BERLIN — Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago came as a huge shock to Europeans. Accustomed to the 30 years of post-Cold War peace, they imagined European security would be built alongside a more democratic Russia, not rebuilt against a revisionist imperial war machine.
There was no greater shock than Finland, with its long border and historical tension with Russia, and Sweden, which had disbanded 90% of its army and 70% of its air force and navy in the years after collapse of the Soviet Union.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to try to destroy a dominant neighbor, both Finland and Sweden quickly decided to apply to join the NATO alliance, the only clear guarantee of collective defense against a newly aggressive and reckless Russia.
With Finland having joined last year and the Hungarian parliament finally approving Sweden’s application on Monday, Mr Putin now faces an enlarged NATO with incentives, one that no longer dreams of a permanent peace.
As NATO countries dread the possibility that the unpredictable Donald J. With Trump, no fan of the alliance, becoming president of the US again, its European members are taking steps to ensure their own defense.
Critics see their actions as too slow and too small, but NATO is spending more money on defense, building more tanks, artillery shells, drones and fighter jets, stationing more troops on Russia’s borders and authorizing more serious military plans for any potential war — while pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine’s efforts to moderate Russia’s ambitions.
The reason is absolute deterrence. Some member states are already suggesting that if Mr. Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will test NATO’s collective will over the next three to five years.
If Mr. Trump is elected and seriously questions the United States’ commitment to defend NATO allies, “that could tip the scales for Putin to test NATO’s resolve,” said Robert Dalsjo, director of studies at the Swedish Defense Agency. Research.
Even now, Mr. Dalsjo said, Mr. Trump or not, Europe must prepare for at least a generation of increased European containment and deterrence of a militarizing Russia, and where Mr. Putin clearly “has significant public support for aggressive revanchism of. “
However, with Hungary finally voting for Sweden to join NATO, the pieces are finally falling into place for a sharply enhanced NATO deterrent in the Baltic and North Seas, with greater protection for front-line states Finland, the Norway and the Baltic countries. border with Russia.
Once Hungary delivers a letter certifying parliamentary approval to the US State Department, Sweden will become NATO’s 32nd member and all countries surrounding the Baltic Sea, with the exception of Russia, will be part of the alliance.
“Sweden brings predictability, removing any uncertainty about how we would act in a crisis or a war,” Mr Dalsjo said. Given Sweden’s geography, including Gotland, the island that helps control entry to the Baltic Sea, joining “will make defense and deterrence much easier,” he said.
It was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago that prompted Finland to decide to join NATO, and Helsinki enticed a somewhat more reluctant Sweden to apply for membership as well.
Finland, with its long border with Russia, saw the most immediate danger. So did the Swedes, but they were also convinced, especially on the political left, by a sense of moral outrage that Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, would seek to destroy a peaceful, sovereign neighbor.
“Overall the feeling is that we will be safer,” said Anna Wieslander, a Swede who is director for Northern Europe for the Atlantic Council.
History also mattered, Mr Dalsjo said. “If Finland joined, it had to — we couldn’t become a wall between Finland and its auxiliaries in the West once again,” as neutral Sweden had been during Finland’s brave but lost “Winter War” against the Soviet Union in 1939, when Finland had to cede about 11 percent of its territory to Moscow.
With Sweden and Finland together in NATO, it will be much easier to bottle up the Russian surface navy in the Baltic Sea and monitor the High North. Russia still has up to two-thirds of its second-strike nuclear weapons there, based on the Kola Peninsula.
So the new members will help provide enhanced monitoring of a critical part of the Russian military, said Niklas Granholm, deputy director of studies at the Defense Research Agency.
The Russian fleet in Kaliningrad, in the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, is just 200 miles away, as are the Iskander nuclear missiles. NATO planners have long worried about how the Baltic nations would support themselves if Russia occupied the 40-mile-long “Suwalki Gap” between Kaliningrad and Belarus, but Sweden’s position stretching across both the North and Baltic Seas would it made it much easier to send NATO reinforcements.
Of course, Russia will retain its land-based missiles, but its nuclear-armed submarines may find it more difficult to maneuver in the open sea without detection.
Sweden, with its own advanced high-tech defense industry, builds its own excellent fighter planes, naval corvettes and submarines designed to operate in the harsh environment of the Baltic Sea. It has already begun developing and building a new class of modern submarines and larger corvettes for coastal and air defense.
By joining NATO, it will now be easier to coordinate with Finland and Denmark, which also have key islands in the Baltic Sea, and with Norway.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stockholm decided that war was a thing of the past. She withdrew almost all her forces from Gotland and reduced the national army by about 90 percent and the navy and air force by about 70 percent.
Forces are slowly being restored, and spending on the military, which was close to 3 percent of GDP during the Cold War but has sunk to about 1 percent, will this year reach 2 percent, its current standard. NATO. “These investments will take time and we need to move faster,” Mr Granholm said.
Sweden may also join NATO’s multinational forward-enforced brigade in Latvia, with the aim of deploying allied troops to all alliance countries bordering Russia.
Sweden’s main tasks, Ms. Wieslander said, will be to help guard the Baltic Sea and the airspace over Kaliningrad. to ensure the security of Gothenburg, which is key to supply and reinforcement; and to serve as a staging area for US and NATO troops, with arrangements for the advance placement of equipment, ammunition, supplies and field hospitals.
For both Finland and Sweden, membership is the end of a long 30-year process of what Mr Dalsjo called “our big goodbye to neutrality”. First came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decision to join the European Union, which meant the abolition of neutrality for what both countries called “military non-alignment”.
Sweden, which had tacit defense guarantees from the United States, gradually became more overtly Atlanticist and increasingly integrated into NATO, he said. “And now we take the last step.”
Sweden will need to adapt its strategic culture to work within an alliance, Ms Wieslander said. “It will be a big difference for us and the allies will expect Sweden to show some leadership.”
Like Finland, Sweden will need to integrate its forces into NATO and develop new capabilities for collective defense rather than focusing solely on homeland defense.
“It’s a steep learning curve,” Mr Granholm said. “We still don’t have the full picture of NATO’s regional plans,” but now as a full member. “Then we have to sink our teeth into what NATO wants us to do and what we want to do. We do this to protect ourselves, after all.”
