Sound of backfire
Thirty-two nations and counting
Vladimir Vladimirovich must be thinking “damn!” these days. One of the major points of invading Ukraine was to shake NATO to its spit-shined boots and fray the alliance. But the best-laid schemes of mice an’ men gang aft agley.
This week, NATO expanded. Again. Sweden officially joined. It brings with it 10.4 million people, tens of thousands of men and women in uniform, a navy of nearly 400 ships (!) and another air force pointing its planes eastward. Last year, Finland joined the alliance. And Ukraine would, as soon as the war there is over and there is no more chance of sparking a wider war between Russia and the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This is not how Vladimir Putin wrote the script. Now NATO has 32 members, from the Arctic Circle to Turkey, from Helsinki to Gibraltar. Far from weakening NATO, President Putin has made it much stronger. When Finland joined, it gave Russia a 833-mile border with NATO. For the record, you can get from Stockholm to St. Petersburg with a 24-foot shrimp boat.
According to The Washington Post: “The addition of Sweden and Finland will strengthen NATO in the far north, where Russia keeps much of it second-strike capability, and boost its presence around the Baltic Sea, particularly around the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
“Sweden’s navy has experience operating in—and under—Baltic waters, and its fighter jets will patrol the region’s skies, making it easier for NATO to supply or defend Baltic allies, should the need arise. Stockholm has already said it will send troops to join a multinational force based in Latvia.”
For years, all this would have been unheard of. Polls showed large majorities of Finns were opposed to any alliance. They prided themselves on being non-aligned. So did Sweden. They weren’t exactly neutral, you understand, just out of the line of fire.
But after Putin’s War began, public sentiment in both nations shifted dramatically. No longer did being nonaligned mean you were non-targeted. Because if Moscow could invade a smaller non-aligned neighbor without NATO protections, and get away with it, which country was next?
Poor Vlad the Impaler. For a couple of decades now, he’s complained about NATO expansions. Now he’s directly responsible for another one.
Not that anybody in the West wants to pick a fight with Moscow. Only a fool would want a war between a nuclear-armed Russia and a nuclear-armed NATO. As bad as the Red Army has been in Ukraine—its officer class outclassed, its NCO class inept, its weapons old and rusting— nobody can guarantee Russia’s nukes wouldn’t operate just as designed. Let’s not find out.
But there is no doubt that Comrade Putin has been weakened, not NATO. His people probably see that. Because they can look down the road, across the fence, over the sea’s horizon, and see NATO members looking back.
Vladimir Putin may not be the only person in Russia thinking “damn!”