The West’s strong north: Finland, Sweden and NATO
The prime minister of Sweden, Magdalena Andersson, and the president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, appeared Thursday outside the White House with President Joe Biden, who voiced his support for the two Scandinavian countries to join NATO. Their citizens are acting to defend a Europe that is “whole, free, and at peace,” he said, adding that the mutual and shared defense commitments within the alliance are central to U.S. defense. “A strong, united NATO is the foundation of America’s security,” Biden said.
For both countries, joining NATO will be a huge break from their past: Sweden has been neutral — not a member of a military alliance — for over 200 years. Finland also was neutral after World War II and even bent over backward not to annoy its eastern neighbor, Russia, with whom it shares an 830-mile border.
Sweden and Finland have complicated, intertwined histories with Russia. As Peter the Great pulled Russia into the modern world in the early 1700s, making it into a strong European state, he did so largely by defeating Sweden, then the superpower in northern Europe. The lands of modern Finland, part of the Kingdom of Sweden from the middle ages on, were seized by Russia in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s and remained part of the Russian Empire until after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
In November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, invading it in what became known to history as the Winter War. The fighting stopped in March 1940, but Finland lost significant territory, including its second-largest city, Vyborg. Then when Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, Finland was pulled on the German side. By the end of World War II, Finns had lost about 96,000 lives, or about 2.5% of the population, and an eighth of its territory.
The Finnish experience in fighting the Soviets — mainly Russians — in World War II is central to Finnish identity. The best-known Finnish novel of the 20th century, Vaino Linna’s “The Unknown Soldier,” has the war as its setting.
After the war, Finland’s neutrality had one purpose: to avoid pressure from the USSR to become like the other countries under Soviet domination such as Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary. Finnish leaders did not criticize the USSR and even engaged in censorship to ensure the country was not seen as critical of the USSR. A fourth of its foreign trade was with the USSR. The Finns’ willingness to not anger the Soviets was called by many in Europe “Finlandization.”
For new states to join NATO all member states must agree. Among these 30 states, only Turkey has voiced reticence, accusing Sweden and Finland of harboring members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, that has carried out guerilla attacks in Turkey. Most analysts believe that Turkey’s concerns will be addressed and the country will allow Finland and Sweden to join NATO. This will be a profound turn in European history: Russia will be even more isolated.
Some argue that by allowing NATO to expand in the 1990s to the countries that had been part of the Soviet-led military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact, Russia was pushed into a defensive posture — that because of a larger NATO, the anti-western stance of Vladimir Putin is supposedly understandable. I do not believe this view holds water. Near the end of World War II the leaders of the states fighting against Nazi Germany — President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin — met at Yalta to establish security arrangements after the expected defeat of Germany. They agreed Germany would be divided into zones of occupation. Stalin said that the countries in Eastern Europe would have free and open elections, but he did not keep this promise. The USSR was permitted to extend its control to an entire swath of countries — Poland; the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, which became East Germany; Czechoslovakia; Hungary; Romania; Bulgaria.
The Soviet empire expanded after World War II. While other European empires after World War II dismantled their empires in following decades — Great Britain, France, the Netherlands — the USSR never decolonized.
And even after the USSR ended in
1991 and broke up into 15 states, a mental decolonization did not occur. The Finns knew that even a post-soviet Russia was still the Russia that Finland had known for 200 years, and they took part in the Partnership for Peace program in which NON-NATO members collaborated with NATO states. But Finland did not join the alliance. It preferred to manage its relationship with the USSR.
Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in February changed how the Finns and the Swedes view their security. There were voices in Russia talking about taking more than Ukraine — the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, even Poland.
It is not the fault of Finland and Sweden that Russian leaders after 1991 were not able to accepted a decolonized Russia. Things were made worse when Russian president Boris Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin as his replacement. This was a fateful error.
There were others who could have taken Russia in the right direction, such as former Vice Premier Boris Nemtsov, murdered in 2015. For NATO and the U.S. to try to situate their decisions for security so as not to anger Putin would be appeasement — just what Great Britain and France did in 1938 before Hitler’s aggression.
In joining NATO, Finns and Swedes will not be new burdens on U.S. security. Both countries have strong militaries. In Finland, 80% of men have completed military service. The country can mobilize an army of 280,000.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But having seen Russia attack Ukraine — an independent country — and kill thousands of Ukrainians, Europeans know they must band together to ensure their security. The United States’ role in NATO is making this trans-atlantic cooperation possible.
As Andersson eloquently put it, “Today, the situation in Ukraine reminds us of the darkest days of European history. And I must say that during dark times, it is great to be among close friends.”