."
Ireland, I guess you could say, faired okay after the war, but during the war, their ships were attacked by both sides and often received no response to distress signals.
Is this a way of saying, like in WW2, that since Sweden doesn't share borders with aggressive neighbors you don't want to have the burden of defending the free world?
What does the US and Turkey have to do with anything? Turkey only requires defending if it's being attacked, not if Turkey starts a war.
There has been a pretty strong anti-US sentiment in the left leaning parts of the political establishment. Partly due to the same reasons communism enticed global intelligenzia, and partly due to the lingering effects of Finlandization.
Finlandization still causes some psychological baggage on the older generations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
Finland was "non-aligned" during the cold war and as silly as it sounds, most people in Finland believed this. What it actually meant was that Finland was heavily leaning towards Kremlin - politically and journalistically - even thought it's civil society existed in a nordic egalitarian bliss. But the higher you went in the society, the stronger the Kremlin corruption was.
(I'm 42 and that stuff feels pretty foreign to me already).
This corruption was hidden from the Finns as a people, who most part distrusted Russia - and as Ukrainian events have proven again, for a good reason. Hence - internal policy was based on blatant obfuscation of truth. After the second world war this was a strategy for survival as Stalin could have likely wiped out the whole nation if he had detected any inch of resistance. But after decades, it became an established "way the things are".
Soviet Union was really successful in it's influence campaigns, and Soviet Russia was lauded as a paradise on earth by many prominent members of the intelligentsia up until it collapsed. Ideological hatred of capitalism is also a theme here.
I have to point out that there was enough multipolarity in the political field that Finland never became a communist state. And could have not become - such a thing would have likely caused a civil war. But the left and center heavily colluded with Russia for decades. And Finland had the same president (Kekkonen) for 25 years.
So, that's the background up to 1990's.
So, Finland had a strong culture of Kremlin appeasement starting from the end of second world war, and it left the political and journalistic tradition scarred for generations. Like the victim in an abusive relationship, the subconscious tries to avoid irritating the bully with whom you live. The first time there was even a hint of honest journalism about Soviet Union was during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The political and journalistic establishment started only heal after the fall of the soviet union.
For a while, though, it looked like Russia might grow up into a democratic liberal economy. There was therefore no reason for the pro-Russia sentiment to die. And no reason for the anti-US sentiment to die either.
This left the political field with lots of people, who in their subconscious viewed US as "the enemy" and Russia as "the great enlightened people".
I for myself cannot fathom this anti-americanism, and have not met it in my daily life as an engineer, but it seems to be a thing in the older corrupt generation of politicians, as well as among the more naive younger types.
I think my generation (42 like I said) and younger recognize US as an innovative, cultural and scientific superpower and Russia as the degrading husk of a state it is.
I think these "we can stand alone" and "make piece not war" sentiments are remnants of the Finlandization period.
As horrible as the Ukrainian war is, I think this enables Finnish society to finally get rid of the 80 years of dishonest kowtowing to a totalitarian state and enables it to become the truly western state it needs to be and finally unleash it's full potential (even though small) in the western world.
It led to nothing, Turkey asked for Patriot missile systems (to protect from attacks from Syria, not Russia or Black Sea), which were hastily provided. Russia started cutting economical ties with Turkey, Erdoğan wrote a personal apology letter to Putin, and after that things got better.
Then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Andrei_Karlov happened, which is still a mystery in itself, and yet, nothing happened that's interesting NATO wise.
Also: If Russia tries anything with the baltic states, it will almost inevitably attack parts of Sweden and Finland just to safeguard its flanks.
There is no upside to appeasing Putin anymore.
The left wing parties in Sweden do not like the idea of a military alliance with Turkey or the US, but this invasion might make it the least bad option to them.
On the long haul, friends of the US have a much better time than "friends" of Russia, especially those with a border to their "empire".
I don't think a lot of people like being allied to Erdogan. Turkey itself is not so much the problem, it is actually a valuable member due to location and contribution.
As I said, non-membership makes involvement of Finland and Sweden in any future wars between Russia and its neighbors more likely, not less likely.
The upside is to avoid nuclear war. Believe it or not, prior to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian peoples wanted peace, too. Joining NATO wouldn't have done so.
The idea that disputes between countries all over the map should lead to NATO involvement is dangerous. It's astounding how so many people don't seem to understand this. Of course, if you say, "How would we react?" it's "whataboutism".
You label the invasion of Ukraine a "dispute"? It's a war of unilateral aggression involving war crimes and genocide.
The point of NATO membership of Finland and Sweden is to avoid military conflicts. Putin proved to the world that he does not abide by any norm or treaty, so not joining NATO will give those countries no security from his forces should he decide attacking them is in his best interests.