Barely a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland set aside decades of military independence and self-reliance and joined NATO.
That happened with breathtaking speed, as these things go, but gaining membership was perhaps the easy part. Now comes the complicated process of integration into the alliance and the demand for collective defense – with all the financial, legal and strategic hurdles that entails.
“Joining NATO is an expensive proposition, and supporting Ukraine is an expensive proposition, with no end in sight,” said Janne Kuusela, director general of defense policy at the Finnish Ministry of Defense.
NATO membership has long been considered a cheap advantage, given the US nuclear umbrella and the principle of collective defense. But NATO also imposes extensive demands on its members – not just spending targets for the military, but specific requirements from each country for certain capabilities, armaments, troop strengths and infrastructure as defined by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
Achieving that will require some difficult and costly decisions by government and military officials as they learn to think strategically beyond Finland’s borders and adapt their armed forces and capabilities to the needs of the alliance.
They will have to decide how to move troops and equipment to Norway, Sweden or the Baltic states if, for example, they need reinforcements, or participate in other NATO tasks such as patrols in Kosovo or the Mediterranean.
At the same time, Finnish officials and analysts say Finland will not change its intention to defend every inch of its own territory, given its 1,330-kilometer border with Russia, a doctrine considered old-fashioned in the era of modern warfare. The country still considers itself capable of self-defense for the time being, so unlike many of the NATO countries bordering Russia, Finland is considered unlikely to request a rotating presence of allied forces.
“The entire security and foreign policy establishment believes that such troops are not needed now, but it is not a categorical no,” said Matti Pesu of the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, a research institution.
At the same time, the country is negotiating a bilateral defense cooperation agreement with the United States, the kind of agreement Washington has with many countries around the world, which would make joint exercises easier to plan and faster to execute. It will be discussed what kind of US troop presence Finland would allow and where, and what kind of equipment NATO’s most powerful country might bring to Finland for exercises or preparations. The agreement also addresses issues of judicial jurisdiction if U.S. forces commit a crime.
The negotiations are complicated, Elina Valtonen, Finland’s foreign minister, said in an interview. Given its history of fending off Russian attacks, she said, Finland is protecting its sovereignty.
“It is of course a matter of balance, however you can defend your sovereignty against an aggressive and unpredictable neighbor, who does not respect the same values as we do with our friends and allies,” she said. “But Finland is a country where we generally like to have agreements, we like treaties, we are very legalistic.”
Finland’s relationship with the United States is considered as important as that with the larger alliance, especially given the U.S. nuclear deterrent that protects all NATO members. Finnish law prohibits the import or storage of nuclear weapons on its territory. But Finland will have to decide on its nuclear deterrent policy and on the nature of its involvement in shaping NATO’s nuclear policy.
Relations with neighboring Russia have also inevitably changed. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, it demanded a rollback of NATO borders and warned Finland against membership. But the invasion caused a rapid shift in Finnish public opinion. Support for membership rose from about a quarter of the population before the invasion to over 80 percent.
The initial Russian reaction to Finland’s accession to NATO was muted, given Moscow’s preoccupation with Ukraine. And now that Russia has moved many of its forces from nearby Finland to Ukraine, few see an immediate threat.
But Finns see Russia as a permanent potential aggressor, and recent statements by Russian officials, perhaps aimed at changing popular Russian perceptions of Finland, have treated the country as “a member of a hostile alliance,” Pesu said.
As a kind of rearguard action, he said, Russia “wants to intimidate us and limit NATO’s presence and Finnish integration into the alliance.”
Russia is even dismantling monuments to Finnish war victims in Karelia, which it captured from Finland in World War II. This tribute had been established with Russian permission in a more cooperative time.
Much of the responsibility for integration with NATO lies with General Timo Kivinen, the commander of the Finnish Armed Forces. At its core, he said in an interview, is Article Three of the NATO Charter, “which underlines that the first priority in a country’s defense lies with the country itself.” For him it is as important as Article Five, which treats an attack on one Member State as an attack on all Member States.
He is familiar with the internal workings of NATO, as Finland has long been a partner country and is involved in NATO exercises; Several hundred NATO troops have been stationed in Finland almost continuously since April 2022. Even as a candidate member, Finland began the first phase of the alliance’s defense planning in July.
Now, as a full member, planning is more intensive, but much remains to be considered, he said, to align Finland’s defense plans with those of the larger alliance.
Article Five will demand more from Finland, General Kivinen said. “We must be able to contribute to NATO’s collective defense beyond Finland’s borders, and that is new,” he said. It will have an impact on the Finnish Armed Forces “as we continue to develop those deployable capabilities, those capability targets” that NATO is calling for, he added.
There are also other NATO missions, such as air policing outside Finland, naval task forces and possible participation in the multinational forces the alliance has deployed in other frontline countries. Finland will also have to decide which officers to supply to which NATO headquarters, and how it wants to influence alliance policy.
The war made Northern Europe and the Arctic more important to the security of the entire Alliance. So General Kivinen said it is also crucial that Sweden, a long-time defense partner of Finland, quickly joins NATO.
That would make alliance planning easier, especially in determining how best to defend the Arctic, the Baltic region and four of the five Nordic countries – Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark (Iceland is fifth). These four have already agreed to operate their approximately 250 fighter jets as a joint operational fleet and also to provide air policing for Iceland.
Then there is the question of where Finland fits in NATO’s three operational commands, which are responsible for different geographical areas. The five Scandinavian countries would prefer to be under the same command, governed from Norfolk, Virginia, which focuses on the navy and defends the Atlantic sea routes, the Scandinavian countries and the Arctic. The logic is that during a war, reinforcements are likely to come from the West, on the other side of the Atlantic.
But Norfolk is not yet fully operational. And given the war in Europe and the current threat from Russia, NATO has placed Finland under the Land-Oriented Command in Brunssum, Netherlands, which is charged with defending Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland and the Baltic countries. Finland hopes this is temporary, but so far integration is going smoothly, officials say.
Finland has already increased its defense budget, in part to pay for the purchase of F-35 fighter jets and new ships to better patrol the seas and hunt submarines. It pledges to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military, as NATO wishes.
Joining NATO will require significant cultural, political, legal and military changes, defense official Mr Kuusela said, and that will take years. But of all European countries, he said, Finland would be the last to underestimate the Russian threat in the long term.
Johanna Lemola reporting contributed.