“This is a historic day. Sweden will now take its rightful place at NATO’s table, with an equal say in shaping NATO policies and decisions. After over 200 years of non-alignment, Sweden now enjoys the protection granted under Article 5, the ultimate guarantee of allies’ freedom and security,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a statement on Sweden’s entry into NATO.
Recently, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson visited Washington on the occasion of his country becoming the 32nd member of the Atlantic Alliance and held a press conference with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he justified his country joining NATO following Russia’s attack over Ukraine in February 2022. Both Finland and Sweden have maintained neutrality since the outbreak of the Cold War in 1945, till the time they had second thoughts and applied for membership in the US led Atlantic Alliance in 2022. Sweden remained neutral since the end of the Napoleonic war in 1815, and was not involved in either the first or the second World War. Along with Finland, it decided not to be part of a Cold War and proclaimed neutrality till the time the two Nordic countries applied to join NATO in 2022.
Does it mean that the legacy of the Cold War still haunts Europe? Does the inclusion of Sweden and Finland in NATO mean that the demise of the Soviet Union failed to mitigate the security threats that prompted the formation of NATO on April 4, 1949?
Many rightfully claim that the replacement of the Soviet threat with the Russian peril was one way that the West was able to sustain the threat perception in order to justify the continued militarization of Europe.
The justification for NATO in the post-Cold War era grew muted with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which was formed as a reaction to the Atlantic Alliance in 1955 under Soviet leadership.
Out of 32 members of NATO, two are from North America - Canada and the United States, and the remaining 30 are from Europe, which means that the Atlantic Alliance has expanded enormously since it was formed in April 1949. Ironically, the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, but NATO, which was a reflection of the antagonism between the Soviet and Western blocs, continued to strengthen with each passing year.
The justification for NATO in the post-Cold War era grew muted with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which was formed as a reaction to the Atlantic Alliance in 1955 under Soviet leadership. It was argued by critics that when Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, what was the justification for NATO’s existence and its expansion? With the joining of Sweden and Finland in NATO’s fold, there are only two neutral states left in Europe - Austria and Switzerland. The surge of NATO from 12 members on April 4, 1949 to 32 in 2024 reflects how cognizant Europe is about ‘threat perception.’ First, in the form of communist Soviet Union, and after the end of the Cold War, terrorism and then later the resurgence of Russian military adventurism, which got an impetus with Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, and Putin’s endeavors to strengthen security ties with former Soviet republics like Belarus, Moldova and the Central Asian states. The way in which Russia reemerged as a threat to the West under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin prompted the expansion of NATO.
The Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed that Russia’s red line was further expansion of NATO, with an emphasis on the announcement that the inclusion of former members of the Warsaw Pact would be massively counterproductive. Ukraine, from where the state of Russia emerged in the 10th century, seeking to join the Atlantic Alliance was shocking for Moscow. The Russian occupation of Crimea on February 27, 2014 led to a sharp reaction by the United States and its NATO allies, which prompted the exclusion of Russia from the G8 and the imposition of sanctions against Moscow.
Many rightfully claim that the replacement of the Soviet threat with the Russian peril was one way that the West was able to sustain the threat perception in order to justify the continued militarization of Europe.
When it became evident for Russia that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was planning to join NATO, Moscow’s patience ran out, and it attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022. That war is still ongoing, having caused hundreds and thousands of deaths on both sides of the conflict. Russia has thus far only managed to separate a part of Russian speaking eastern Ukraine from Kiev. Fears of NATO’s encirclement of Russia deepened when Ukraine established security and strategic ties with the West, and got billions of dollars of military assistance to combat the Russian invasion. The joining of Finland and Sweden, the two traditionally neutral states of Europe, confirmed Moscow’s fear that NATO wants to encircle Russia even further.
Security polarization in Europe will intensify with NATO’s expansion, with shrinking space for neutrality in the NATO-Russian security conflict. It would have been better for Sweden and Finland not to abandon their neutrality by not becoming a part of the growing NATO-Russia schism. There was no strategic need on the part of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic alliance, because Russia’s focus was to prevent Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics from joining NATO. Moscow had no aggressive designs against Finland and Sweden.
According to Jonathan Masters, writing for Council of Foreign Relations in June 2022: “Finnish and Swedish membership is expected to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank and its collective defenses in northern Europe. Perhaps the most significant impact would be the stretching of NATO’s border with Russia. Bringing in Finland would more than double the length, adding roughly 800 miles of frontier. And Finland and Sweden together would vastly expand the alliance’s presence in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic Circle.” For centuries, Europe and Japan pursued a policy to contain Russia in the Pacific, Black and Baltic Seas. Now, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the encirclement of Russia along the Baltic Sea and the Artic circle will have been fully realized.
Against one country - Russia - there is an alliance of 32 countries which is both ironic and surprising in today’s world.
After Finland and Sweden abandoned their neutrality, the two remaining neutral states of Europe, Austria and Switzerland will be approached by the US to follow the example of the two Nordic countries and join NATO. It is beyond one’s imagination why, even after the end of the Cold War, the United States wants to sustain an environment of ‘threat perception’ in Europe, particularly when there is no counter alliance to NATO, like the Warsaw Pact which ceased to exist in 1991. The West and NATO grossly overestimated Putin’s ambitions, akin to the former Soviet Union, when the threat of Communism in Europe loomed large. Presently, there is no such threat and the very rationale of enlarging and expanding NATO, with a view to balancing against Russia, does not make sense. Sweden and Finland certainly overestimated the implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a justification for their membership.
The politics of alliances which has been the cornerstone of American foreign policy since the days of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles seems to have become an integral part of the Western mindset, and NATO has emerged primarily as an anti-Russian alliance. Against one country - Russia - there is an alliance of 32 countries which is both ironic and surprising in today’s world.
Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO has given a new shape to the phenomenon of deterrence, which means that it will now extend to the Arctic circle and to the Baltic region against Russia. The revival of the alliance system during the Cold War led to the formation of the Baghdad Pact, later renamed as the Central Treaty Organization, covering West Asia, and the South East Asian Treaty Organization against Communist Soviet Union and Communist China. Such a system may be revived, not on ideological grounds, but inspired by real politik concerns, with a focus on containing Russia and China.
By augmenting the threat perception that is exclusively focused on Russia and China, the West will open a Pandora’s box and plunge the world into a new Cold War.
Following the inclusion of Finland and Sweden in NATO, one can expect the expansion of security alliances in the Asia-Pacific region by including India, some of the ASEAN member countries, and the likes of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, in a new security architecture led by the United States.
Plunging the world into a new Cold War seems to be the West’s strategic mindset at the moment, so as to justify colossal military expenditures and an arms race. While the world has not fully expunged the legacy of Cold War, plunging it into another rivalry will only serve to further destabilize the global order.
It is yet to be seen how Russia and China will ultimately react to the expansion of NATO with the inclusion of Finland and Sweden in the Atlantic Alliance. But one thing is certain, by augmenting the threat perception that is exclusively focused on Russia and China, the West will open a Pandora’s box and plunge the world into a new Cold War. When the world is still grappling with the legacy of the original Cold War, it cannot afford to be gripped by another global great power rivalry.