Finland’s NATO Accession and the Agony of Russia’s Apologists

By Noah Rothman

Friday, March 31, 2023

 

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a report in the Economist detailed a frenetic effort underway in Western capitals to avert disaster. In one of his many pre-war meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron, Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin reportedly proposed a solution to the crisis he had inaugurated: the “Finlandization” of Ukraine.

 

Given Putin’s obsession with reconstituting the former Soviet Union by every available means, it’s unsurprising that his mind would be drawn to this defunct Cold War–era concept. “Finlandization” describes the status assumed by Finland following the 1939–40 Winter War, in which the Finns managed to briefly fend off the Soviet advance before their defensive lines were overrun. In the end, Helsinki was compelled to surrender 11 percent of its territory to the USSR, legalize its local Communist Party, and, eventually, consent to neutrality in the contest between the superpowers.

 

In practice, Finland’s relative commitment to neutrality throughout the Cold War was subject to interpretation. As Finnish political observer Tim Linka has noted, “Finlandization” was despised by the Finns because it provided the Soviets with just enough diplomatic cover to treat their neighbor as a de facto member of the Warsaw Pact (the country’s integration with the European Economic Community after 1972 notwithstanding).

 

History books were censored and communists, in their typical fashion, kept tabs on people in universities and elsewhere and people had to watch their tongue. There was a constant struggle over control of the unions between the social democrats and the communists. Politicians that were disliked in Moscow were barred from certain political offices or dismissed shortly after the Soviets expressed mild discontent with their appointment. Governments fell when the Soviets didn’t like it and Finland’s eternal president Urho Kekkonen (1956–82) also stayed in power for so long because he became their favorite.

 

It’s easy to see why Putin would have welcomed the prospect of “Finlandizing” Ukraine. Like the Finns, however, Ukrainians would have none of it. When war came to Ukraine, Europe’s reliably accommodationist instincts weren’t so reliable after all. European capitals steeled themselves for a long campaign in support of the Ukrainian resistance, even with the understanding that this commitment would entail hardships and trade-offs. Helsinki was no exception. Along with Sweden, Finland broke the emergency glass on the NATO option. Today, following an exhausting process requiring the consent of all the Atlantic Alliance’s 30 members, Finland’s accession to NATO is secured.

 

For those who are inclined to lend undue credence to the dubious casus belli that Moscow cites in defense of its monstrous actions in Ukraine, Finland’s NATO membership presents a conundrum.

 

It has become an unfalsifiable conviction among self-described realists, whose realism frequently manifests guileless credulity, that Ukraine’s flirtation with NATO membership antagonized Russia to such a degree that it was driven to invade Ukraine and execute, kidnap, and rape Ukrainians. This narrative is impervious to conflicting data.

 

Among them is the fact that Moscow’s provocative actions against Ukraine predate the “intensified dialogue” around a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). Indeed, the former begat the latter — not the other way around. The realists’ conviction is just as unshaken by the fact that Ukraine’s accession plan hit a brick wall in 2008. When NATO members gathered in Bucharest in April of that year, the alliance’s members signaled that accession for Ukraine and Georgia, while notionally desirable, was a long way off. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 confirmed for Western Europe’s pacifists the wisdom of that verdict. But, once again, the realists have the order of events reversed. The invasion of Georgia followed NATO’s decision of entrenchment, and not of its advancement.

 

Indeed, after Ukraine assumed “non-bloc status” in 2010, Russia enjoyed the very Ukrainian neutrality it supposedly sought in 2022. It was Ukraine’s oft-thwarted desire to integrate into European economic — not military — structures that sparked the Maidan revolution, the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, and the invasions of Crimea and the Donbas. In sum, it was Ukraine’s expressions of its own sovereignty that Russia and its imperialist leadership could not abide.

 

According to Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, “Moscow’s patience with NATO’s ever more intrusive behavior” had worn “thin” after the Baltic states — which were subsumed into the Soviet Union following Stalin’s 1939 pact with Nazi leadership — joined NATO. “Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded.” National Public Radio informed its readers about the ways in which “NATO’s expansion helped drive Putin to invade Ukraine.” One of the preeminent realist scholars, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, still maintains that the “West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis [in Ukraine] which began in February 2014.” He makes no discernible distinction between the expansion of NATO — a voluntary mutual-security treaty — and Russian expansionism, which takes the form of invasions, occupations, sham referenda, and annexations.

 

If even the prospect of NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s borders is regarded in the Kremlin as an existential threat necessitating a preemptive military response, what stayed Putin’s hand while Finland embarked on a diplomatic blitz toward NATO membership? Finland more than doubles the length of Russia’s border with NATO, and its accession will bring NATO forces to the doorstep of cities such as the czarist capital St. Petersburg. Of course, Moscow protested. It lobbed diplomatic volleys toward Helsinki and cut off electricity exports, but did little else.

 

“Well,” I can hear the realists say, “Russia had already committed most of its forces to the war in Ukraine.” Correct. Because the Kremlin’s leadership is engaged in the pursuit of strategic (geographic depth) and sentimental (“Ukraine isn’t even a country“) goals in Ukraine, which have little to do with the Atlantic Alliance save for the degree to which NATO membership closes the window in which Russia can act with impunity.

 

In the zero-sum game of geopolitics, Finland’s accession to NATO is a win for the West and a loss for Moscow. But to judge by the Kremlin’s behavior, the ratification of Finland’s de facto Western status is an absorbable loss. Moscow couldn’t impose its will on Helsinki, even if it tried. Ukraine presented a riper target. It was as simple as that. Fortunately for the transatlantic alliance, its member states on the Russian frontier understand Putin better than the realists do.