BIDEN SEEKS SWIFT EFFORT TO BRING FINLAND AND SWEDEN INTO ALLIANCE
NATO leader hopeful Turkey’s objections will be resolved
President Joe Biden vowed on Thursday to speed Finland and Sweden to NATO membership, seeking to redraw the map of Europe to the West’s advantage less than three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine.
In a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, Biden said he was immediately submitting to the Senate the treaty language needed to make the two countries the newest members of the alliance. Formal accession to the alliance will require the approval of the other 29 member nations.
Although there is little doubt that the Senate and most other NATO members will overwhelmingly approve a treaty of accession, Turkey — which under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a sometimes close and sometimes contentious relationship with Moscow — has expressed objections that could slow the process and require negotiations to address its concerns.
“These two countries, especially Sweden, they are a complete hotbed of terrorism,” Erdogan said Thursday, an apparent reference to what the Turkish leader contends is their tacit support for Kurdish separatists.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met his Turkish counterpart in New York on Wednesday, and Finnish officials said they were in talks with Turkey as well.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, expressed confidence that “Turkey’s concerns can be addressed” and that Finland and Sweden would ultimately be able to join the alliance.
But Erdogan is famously unpredictable, and he could easily take advantage of his leverage as a potential spoiler to press for his own demands, including a lifting of sanctions on the country for its purchase of Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that he expected to resolve Turkey’s concerns.
“I’m confident that we will come to a quick decision to welcome both Sweden and Finland to join the NATO family,” he said, adding, “We are addressing the concerns that Turkey has expressed.”
Erdogan’s demands aside, the ceremony at the White House was a remarkable moment in the history of the Western alliance — a rare instance in history where a single event — Russia’s invasion — changed sentiment, and probably NATO’s borders, almost overnight.
Under an agreement with the Soviet Union, Finland stayed outside the alliance, which was created to contain Russia after World War II. It remained independent in the post-Soviet era even after joining the European Union and growing ever closer with the West. Until now, Sweden had kept to more than 200 years of neutrality.
But that posture has been quickly abandoned after Putin’s decision in February to invade Ukraine, which is not a NATO member.
On Wednesday, Sullivan said that Biden had asked his national security officials whether they backed the addition of Finland and Sweden to the alliance and that they had “emphatically supported” the move in a unanimous fashion.