Finland, Sweden would boost NATO

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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The news that Finland and Sweden want to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a positive development for the alliance, the West and the U.S.

It's also a blow to Russia, as its Ukraine invasion continues to be a catastrophic miscalculation bringing the very consequences Vladimir Putin sought to avoid.

It didn't have to reach this stage. Neither Helsinki nor Stockholm have any desire to attack Russia. Neither did Kyiv, of course, but Putin's unprovoked, immoral invasion of a sovereign nation has appropriately and predictably changed the perspective of Finns and Swedes. They now realize the necessity of the collective security of the Western alliance.

Each can see that Ukraine is an example of what can happen to a nation not protected by the pact. Had Ukraine been part of NATO, it's doubtful that Putin would have even considered invading the country and in effect declaring war on the world's most potent military alliance.

Both Nordic nations are already relatively integrated into NATO and ready to take on their alliance responsibilities. They're "as close to being in NATO without being in NATO," Elizabeth Shackelford, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told an editorial writer.

Now, instead of keeping Ukraine out of NATO — which, while certainly not imminent, is still possible — Putin and Russia could have a new NATO nation with an 810-mile border to the west.

While the additions of Finland and Sweden would be a military and morale force multiplier for the alliance, it does risk reinforcing Putin's message that Russia is under siege from the West. It isn't. NATO is intended to be a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. Any perceived siege is because no nation can be naive about Putin's intentions after the Ukraine invasion, let alone his previous annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine, Georgia and Syria.

"It's a major development because it's such a huge shift," Shackelford said. "It signifies most clearly that Russia has strategically failed. If President Putin claims that he started this war because of NATO expansion, well, he's getting the opposite of what he was pushing for."

The NATO expansion faces one internal hurdle, however: Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has threatened to veto Finland's and Sweden's entry because it accuses each country of harboring Kurds it considered part of a terror group. Ankara is also pressing for more arms sales from alliance members. While most Western diplomats believe these and other issues can be resolved, it needs to happen with dispatch, lest each remain vulnerable to Russian aggression, just as Ukraine was.