> Would there be consequences to ruining the plans of US, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Slovakia and Romania, and many other countries? No doubt, and beyond what Hungary is prepared to pay.
You can add Norway and probably Denmark to that list. With Finland and Sweden in Nato, all of Scandinavia becomes significantly more defendable. This would enable all Scandinavian countries to combine their defensive efforts, and would it make it extremely hard for Russia to attack any individual country.
And keep in mind that Stoltenberg is Norwegian....
> In practical reality, if Russia were to attack Finland or Sweden now, the answer from NATO would be pretty much the same as if they were already members.
Really? Why is this true of Finland but not Ukraine?
> what made Sweden and Finland finally want to join now after all these years?
Honestly I suspect that's just a momentary bout of mass irrationality (to put it politely). Both countries are completely safe, de-facto NATO members. Russia has no stated or implied interest in invading either. More importantly, Russia has no capacity to do so - they can barely push 50 km into Ukraine as it is.
America, otoh, has a lot to gain in extra weapons sales (remember NATO comes with a 2% of GDP spending target).
> Anyway, this threat loses a lot of teeth when the reason Ukraine is getting destroyed at the moment is because they are not in NATO.
It is because they are not in NATO and also did not explicitly abandon the aspiration of joining. The threat is intended to get Finland and Sweden to explicitly disclaim any intent of joining NATO (and maybe make binding commitments), not just to get them to not apply.
OTOH, as you note, it also underscores the benefit of getting into NATO and under the umbrella while Russia’s military is committed to Ukraine.
> why do some NATO members intent on continued eastward expansion
If Russia rolling tanks into Ukraine doesn’t show why expanding mutual protection makes sense, I don’t know what would. As a direct result of these moves Putin has all but guaranteed NATO forces in Sweden, possibly even Finland.
In spite of everything that has been said about this: or not. I'm not convinced that NATO is going to actually deliver on its obligations, after all, if we're willing to let a country of 45 million people be invaded and murdered wholesale I have a hard time convincing myself that NATO's obligations will suddenly make everything different if for instance say Estonia (much, much smaller) would get invaded.
> Why did Sweden and Finland just decide to join NATO, after more than half a century of neutrality?
It's a nitpick but one I believe just expands your point here, I live in Sweden and this country has been neutral and out of wars for more than 200 years. Putin has broken a 200 years stance on neutrality and forced Sweden, under a Social Democrat government nonetheless, to join NATO, something that was unthinkable and unsupported by the population barely a year ago.
> I highly doubt that any of NATO's members will veto an application from Finland (or Sweden).
The big questions are over Hungary and Turkey; Hungary because Orbán is somewhat pro-Russian and has opposed some EU and NATO moves already wrt Ukraine, and Erdogan for somewhat similar reasons, and because he has publicly stated that he is not in favor of Sweden and Finland joining.
OTOH, I think the general expectation is that those are surmountable issues.
> The goal is to prevent a NATO giant air carrier on its borders.
If their goal is to prevent Germany, Poland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Alaska from existing and being (part of, in the last case) NATO members, well, invading Ukraine seems a rather improbable route to achieving that.
All they’ve managed so far is to make that worse by adding Finland to the mix, and increasing NATO deployments to the existing eastern flank members, and increasing defense expenditures across NATO.
> If NATO declares war on Russia, that also immediately expands the front line from Norway, down into the Baltics, all of which would have to be defended from Russian retaliation. Doing that and fighting a full scale invasion of Ukraine would be the largest European Conflict since WWII.
Well, that obviously goes both ways. Russia will also have to defend itself all the way from the north to the south.
> IMO The cost of NOT joining NATO would have been de facto loss of sovereignty.
This to me as a Finn is the most important part. The moment your neighbor country says "you can't join alliance X" and you actually take their opinion seriously and don't due to their pressure means you just lost your sovereignty as a nation.
And Finland has experience of that from the years after WW2 under YYA[1]. While we were lucky to not be fully take into the soviet union shit just sucked. Press was heavily censored "voluntarily", got a god king president for decades (this is why the President has 0 power in internal politics now), etc. After the fall of soviet union we got rid of the bullshit of licking Russias ass and are never going back.
NATO's most important member is the US, which isn't party to these European agreements. The same escalation risks that preclude the US fighting for Ukraine would probably prevent the US from fighting for Sweden.
Sweden has to join NATO to get the unambiguous commitment of the US, and to put the decision of running escalation risks on the Russian side.
>But if Finland joins NATO, Sweden either must yield to RU or join NATO itself.
Why? Russia has made no mention of any issues with Sweden. And in this scenario, the only reason Finland would find themselves in conflict is if they joined NATO. Not saying that is a valid reason for Russia to go on the offensive, but it is a well known and documented policy.
> It's possible that Russia swallows their joining NATO, as it did with the two rounds of NATO expansion in the past (former Warsaw pact, then Baltics). It's also possible that Russia sees that as an existential threat, as it did in the case of the announced third NATO expansion (Georgia and Ukraine).
Russia has no real choice this time, they have already shown that there military is both weak and ineffectual. Either Finland or Sweden would absolutely crush the Russian military in their own countries.
> Finland in NATO is sad, but at least it's not immediately dangerous, as Fins are unlikely to be willing to pose as human shields for the US military infrastructure.
How is Finland in NATO sad?, Finland has joined the largest defensive military alliance in the world, and they clearly felt as a country that had been invaded by the USSR in the past that they needed more protections.
Russia won't even breathe in the direction of Finland now, because Russia cannot handle NATO and Russia knows it.
> Finland should have applied for NATO 10 years ago or in 10 years, not now with the tense situation.
10 years ago, it was reasonable to believe that Russia would never invade a neighboring country, so joining NATO wasn't seen as necessary or preferable to maintaining neutrality.
10 years in the future, based on what we're seeing now, Russia may have already invaded/attacked Finland and it would be too late to join NATO.
> Finland joining NATO benefits the military-industrial complex immensely. There are HUGE profits to be made in the effort required to get NATO and Finnish military standards aligned.
Those profits have already been made, because both Finnish and Swedish military standards have been NATO-aligned for decades already.
Maybe you'd have a somewhat more sane perception of the world if you actually knew anything about it.
> Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.
Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.
> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.
I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.
You can add Norway and probably Denmark to that list. With Finland and Sweden in Nato, all of Scandinavia becomes significantly more defendable. This would enable all Scandinavian countries to combine their defensive efforts, and would it make it extremely hard for Russia to attack any individual country.
And keep in mind that Stoltenberg is Norwegian....
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