Adding Sweden and Finland to NATO will anchor the NATO northern flank and provide decisive assets for the Baltic Sea region. Is this one more step to Russian strategic sanity?
Good:
Sweden elected a new government in September, and Jonson was sworn in as the new defense minister about a month later. The previous government had vowed to raise its defense spending in line with the NATO threshold by 2028. Jonson said Sweden currently spends about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. However, with the worsening security situation in Europe, the nation will move that goal up to 2026, he said.
“This is about solidarity with other allies. The Baltic nations are at about 2 percent. Poland is way over 2 percent, and Germany is on the track to 2 percent,” he said. All eight parties in the newly formed Swedish government support meeting the threshold, although half of them want to keep the original goal of 2028, he noted. “We can find bipartisan agreement on it,” he added.
Once membership is approved, Sweden will be ready to participate as a full member, he said.
Sweden also has naval power, a modern defense industry, and useful intelligence capabilities focused on Russia.
Sweden has been addressing my 2015 concern about their potential membership:
Sweden's military is a joke, and NATO shouldn't consider Sweden for membership until Sweden can be a provider rather than a consumer of military security.
Sweden used to have a potent military to defend their neutrality. No more[.]
Finland, too. Although I hadn't imagined Finland would join. Russia's 2022 invasion alarmed both. But
Russia's extended face plant in Ukraine was a window of opportunity of heightened worry and temporarily reduced Russian military capabilities to
enter NATO too good to ignore. Finland adds modern air power, tanks and artillery, and a longstanding determination to keep the Russians out.
Both have made efforts to work with NATO, since 2014 especially, increasing their ability to quickly fit in as NATO partners.
Adding Sweden and Finland to NATO provides significant military power and bases to dominate the Baltic Sea and assist in the defense of the Baltic frontline NATO states.
Sweden and Finland added to Norway also stretch Russia's forces to the Arctic, drawing away Russian power from the main threats to the Baltic states and Poland. And complicate Russia's objective of dominating the Arctic.
I do wonder if Russia's decision to demote its Northern Fleet was a reaction to the cost and likely futility of defending the northwestern Russian bases from Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish air power, bolstered by other NATO assets.
I also wonder how this affects Russia's need for SSBN bastions in the Northern Fleet area to maintain a credible sea-based nuclear deterrent? That's a key consideration for Russia, given their conventional military weakness even before the Winter War of 2022 exposed that.
And other Russian critical nuclear and conventional military assets are located on the far northern Kola Peninsula need protection. Can Russia contract defenses to that region while extending Arctic SSBN bastions further east?
Or will Russia focus on protecting a Sea of Okhotsk SSBN bastion?
Russia's constant claims that NATO is a threat is just resulting in a stronger NATO. Recognizing the truth hurts, but Putin's invasion is rubbing Russia's face in the fact that was oddly not clear earlier. The West can't really trust Russia. And Russia is finding it can't terrify the West.
Will Russia finally realize fighting NATO is futile--and needless--and that it would be safer to cut a deal with NATO to pivot to China's threat to Russia?
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 updates continue here.
