One of the many claims President Putin made in his attempt to justify his illegal invasion of Ukraine is that the “special military operation” was an effort to stop NATO encroachment on the Russian border. Looking past the completely false notion that Ukraine was on the verge of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Putin’s war has had the exact opposite effect as hoped by the Russians. The aggression Russia has displayed to its neighbour has woken Europe up to the sobering fact that the European continent is not as safe from large scale war as many hoped. This has galvanised NATO around its founding principle, presenting an issue for Russia’s national defence, they’ve forced the hand of Ukraine’s other neighbours relaying on neutrality for their national security.
Despite delays from Turkey, due to objections based upon apparent disrespect of the Koran in Swedish protests, Finland’s application to join NATO has been finalised on the 5th of July, making it the 31st member. Finland’s assent was permitted by the Turkish president after it dropped its commitment to join in conjunction with Sweden, gaining consent a week before from all members. The move had been met with delight from most western allies. Jen Stoltenberg, head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, hailed it as “a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security and for NATO as a whole”.
Such a massive shift in Finland’s foreign policy marks the end of almost 80 years of neutrality and a general shift across the continent. Sweden in its application to join NATO, which is still being opposed by Turkey, ends a policy of neutrality stretching back to the end of the Napoleonic war. The famously neutral Switzerland is currently attempting to find a legal basis to override their various legal obligations to neutrality in order to send military support to Ukraine.
This is unsurprisingly a massive blow to the Kremlin. Not only does it increase Russian borders with NATO by almost 830 miles or 1340 km, it also poses a direct challenge to President Putin himself. The security infrastructure he calls the Russian state, is becoming increasingly restless at his inability to project power across Europe and at home. With the vast majority of his forces committed to the Ukrainian theatre, there is no obvious way that President Putin can plug the holes in his invasion force on top of manning this new massive border with his passive arch villain.
The irony of this issue is that by using the expansion of NATO as justification of force against a neighbour, he has fed into the very expansion he fears. Despite what Putin claims, the expansion of NATO since the cold war was not driven primarily by the west wanting to get closer to Russia but instead former client states of the Soviet Union wanting protection from an increasingly aggressive Russian federation. In other words, NATO’s expansion is a demand driven phenomenon, and Putin has just massively increased those demand pressures.
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