One of the first victims of the expansion of the Atlantic alliance on this occasion is the very concept of neutrality. In the case of Finland, it did so from 1948, in an effort to avoid any further confrontation, especially with the Soviet Union.
For Helsinki, it was decades of guaranteed peace with neutral status, while Sweden made it almost a currency and a seal for the world since the 19th century, which allowed it to stay out of many of the complications of World War II and the Nazi fascism.
However, the concepts of pacifism that guided these two Nordic nations seemed to be forgotten in recent years, to yield to a will imposed from outside, especially from the United States.
This, among other causes, led the Finnish government to increase military spending to two percent of its Gross Domestic Product, something that several European countries with more powerful economies did not do in the past, as in the case of Germany.
Sweden and Finland were frequent guests at large NATO military exercises, with the participation, on occasions, of up to 30,000 soldiers from the war pact, created in 1949.
In recent years, NATO countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark have carried out provocations using fighter planes and warships in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Black Sea, all along the border of the Russian border.
But one thing is to participate sporadically and another to assume the commitment to be part of NATO, with the challenge of nesting in their respective territories troops and combat means of that alliance that now would have 30 countries, analysts consider.
Finland and Sweden could face dilemmas with their non-nuclear status, in case the allies of the military pact decide to place weapons of mass destruction there, as part of the growing siege that forms around Russia, experts estimate quoted by the Russian daily Izvestia.
The internal controversy within the aforementioned countries, with a long history of anti-war movements, could be one of the causes that led their governments to avoid a referendum on joining NATO and replace it with a mere parliamentary vote, estimates the newspaper.
The entry of Finland and Sweden, who made their decision in the midst of a military operation in Ukraine, launched last February by Russia, would take the border to be shared by NATO with that Eurasian giant from the current 1,215 kilometers to 2,600. more than double.
The challenge would not only be for Moscow, which has already announced the need to create units to reinforce its northern border, in the event of entry by its Nordic neighbors, but also for NATO itself, which will assume new areas of risk of confrontation, including the nuclear, with Russia.
On the other hand, the path to the entry of the aforementioned nations appears paved with Turkey’s position of making prior demands, before giving its consent.
Ankara considers that Sweden and Finland are havens for the refuge of Kurdish leaders and members of their armed formations, which are considered terrorists by the Eurasian country, although this does not precisely coincide with the qualifications of the rest of the world.
In 2019, Helsinki and Stockholm joined the arms embargo on Turkey in retaliation for the Turkish army’s attacks on Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria, although in that case few made reference to the need to respect their own territorial integrity. Syria.
In addition, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also demands that the aforementioned Nordic states express a clear rejection of the reception of supporters of the Muslim cleric Fatullah Gull, established in the United States and whom he blames for a failed coup in 2016.
All these topics, including the start of a hypothetical collaboration in the fight against terrorism, must be reflected in writing, otherwise Ankara’s answer will be no and everyone knows that the decisions of the Atlantic alliance are made by consensus.
The Turkish case joins the already existing rivalries and differences between NATO members. Greece recently protested the Turkish military presence in an area that Athens considers to be part of its zone of economic responsibility, in the Mediterranean Sea.
On its side, the United States imposed sanctions on Turkey for its decision to acquire Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems.
Thus, Helsinki and Stockholm will seek to increase the ranks of an organization that seems to set goals to act as a global police force, above UN precepts and in the midst of growing opposition in the world to Washington’s attempts to impose its hegemony.
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