NATO’s Borders Are Likely To Change, and Soon.

One clear by-product of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine is a sharp rise in interest by bordering nations to join the NATO alliance and enjoy “Article 5” protection—by which member states, including the U.S., pledge that any attack upon one is an attack upon all. Nowhere has public opinion swung more sharply than in the Nordic nation of Finland, which has traditionally remained neutral.

Finland’s fierce independence and preparedness for war derive in large measure from its own history with a hostile and territory-hungry Soviet Union, which invaded Finland in 1940 in what became known as the “Winter War.” That experience has many historical echoes and lessons for the war in Ukraine today. Outnumbered and outgunned by multiple margins, the Finns, holding the home-field and morale advantage, managed to battle the Soviets/Russians to a bloody stalemate after only a few months of fighting. The international community had condemned the invasion and kicked The Soviet Union out of The League of Nations. But other nations did not send in troops, instead providing Finland with military aid and equipment. Despite the imbalance of force, Moscow failed to topple the government in Helsinki, and it lost far more in troops and armor than it had ever assumed it would. Stalin was forced to sue for peace, ultimately gaining around nine percent of Finnish territory but losing far more in terms of his army and his international standing. Importantly, it also left the Soviet Union isolated and highly vulnerable, which Hitler then exploited in his full-scale invasion of the country the following year.

The Finnish public has long been tepid about the prospects of joining NATO, preferring instead for decades to hold a kind of strategic ambiguity and to be reassured by history that Russia would unlikely want to repeat the bruising lesson of the Winter War. Public support in Finland for joining NATO had long remained under 50 percent. But with the invasion of Ukraine, all that changed. President Biden and other NATO leaders began to discuss Finnish membership in NATO in earnest in early March, just a week after Russia sent in its tanks and troops to Ukraine. And by mid-March, public support for joining the alliance had hit a new high of 62 percent.

Over the weekend, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that the war in Ukraine had forced Finland to reexamine its own security policy. “Russia is not the neighbor we thought it was,” she said. And Finland’s largest paper, Helsingin Sanomat, interviewed 13 sources who said that signs now point to Finland likely applying for NATO membership as early as this year. If Finland moves to join, it is likely that Sweden will follow.

These moves come despite express threats by Russia aimed at deterring Finland and Sweden from joining the alliance. Russia promised “serious military and political consequences” should that occur. Such a realignment “would require changing the whole palette of relations with these countries and require retaliatory measures,” said Sergei Belyaev, the head of the Russian foreign ministry’s European department. This echoed a threat made by Russia the day after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.

But Russia’s sheer brutality toward Ukraine has had the effect of hardening public opinion in favor of the NATO alliance. After all, nothing by way of “serious military and political consequences” could be worse than a full-scale invasion and war crime atrocities toward a much smaller neighbor lacking security assurances of Article 5. 

One Finnish general reacted to Putin’s threats around Finland joining NATO by recalling the folly and deep failure of the Winter War. “You are most welcome here to join the 200,000 Russians that are already in Finland buried a few meters in the ground after your last attempt in 1939.”