Finland and Sweden can apply to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a few days. Officials from both countries will meet this Saturday to discuss the matter.

This is a monumental change for two nations with a long tradition of wartime neutrality and abstinence from military alliances.

Russia strongly opposes the joining of the two countries to NATO and uses the expansion of the West’s military alliance as a pretext for its war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he sees “possible security threats” from Russia if the two countries join NATO.

Already the head of Tuquia, Recep Erdogan, said that he is against the measure – Turkey is also part of NATO, but Erdogan is close to Putin.

Ankara’s opposition could be a major stumbling block, as any expansion of the alliance needs unanimous approval from existing member states.

The Turkish president argued that the two countries harbor Kurdish refugees who form the fronts of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an acronym considered terrorist by his own government.

If unity does occur, it means that Sweden will end the more than 200-year cycle of disengagement with other military powers. Finland, on the other hand. He adopted neutrality after a bitter defeat against the Soviet Union during World War II.

The support of the Finnish people for the country’s NATO membership has varied between 20% and 25% in recent years.

However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, support has reached a record high of 76% of the population, according to a recent opinion poll. In Sweden, 57% of the population wants to participate, much more than before the war.

decision time

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto revealed his stance on NATO on Thursday, and the ruling parties in both countries will have a say over the weekend.

If your answer is yes, both parliaments will have a clear majority in favor of membership and the nomination process can begin.

While the Finnish Social Democrats are probably in favour, the Swedish Social Democrats are split on the issue – the group is currently conducting an internal consultation. However, more skeptical members of the party seem inclined to join. “Everything seems to be going in that direction,” says former Secretary of State Margot Wallstrom.

The United States says it is confident it will address any security concerns that countries may face in the period between registration and official accession. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will visit the two countries on Wednesday and discuss “broad security issues”.

Why should you join now?

The actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin have shattered the long-standing sense of stability in northern Europe, leaving Sweden and Finland vulnerable.

Former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said joining the alliance was a “deal” for his country after Russian troops invaded Ukraine on February 24.

Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist described that day as the moment when the Russian leader proved “ready for an unpredictable, unreliable and brutal war, bloody and brutal”.

After Sweden promised never to join NATO in November last year, he now says the Nordic region’s defenses will be strengthened if both countries join NATO.

As a result, many Finns and Swedes look to NATO in the belief that it can keep countries safer.

For Finns, events in Ukraine bring an eerie sense of familiarity. The Soviets invaded Finland in late 1939. For more than three months, the Finnish Army, though outnumbered, fiercely resisted.

The country survived the occupation, but lost 10% of its territory.

Watching the Ukrainian war unfold is like reliving that history, says Iro Sarkka, a political scientist at the University of Helsinki. The Finns look at its 1340 kilometer border with Russia and ask, “Can this happen to us?” she thinks.

Sweden has also felt threatened by several airspace violations reported by Russian military aircraft in recent years.

In 2014, the Swedes were stunned by the news that a Russian submarine was lurking in the shallows of the Stockholm archipelago.

Two years later, the Swedish army returned to the small but strategically important island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea after abandoning it for twenty years.

What will change?

In a way, joining the two countries in NATO doesn’t change much. Sweden and Finland became official NATO partners in 1994 and have made significant contributions to the alliance ever since. They participated in several NATO missions after the end of the Cold War.

An important change would be the implementation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, which makes an attack on a member state an attack on all. Finland and Sweden will receive security guarantees from nuclear-armed states for the first time.

Although the debate has changed rapidly in favor of membership in both countries, historian Henrik Meinander argues that Finland is mentally prepared for it. He says that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, small steps have been taken towards NATO.

In 1992 Helsinki bought 64 US fighter jets. Three years later it joined the European Union along with Sweden. Since then, every Finnish government has considered the so-called NATO option, Meinander says. Serving a population of 5.5 million, the army has 280,000 soldiers and a total of 900,000 reserve soldiers.

Sweden took a different path in the 1990s, downsizing its armed forces and shifting its priorities from regional defense to peacekeeping missions around the world.

But everything changed in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Recruitment has returned and defense spending has increased. In 2018, all families received army leaflets entitled “If Crisis or War Comes” – such material was distributed for the first time since 1991.

Finland has already met its defense spending target of 2% of NATO’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and Sweden has prepared plans to do the same.

What are the risks?

President Putin has often used the prospect of NATO expansion into Ukraine to justify his invasion. Therefore, the joining of Sweden and Finland to the alliance will be seen as a provocation by him.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said both countries had been warned of the “consequences” of such a move. Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of the Russian leader, has warned that NATO membership could lead to Moscow’s nuclear weapons deployment in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

While not ruling out these threats, Alexander Stubb suggests that a more realistic risk comes from Russian cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and occasional airspace violations.

Does NATO make Sweden and Finland safer?

At least in Sweden there is a significant minority of non-believers.

Deborah Solomon of the Swedish Association for Peace and Arbitration argues that NATO’s nuclear deterrence is escalating tensions and risking an arms race with Russia. This complicates peace efforts and makes Sweden a less safe place, she says.

Another fear is that by joining the alliance, Sweden will lose its leadership role in the global nuclear disarmament effort. Margot Wallstrom recalls how heavy pressure was put on some NATO foreign ministers by the United States to not participate in the UN disarmament talks in 2019.

But the country’s current defense minister, Hultqvist, says there is no conflict between NATO membership and Sweden’s disarmament goals.

A more skeptical part of Sweden’s NATO dates back to the 1960s-80s, when Sweden used its neutrality to position itself as an international mediator and ally of developing countries. He was fiercely critical of the Soviet Union and the United States – and was the only Western country to support South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s.

Sweden’s joining NATO would be “to give up on its dream” of mediating, Solomon says.

Finland’s neutrality was very different. This emerged as a peace condition imposed by the Soviet Union in a 1948 “friendship treaty”. This stance was seen as a pragmatic way of maintaining and maintaining the country’s independence.

“While Sweden’s neutrality was a matter of identity and ideology, in Finland it was a matter of existence,” says Henrik Meinander. He believes one reason Sweden could enter into a debate over NATO membership is because it uses Finland and the Baltic as “buffer zones”.

Finland abandoned its neutrality after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He looked to the West and tried to free himself from the Soviet sphere of influence. European Union membership was seen as an opportunity not only for economic advantages, but also for security.

Iro Sarkka argues that joining NATO in the early 1990s was seen as a huge step for Finland, but perceptions of time and risk have changed. Now most Finns say they are ready to participate.