NATO membership has never been completed so quickly. Finland applied to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization three months after Russia invaded Ukraine. Therefore, the process will not have lasted even a year.
Helsinki has put special determination into it. The former Finnish liberal prime minister, Alexander Stubb, misses no opportunity to correct any interlocutor who ventures to evoke some historical neutrality of his country: “No, Finland is not a neutral state. It is a misunderstanding that I have yet to correct. We had We chose our path in 1994, with accession to the European Union and association with NATO.”
But it is not only this eagerness to deny a prior military non-alignment that can explain such an accelerated adherence. Member 31 shares 1,340 kilometers of land border with Russia, which means that the extension of the contact zone of the entire Atlantic Alliance is doubled today. The organization must then review its external arguments, established in 2016, aimed at deconstructing “the first myth of a NATO that would try to encircle Russia.” It was placed in the introduction that “less than one-sixteenth of the total length of Russian borders adjoins member countries.”
A reserve of 870,000 people
The Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance viewed this arrival at the gates of Russian territory with all the more interest since Helsinki did not let its guard down after the fall of the USSR. This state has been careful never to forget the lightning invasion of 1939 by Soviet forces, which has always encouraged it to maintain a form of conscription at all costs: its reserve is likely to mobilize 870,000 people tomorrow in total.
Jens Stoltenberg insisted that Finland is “one of the few countries that has not subsequently reduced its investment” in its military capabilities, including in terms of readiness. He believes the contribution is substantial, noting that the Finns have massively ordered F-35s: more than 60 copies of this so-called fifth-generation fighter aircraft built by American Lockheed-Martin.
Securing the Baltic
Minna Alander, from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, quoted by VoA, also explains that her country has deployed 1,500 artillery systems, one of the greatest capabilities in Europe in this field, according to this expert, around a permanent effort in air defense . . Seen by NATO, this strong army will also be able to make an essential contribution to ensuring access to the Baltic Sea for Estonia, a member of the alliance since 2004, which is some forty miles away.
Finnish public television, regarding the meaning of its accession, recalls that it is accompanied above all by the solidarity clause provided for in Article 5 of the Treaty of Alliance: a commitment in principle to defend any other Member State in case of attack. For the moment, the outgoing Finnish government has not asked its new alliance to bolster common resources along its border with Russia.
Access to Finnish airfields
Moscow, for its part, announced on Monday its intention to increase its forces near this new land border with NATO. For the strategic analyst Nikita Lipunov in Moscow, a specialist in Scandinavia quoted by RIA Novosti, the United States can now access all the military infrastructure of this “direct neighbor”, in particular its airfields.
Russian diplomacy therefore multiplies the warnings, such as that of its embassy in Sweden which writes on a social network that “the new members of the hostile bloc will become a legitimate target for reprisals”, also aiming in this supposed Sweden to become in the 32. member for this summer.
Source: BFM TV
