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Comment by sprash | Hacker News Reader

These questions are irrelevant. The tactical significance of Finland to Russia is small compared to the resources required to invade it as is. Due to bad cost/benefit ratio it is therefore unlikely for Russia to attack Finland. But now that Finland is part of NATO it has to bear the cost when some other country gets attacked. It's a bad deal.

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Russia literally invaded Finland last century

I don't think you can count "non-NATO" when NATO did not exist yet.

The point is that Finland matters a lot to Russia. The border with Finland is huge, geographically hard to defend, and right next to Russia's capitol. Finland's maritime zones join with existing NATO states to block Russia from operating in much of the Baltic (a process that would be completed when Sweden joins). Finland joining NATO is more than a shrug for Russia.

Moscow is nowhere close to Finland. St Petersburg is. Most of Russian border area near Finland is just forest.

Oops, fair enough—I had just been thinking of older history and forgot that the Bolsheviks moved the capitol. St. Petersburg is still the second-largest city and a major strategic location, but you're right that it's not the capitol.

Finland was also part of Russia until 1917.

Yeah, and the Finns hated it. My ancestors immigrated to the US to avoid being drafted from Finland into the imperial Russian army.

Even worse deal for Russia, which now has to think even harder about attacking NATO countries with its magnificent invincible army.

Exactly one[0] NATO country has ever been attacked and that wasn’t even in Europe but in the Falkland Islands. Being a member state is a pretty good bet on not being invaded.

[0] not counting non-nation state terrorist attacks on various members

It is also interesting to note that 9/11 resulted in the first and only time article 5 was invoked.

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