On the issue of NATO, it is hard to imagine how Putin’s war strategy could have been more counterproductive.
Which NATO country shares the biggest land border with Russia? It’s now the newest member, Finland, which shares 832 miles of border with Russia. (At least for now, Finland is still the newest member of NATO; Sweden has an agreement in principle to join the alliance, but the deal isn’t official yet.)
Vladimir Putin’s war to prevent the expansion of NATO ended up creating a much, much longer shared border with the Western military alliance, with one part of the border about 200 miles from Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and the country’s largest port.
As you might expect, the Russian government is more than a little displeased about this development; Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, declared at a Russian defense-ministry meeting last week that “threats to the military security of the Russian Federation have multiplied in the western and northwestern strategic areas,” and that those threats “require a timely and adequate response.” Shoigu went on to call Finland’s new NATO membership “a serious destabilizing factor.” “On Finnish territory,” he continued, “it is likely that additional military contingents and NATO strike weapons will be deployed, capable of hitting critical targets in the north-west of Russia to a considerable depth.”
The Finns are not particularly worried about the Russian response. Finland’s foreign minister, Elina Valtonen, told the Financial Times this week, “We don’t really have any concern in relation to that. It’s pretty much expected. It has to be said that our border is pretty empty during the war that Russia is illegally waging against Ukraine.”
But Finland is likely to include U.S. troops in military exercises on its territory regularly in the future — metaphorically on Russia’s doorstep.
Finland is currently negotiating a new defense-cooperation agreement with the U.S., which would permit the presence of foreign troops on its territory for extended periods, specifically for conventional military exercises. This past winter, U.S. Marines belonging to Combat Logistics Battalion 6 based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., trained with the Finnish Navy’s Nyland Brigade, a unit that focuses on amphibious operations, in the lead-up to the Finnish-led exercise “Freezing Winds 22.”
When completed, the new agreement is expected to grant the U.S. military access to Finland for training, weapons storage, and equipment maintenance, including the potential use of airports, harbors, and designated training zones. Finland’s laws bar the storage of any nuclear weapons on its soil, but Finland is now participating in the NATO alliance’s nuclear-planning and support operations.
Russia invaded Ukraine for several reasons, including Putin’s deranged ambition to be a modern great czar, expanding an empire. But the Russian dictator no doubt believed that his brazen aggression would intimidate Europe and shake the NATO alliance; the expansion of NATO eastward, to include states that were former parts of the Soviet Union, enrages Putin. He may have even hoped that some Western capitals would start asking whether NATO membership was worth it.
While the outcome of the Russian invasion is still being written, on the issue of NATO, it is hard to imagine how Putin’s strategy could have been more counterproductive. Putin wanted to intimidate the West, and now he has U.S. Marines training on the Finnish Archipelago — with those operations slated to become a regularly occurring event for years to come. And with an estimated 300,000 Russian troops still bogged down in Ukraine, Russia just doesn’t have a lot of men to spare to beef up defenses and patrols along 800 miles of border.
We can only hope that Xi Jinping is noticing the hard lessons for Russia; a war aimed at preventing the expansion of NATO has directly led to the expansion of NATO. The looming question is whether there is a way to make clear to China that a war to conquer Taiwan would similarly backfire against China’s interests.