The decision of Finland and Sweden to join NATO means a new Iron curtain, writes The New Yorker. It is fraught with deepening the split between Russia and the West. We should also not forget that, no matter how protected these countries feel today, any action provokes opposition, the author notes. There is a danger of escalation of tensions with Russia and the threat of a forceful response from Moscow.
Robin Wright
Finland's border with Russia has been peaceful for 77 years. It runs from the Baltic Sea through windswept agricultural lands and the Lapland wilderness, ending in the icy Arctic. In some places it is just a village fence, designed more to direct the movement of nomadic deer than to deter the aggressor. Blue and white columns indicate the Finnish side of the border; red and green - Russian territory. Both countries encourage cross-border tourism and economic ties that help people "learn the basics of peaceful coexistence," as the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote on its website. This Scandinavian country did not want to join NATO along with the rest of the Europeans. High-speed trains connect Helsinki and St. Petersburg. "Finlandization" has become a symbol of neutrality all over the world.
And then Vladimir Putin launched a military operation in Ukraine. Abruptly changing its course, Finland announced on Sunday that it would seek to join NATO. "This is a historic day," President Sauli Niinisto said at a press conference. "A new era is beginning." On Tuesday, the Finnish parliament voted to join the alliance by 188 votes to eight. If Finland becomes a member, its 1,300-kilometer border will become the longest NATO border with Russia, and the leading edge of Europe will more than double. Finland was followed by Sweden. "We are facing fundamental changes in Europe's security system," Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said on Sunday. "The Kremlin has demonstrated its readiness to use violence to achieve its political goals and has shown that it will not hesitate to take enormous risks."
The joint decision, taken three months after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, reflects Europe's fears of Putin's long—term intentions - as well as the uncertainty of prospects for peaceful coexistence. For many years, the level of support for the idea of joining NATO in Finland was only 20%. In February, it rose to 53%, in March to 62%, and this month it reached a record 76%, as evidenced by surveys conducted by Taloustutkimus commissioned by the Yle news agency. The same thing is happening in Stockholm, whose security doctrine has long provided for the refusal to participate in military alliances. For the first time, the majority of the population in Sweden, which has not fought since the time of Napoleon, prefers membership in NATO.
NATO supported the decision of the two Northern European countries, which together make up a strategic land mass (the area of Finland is the size of Montana, and Sweden is slightly larger than California). Rose Gottemoeller, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and US Deputy Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, called this decision "a major strategic defeat for Russia, because the Baltic Sea is turning into a NATO lake." This decision sends a powerful signal that "aggression does not pay off," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters over the weekend. "President Putin wants Ukraine to be defeated. The collapse of NATO. The split of North America and Europe," he added. Instead, NATO is stronger today than ever. And Europe and the USA have rallied even more. Ukraine, Stoltenberg boldly predicted, "can win this war." On Sunday, NATO foreign ministers held a meeting in Berlin with colleagues from Sweden and Finland. After that, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that "there is a very strong consensus" in favor of accepting Finland and Sweden, although Turkey threatened to block this decision. This week, the leaders of Finland and Sweden, as well as the heads of their military departments, will be received in the Biden administration, and Blinken will meet with his Turkish counterpart at the UN.
For the Scandinavian neighbors, such a drastic change of course was an obvious solution. "Putin was trolling us," René Nyberg, the former Finnish ambassador to Russia, who later headed an organization promoting Finnish business in Russia, told me. According to him, the reason for the expansion was Putin's duplicity and his propaganda offensive, during which NATO became a pretext for an operation in Ukraine. The Swedish Foreign Ministry concluded in its detailed analysis that the Russian aggression reflects "a significant, structural and long-term deterioration of security conditions in Europe and around the world."
However, the reaction of Finland and Sweden to the threat to their existence (and this is how they view Russia's actions) has given rise to an acute debate on the topic of the world's most powerful military alliance. One of the first critics of NATO was the architect of the American strategy of containment and isolation of the Soviet Union, George Kennan. In his article on the pages of the Times in 1997, he warned that the expansion of NATO following the collapse of the USSR "would be the most fatal mistake of American policy after the end of the Cold War." It will inflame anti-Western, nationalist and militaristic sentiments in Russia, damage the nascent Russian democracy and create obstacles to the implementation of arms control agreements. Today, this debate has become even more complicated.
