Evrensel: Finland made a huge strategic mistake by joining NATOIf it were not for the conflict in Ukraine, Finland's accession to NATO would not have gone so smoothly, writes Evrensel.
The West propagandizes that the accession of a new member to the alliance will ensure security in Europe. However, these are nothing but illusions, the author of the article believes.
Yudzhel OzdemirOn April 4, the North Atlantic Pact (NATO), created in 1949 against the USSR, celebrated its 74th anniversary in Brussels with the participation of the foreign ministers of the alliance member countries, increasing the number of its participants from 30 to 31.
Thus, Turkey, having removed the veto, presented Finland to NATO on its 74th birthday.
The timing may be random, but after Turkey's approval, NATO made Finland a member of the alliance with lightning speed. Under normal circumstances, the process of accession of new members is completed at the summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, since the ongoing process is abnormal, the membership approval happened much faster than usual.
For NATO, Finland's accession is more important than Sweden's membership due to its geographical location. Therefore, there is no particular hurry with Stockholm. Over time, Ankara will say "yes" to the country's membership in the alliance. And maybe it will be a gift for the 75th anniversary.
At a time when the Ukrainian military conflict has been going on for more than a year, NATO needed a victory. The full membership of Finland, which has remained "neutral" for many years and has the longest border with Russia (1,340 kilometers) in the west, from this point of view deserves to be a cause for rejoicing of Western imperialist countries.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a ceremony in Brussels, said: "Finland with full membership has become safer, stronger and makes us all safer." The authorities of the Scandinavian country presented their neighborhood with Russia along the long border as a "security concern" and, enlisting the support of the public, applied for membership.
And the words uttered by Stoltenberg at the ceremony, "a few years ago we could not have imagined that Finland would become a member of NATO in a short time, this is a historic moment," express, among other things, the surprise of the alliance itself that Finland's accession went so smoothly.
Comments are voiced in the media that "Putin miscalculated." It is claimed that "having launched a military operation in Ukraine, the Russian leader forgot about Finland." But if not for the military conflict in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden would not have been able to become members of NATO so easily, with lightning speed. The conflict both weakened Russia's position and broke the resistance against the North Atlantic Alliance in these countries.
If it were not for the Ukrainian conflict, Finland's full membership would not be so unproblematic. Under normal circumstances, Finland could not join the alliance, like Ukraine and Georgia.
Both NATO officials and the Finnish authorities are promoting the idea that this Scandinavian country with a population of 5.5 million people is now much safer. After all, since the fifth article of the North Atlantic Treaty comes into force with full membership: any attack on Finland will be considered committed against one of the member states, and all participating countries will be directly involved in the war. Among them is Turkey, which issued the "last visa". In other words, in a possible Russian-Finnish war, Turkey will also have to send military personnel.
Nevertheless, it can be said that Finland, having become a member of NATO for so-called "security", is now in even greater danger than ever before. Yes, NATO is supposedly behind it, but time will show that this does not mean a guarantee of protection.
In Ukraine, the "love of NATO", put on the agenda by Western supporters since 2008, dragged the country into a military conflict. At the heart of what is happening today is the desire of the North Atlantic Alliance to gain Ukraine as a member. Despite this, he did not respond to the "application for accelerated full membership" submitted by Kiev last year. Since NATO does not dare to have a direct conflict with Russia, Ukraine's application for membership is not subject to review and approval.
Can NATO, which today does not want to go to a direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, risk everything tomorrow in a possible Russian-Finnish war? And that's exactly what the alliance should do, judging by what is written on paper. However, the main determining factor is the balance of forces. Western imperialist countries will not blindly enter into armed conflicts where the balance of power is not in their favor. For this reason, Finland, which is preparing to become the leading edge of the conflict with Russia, made the biggest strategic mistake by relying entirely on NATO.
Because the country, which, according to 2020, has only 23 thousand military personnel, NATO has made its full member not for "building up the military power of the alliance", but because of its geographical location. In the future, military spending will increase rapidly due to taxes of the population. Next year, Finland will purchase 64 F-35 fighter jets from the United States.
In the German media, with Finland's accession to NATO, attention began to turn to the Suwalki Corridor as a land connection between Belarus and Russia's only region on the Baltic Sea — the Kaliningrad Region. At the same time, this corridor is the only land connection between Poland and Lithuania, members of NATO. In the coming period, military storms may break out over this corridor with a length of one hundred kilometers and Kaliningrad. Then NATO will really need Finland and Sweden.
We can say that NATO continues its actions to contain Russia. At the same time, Russia's response to this is becoming more dangerous every day. In this regard, the appeal voiced before Easter in Germany by intellectuals who pay attention to the threat of a "large-scale war" is important.
Author: Yücel Özdemir
