EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — “Mirror, mirror on the wall—who’s the fairest one of all?” is the famous misquote from the movie Snow White. Speaking at a press conference in Helsinki on May 11, a visibly angry Finnish President Sauli Niinisto responded to a reporter’s question about possible Russian reaction to a decision by Finland to join NATO saying “My response is that you caused this. Look in the mirror.”
Niinisto was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Putin’s decision to order Russia to invade neutral Ukraine on February 24. In the past week, both Sweden and Finland—countries that were neutral throughout the Cold War—announced their decision to apply for membership in NATO. It’s a momentous decision.
If either Putin, the circle of military and intelligence officials keeping him in power, or the people of the Russian Federation were capable of self-reflection, they would realize the disastrous and delusional course of action their president has taken since his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2008 that has—however improbable it might have seemed fifteen years ago—resulted in the further eastward expansion of NATO and again this time, to the land border with the Russian Federation. So, what will come next and how will Russia respond?
Sweden and Finland are free, democratic, and prosperous countries with capable military forces. Finland has a land border with Russia of about 830 miles. Sweden and Finland are both important economic and military powers in the Baltic Sea region. Combined, the countries have a population of about 16 million and GDP of over $800 billion which is nearly half that of the Russian Federation (Russia has an estimated population of 145 million and GDP of $1,709 trillion—which is estimated to contract by over 10% this year).
Finnish President Niinisto is thought by many to have been one of the few European leaders since the departure of Former Chancellor Angela Merkel, who communicated frequently with Putin. Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Anderson represents the Swedish Social Democratic Party which has long supported Swedish neutrality and includes powerful anti-war and anti-NATO elements.
Along with Finland, and in addition to applying for NATO membership, Sweden has signed a mutual defense treaty with the United Kingdom. Expect similar defense commitments from the U.S. as President Joe Biden, who met with leaders from both countries in Washinton this week, said, “Having two new NATO members in the high north will enhance the security of our alliance and deepen our security cooperation across the board.” We are also likely to see some form of deployment of British and US forces to Sweden and Finland in the near term until the NATO membership process is complete and Sweden and Finland qualify for Article V protection.
President Putin said on May 16 that the expansion of NATO “will definitely provoke a response. We’ll see what it’s going to be like depending on the threats this would pose to us.” Russia has previously threatened to deploy nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea if Sweden or Finland were to join NATO and there are recent reports of the movement of Russian tactical nuclear weapons to areas near the Russian-Finnish border. (Many observers have assumed the Russians have had nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad for some time as the Iskandr missiles Russia has deployed there are nuclear-capable). Russia has also cut off some electricity supply to Finland over the past week allegedly for non-payment but more likely an attempt to intimidate Finland from applying for NATO membership. As with nearly all of Putin’s efforts at strategic genius since 2008, the effort failed.
It is perhaps useful to reflect on Russia’s principal “security guarantee” demands which preceded Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: 1) no further eastward expansion of NATO (clearly not achieved), 2) no military bases in the territories of the former USSR that are not NATO members or use of their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them (not achieved), 3) no deployment of military forces or weaponry on the territory of any other states in Europe beyond what was stationed there in May 1997 (clearly not achieved). Moreover, Putin has brought NATO together in a way few could have imagined following the perceived decline of the alliance only a couple of years ago. He has united Europe, the United States, and many other countries in a significant package of economic, financial, political, social/cultural sanctions many would have thought impossible to achieve. Putin has put Europe on an irreversible path toward independence from Russian energy thereby depriving Russia of a significant stream of revenue that will become more consequential over time. Perhaps more significantly, Putin has destroyed the myth of Russian military power. The performance of the Russian military has been worse than third rate and amateurish—except in the commission of war crimes and looting where Russian forces sadly have “overachieved.” Lastly, Putin has helped create a unified and proud Ukraine and has produced a deep enmity between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples that will last generations. Putin has shown Russia to be what we all long suspected, a gas station with nuclear weapons.
Much of the world will soon stop using the gas station, further decreasing Russia’s relevance on the world stage. As the gas station’s leverage declines and with his conventional military capability completely discredited, the West should be messaging Putin in clear terms that the use of weapons of mass destruction in any form in the Ukraine or elsewhere, will be met with a swift proportionate or symmetrical response. Putin and his generals should have no illusion about the cost of escalation to that level.
This is the time for the West to broaden the front against Putin’s Russia. An initial step might be the re-examination of the Republic of Georgia’s application for NATO membership and giving Georgia the tools it needs to deal with the corrupt Russian statelets of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. NATO should initiate discussions with Azerbaijan about a deeper relationship. Closer to the conflict in Ukraine, NATO should discuss deeper ties with Moldova, where there has already been a cooperative relationship since 1992. Moldova has had part of its territory, Transnistria, “occupied” by Russia since the collapse of the USSR.
This is the time for the developed world to press harder to remove Putin and his kleptocracy from the pages of history. The first step is to ensure Ukraine continues to get the military and financial tools to win the war with Russia, recapture the Donets and Luhansk “People’s Republics” and arrest their leaders and hold them accountable for their crimes. Similarly, we should begin the process of compiling a list of the leadership of the Russian Federation to be held accountable for the crime of the invasion of Ukraine and the destruction and war crimes already committed. That list should be presented to the United Nations. It should be obvious now to all that there can be no return to the status quo ante.
The People of the Russian Federation need to hold those leaders accountable and take immediate steps to return the Russian Federation to the family of nations, but I fear the mirror on the wall is cracked and the criminal in the Kremlin will be allowed to continue to destroy the very people and country he described in his July 2021 essay, as an inseparable part of Russia.
The West won the Cold War and, despite the complaints of Putin and his ilk, Russia was treated generously and more than fairly in the aftermath—especially considering the amount of misery the Soviets inflicted first on the Russian people and then the rest of the world for the better part of a century. But now, Putin has taken Russia too far and there needs to be a reckoning or the cancer that Putin now represents will only get worse. Let Putin enjoy his victory survey of Mariupol for the moment in the magic mirror, but that mirror will also show the flags of Sweden and Finland joining those of the 30 other members of the alliance.
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