Ukraine invasion triggers NATO expansion as Finland, Sweden seek membership

Signalling the growing resolve across Europe to deal firmly with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two major Scandinavian countries, Finland and Sweden, approached the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) on Wednesday with formal requests to join the 30-member alliance.

If, as seems likely, NATO accepts their request, this will be the Atlantic Alliance’s biggest and most far-reaching expansion in two decades, adding over 800 miles to Russia’s northern border and greatly complicating its security calculus.

This is also an indicator of how much opinion in Europe has shifted against Russia since it invaded Ukraine. Finland’s parliament endorsed the proposal to join NATO by a majority of 188 to eight; and Sweden, which has been an isolationist for the last two centuries, now backs joining NATO, too.

Finland and Sweden’s admission into NATO, however, is required to be approved by the North Atlantic Council. Turkey has already signalled opposition over Sweden’s grant of asylum to Kurdish refugees. Italy, Greece and Spain are also ambivalent about NATO expansion.

The fortification

NATO was created with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington on April 4, 1949 by 12 western European and American countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Canada, to provide collective security against the resurgent Soviet Union and to combat the spread of communism. NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the US entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere.

At the broader strategic level, NATO was intended to serve three purposes: Deterring Soviet expansionism; combating the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent; and encouraging European political integration.
 

Article 3 of the Treaty called for the signatories to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack”. Article 5, arguably the most consequential clause, stated that “the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or America shall be considered an attack against them all,” and in such an event, each of them would exercise the right of individual or collective self-defence.

Article 9 began the process of giving the Alliance an organisational structure by establishing the North Atlantic Council (NAC) and calling for it to “set up such subsidiary bodies as may be necessary; in particular, it shall establish immediately a defence committee, which shall recommend measures for the implementation of Articles 3 and 5.”

As NATO set about developing an overall strategy for the Alliance, a key question hung over the use of nuclear weapons to defend the North Atlantic area. Most western military planners believed that NATO was greatly inferior in conventional military strength to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, which joined hands to form the Warsaw Pact.

Meanwhile, there was confidence in the US’s preeminence in the nuclear weapons field. These two beliefs slanted the development of NATO’s military strategy towards the use of nuclear weapons.

A key concern amongst NATO countries was the apprehension that the US might violate Article 5, and decide against coming to Europe’s assistance in the event of a Soviet Union attack. To provide assurances of US assistance, European powers insisted that the US station a “tripwire force” in Europe.

The “tripwire force” constituted a small US military contingent stationed in Europe to demonstrate American commitment to place its troops in harm’s way by militarily countering a massive Soviet Union attack.

In the event of an attack, the “tripwire force” would slow the Soviet advance for long enough to allow the US time to marshal additional resources. Since the “tripwire force” is too small to present an offensive threat, it can be deployed without triggering a “security dilemma” — a political science concept in which a state’s actions taken to increase its own security causes other states to react in a manner that decreases, rather than increases, the original state’s security.

High readiness to very high readiness

Up to when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, there were just a few thousand NATO troops in Europe. Since then, their number has risen to tens of thousands as relations with Russia have dramatically spiralled downwards. The 2014 NATO summit, in Wales, returned the grouping to its Cold War role of territorial defence.

Now NATO’s military presence has been sharply boosted. According to the Economist, the high-readiness NATO Response Force has been tripled in size to 40,000 and given more weaponry. This has been reinforced by another quick-reaction force, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, whose 5,000 ground troops supported by air, sea and special forces, can be deployed within 48 hours.

Additionally, NATO has agreed to deploy four multinational battalions — each with about 1,000 troops and commanded by the US, UK, Germany and Canada — in the three Baltic states and Poland.

Washington has promised to boost funding for the Pentagon’s European Reassurance Initiative to $3.4 billion next year. This fourfold expansion will be spent on increasing US forces and heavy weaponry in the region.