Our applications were submitted simultaneously to signal that we were united in our assessment of the Russian threat. We will defend literally every inch of NATO,” Biden told the group.įinland and Sweden submitted applications for NATO membership last June, assuming we’d be on a fast track to accession. “Article 5 is a sacred commitment the United States has made. US President Joe Biden underscored the importance of the article during his meetings in Poland this week with leaders from the so-called Bucharest Nine countries – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – on the frontline of any potential hostilities with Moscow. It’s been a cornerstone of the 30-member NATO alliance since its founding in 1949 as a counterweight to the Soviet Union.Ī thorny question for Finns: Is this where we part ways with Sweden? We were particularly keen for the protections afforded by Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the collective defense doctrine stating that an attack on one member is tantamount to an attack on the entire alliance. It quickly became clear that if Finland and Sweden are to have real security from possible Russian aggression, we are more likely to find it within the larger NATO military alliance than on our own.
Moscow’s brutal invasion of Ukraine changed all that. Until one year ago, we Finns actually harbored the idea that our eastern neighbor had become a peace-loving trading partner, and no longer posed a threat to our national security. We felt we had our mutual defense needs covered vis-a-vis Russia.įinland also has robust military defenses which we developed as a matter of exigency, living in the shadow of a powerful Russian neighbor with whom we already went to war once before, back when it was part of the Soviet Union. That close military cooperation is one of the reasons why, when many other countries in northern and eastern Europe rushed to join NATO, Helsinki and Stockholm chose to remain outside. The two countries have been cooperating on defense since the 1990s. In fact, Sweden is Finland’s closest defense partner. In recent decades, our two countries have also been close military allies.
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