Vladimir Putin wanted less NATO? Bad luck: He gets more of it. And in the long run. The Ukraine war brings a heavy defeat for Russia. And it doesn’t matter how the unequal fight between David and Goliath ends. That may sound paradoxical. But it is not.
What is probably Putin’s greatest defeat is not taking place on the military but on the political battlefield. This circumstance alone shows how limited and short-sighted the criticism from the pacifist corner is that one should not fixate so much on the military.
The West doesn’t do that. He is currently giving diplomacy a huge opportunity, the geostrategic consequences of which can hardly be estimated. The admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO, not yet complete but almost certain, marks a major diplomatic victory.
Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.
Finland and Sweden were militarily neutral. They did not belong to any defense community, neither the Eastern Bloc nor the Western Bloc, i.e. NATO. Although Sweden was a western country during all the years of its military neutrality. This does not apply to Finland. For decades, the Finns’ reason of state was to refrain from doing anything that could anger the Russians. This went right into the school books.
In other words: For Finland, joining NATO is more than a military decision. Finland chooses freedom. The end of “Finlandization”, i.e. the unspoken dependence on Russia’s benevolence, means that we no longer have to be considerate in our thinking and speaking.
The Finnish border, which is a good 1,300 kilometers long, is still threatened by Russia. But now Russia is no longer threatening Finland alone. Instead, every Russian violation of the territorial integrity of its north-western neighbor violates NATO territory. From now on, Finland will no longer protect itself, but will be protected by the most powerful defense alliance in the world. From now on, in the near future, Finland will be under the nuclear umbrella of NATO.
Just like Sweden. And as so often, it is perhaps a blessing that a social democratic government is responsible for this paradigm shift in the state constitution of the Scandinavian country. What Sweden is doing right now, to illustrate it with a comparison, is certainly as much as the end of pacifism “turning point” that Olaf Scholz proclaimed for Germany.
Putin’s Net – How the KGB took back Russia and then set their sights on the West
It’s a profound change. In geostrategic terms, it means a great deal: in the Baltic Sea, only Königsberg, Kaliningrad and Petersburg will remain non-NATO territories. Everything else will soon be NATO territory: the Baltic States, Scandinavia, Poland, Germany. Politically, the Baltic Sea becomes a West Sea.
This will have immediate consequences, especially for the three Baltic countries. From now on you are no longer just behind NATO’s most vulnerable point, the Suwalki line between Poland and Lithuania, around which Russian transfers to Koenigsberg are processed. The Baltic States will soon be across from NATO territory. Which means: It is much easier to defend, in the case of a Russian attack, with shorter distances from the sea.
This northern expansion of NATO will remain, regardless of how the Ukraine war ends. Not a single scenario for an end to the asymmetric battle between the giant Russian Empire and Ukraine assumes that a north expansion will be reversed at the end of this war. Not even the otherwise snorting Russians are demanding this.
But this is not the only long-term geostrategic shift. The other two are also of great importance: in view of Russian aggressiveness, which is ideologically underpinned and thus structural imperialism, NATO is switching from enemy observation to forward defense. More troops are stationed: in the Baltic States, in Poland, in Slovakia, in Romania. And the air defenses are being strengthened – in Germany and Italy.
The border between NATO and the Russians is now more than a territorial delimitation – it is a demarcation line. It not only separates states, but systems at the same time: where Russia begins, freedom ends and authoritarian rule begins.
Poland is getting its own permanent military headquarters, announced its closest ally, the United States. US President Joe Biden is thus drawing the military conclusions from the growing importance of the Poles as a middle security force on the border to the Russian sphere of influence.
Finally, the US is back in Europe. Not that NATO is “obsolete”, as Donald Trump put it. All of its members see NATO as necessary as it was during the Cold War. And the United States is as indispensable as the leading Western power as it was before the end of the Iron Curtain. Without the US, Europe cannot be defended against the Russians.
Europe lacks the two crucial prerequisites for this: it does not have its own army. And it doesn’t have its own nuclear missiles. Unless this changes, Europe will remain dependent on the United States.
The anxious question, which is not only being asked behind the scenes at the Madrid NATO summit, is: What if Biden is not followed by Biden, but by Donald Trump? Or a US Republican of his America First mindset? That would be the greatest victory for the power man from Moscow. And the nightmare of Europe.