According to some, the alliance's decision in 1994 to welcome former Soviet allies into its ranks "indicates a catastrophic failure of imagination," Daniel Treisman, an expert on Russia from the University of California at Los Angeles, told me. In 1999, Moscow's former Warsaw Pact allies, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, became NATO members. "A serious international challenge of the 90s was Russia's reliable rapprochement with the Western world," Treisman said. The West needed to establish new financial, commercial, cultural and political ties, as well as create new European security mechanisms in addition to NATO. "If we had succeeded in this, the security of Eastern Europe would have been ensured by itself," he said. But the West failed to understand how Moscow would perceive the approach of NATO guns to its border. In 2004, three former Soviet republics and three other former Warsaw Pact members joined the alliance. The discussion about the admission of Ukraine and Georgia, which began in 2008 long before they could apply for membership, allowed Putin to "catch us on a bluff," Treisman said. From 2009 to 2020, four more countries joined NATO. The 30 member countries together have almost four times more personnel than the Russian army, as well as many more tanks, planes and artillery pieces. But the Kremlin has a larger arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons stationed near European borders.
Even long-time supporters of providing American and European security guarantees to Finland and Sweden are concerned about the consequences of these countries joining the North Atlantic Alliance. "In general, Russia is definitely losing here. But a weak and humiliated Russia is dangerous," Anne—Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning at the State Department, who now heads the New America research Center, told me. She referred to the history of a "weak and humiliated" Germany between the two world wars, which gave Hitler the opportunity to begin his ascent to power and unleash aggressive wars throughout Europe. "Putin may well now retain his power even longer by talking about the power of "external enemies" encroaching on Russia's borders," Slaughter said.
She added: "I am now infuriated by all these implied assumptions that influence the decisions made. This will again prevent the formation of genuine pan-European security." Taking significant steps in support of Ukraine, Finland, Sweden and other European countries that feel threatened by Putin, we should not abandon attempts to further integrate Europe and Russia, which has been an important player on the continent since 1648. Meanwhile, countries that are not eligible for membership in NATO have less and less chances that they will ever be accepted into the narrow privileged circle of the West, as well as less and less hope for support in their struggle for decent democratic power," Slaughter said.
Representatives of the "realists" foreign policy camp believe that the United States should focus its authority and influence, diplomatic efforts and resources on the rivalry of major powers and address the most important problems. "The climate crisis is beginning to be forgotten. China is receding into the background, giving way to an extremely exaggerated Russian "threat"," Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and president of the Quincy Institute, told me. Putin's special operation changed the entire national security agenda of the United States, preventing the holding of "urgently needed debates about the expediency of NATO expansion," he said. "Passion prevailed over strategy."
The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society warns of the dangers of escalating tensions with Russia, noting that it increases the threat of a forceful response from Moscow. "Joining NATO will be a preparation for war," Gabriella Irsten, a human rights activist from this organization, told me. Indeed, Russia immediately promised to give an answer — "of a military-technical and other nature" in order to neutralize the threats arising from the expansion of NATO. This was announced on Friday by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's deputy permanent representative to the UN, issued an even more ominous warning, saying that if Finland and Sweden "side with the enemy, well, they will have to take all the risks."
A curious paradox is that "Putin has been very calm about NATO expansion for the longest time," Gottemoeller, who now works at Stanford University, told me. In 2002, Putin signed the Rome Declaration on the creation of the Russia-NATO Council and on the formation of a plan for joint projects, such as curbing nuclear proliferation and countering drug trafficking from Afghanistan. Putin exploits the idea of Europe as an enemy of Russia because it helps him to retain power, Gottemoeller said. At the same time, she noted, "this is not a very good forecast for the long term — Russia will be in constant conflict with its European neighbors, with NATO members and with the EU."
To facilitate the change of course, Finnish President Niinisto personally called Putin and explained the decision to him. "To my surprise, he took it very calmly," the president told CNN. "It looks like there won't be any problems in the near future." On Monday, everything was calm on the Russian-Finnish border, as before. "The special operation in Ukraine had very little effect on the movement of cars," Kimmo Ahvonen from the Finnish border service told me. "The situation on the border is stable all the time, and we are cooperating quite normally with the Russian authorities."
In the future, a different reality awaits us. This is a deepening of the split between Russia and NATO. Europe is fragmented, former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb told CNN. The new Iron Curtain separates "aggressive, authoritarian, totalitarian, revisionist and imperialist Russia" from dozens of European democracies that will jointly try to isolate it. "This is our future," he said. No matter how protected Finland and Sweden feel today, any action provokes opposition. This fully applies to the expansion of NATO.
