The foreign ministers of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) meet this Tuesday, April 4 at the headquarters of the Alliance, in Brussels. On the menu for their debates: preparation for the Vilnius summit in July, where the allies should decide on the acceleration of their defense spending. A major geopolitical change will thus be recorded against Russia when Finland formally joins the Atlantic Alliance on the same day.
It is this Tuesday morning that Turkey formally deposits its ratification of the “protocol of accession” to NATO of Finland. The latter will then be able to deposit its membership documents on its side, thus becoming the 31st member of the Atlantic Alliance. This will be symbolized by a ceremony in Brussels at 3:30 p.m. local time (1:30 p.m. in universal time). In the Belgian capital, the Finnish flag will be hoisted, the blue Scandinavian cross on a white background, explains our correspondent Pierre Benazet.
The symbol is largely that of the confrontation with the Kremlin, because this membership puts an end to Finnish neutrality, adopted in 1944 against the Soviet Union. The invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s assertion of geostrategic power, had the opposite effect to that which was intended: Russia now shares 1,340 kilometers of new borders with a NATO country, Finland now being covered by the mutual protection offered by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
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Finland has never neglected its military capabilities, despite its observed neutrality for the past 79 years. It has, across Europe, a substantial arsenal of some 1,500 artillery pieces, including around a hundred Leopard 2 tanks. It has around fifty F/A 18 Hornet fighter planes and has placed an order more than 60 F-35s. NATO will also be able to count on the country’s 19,000 soldiers and some 280,000 reservists.
For the Baltic countries, which have only a short land border of 65 kilometers with the allies to the south, this membership is a security guarantee. They will now have an alliance country on their northern border, just across the Baltic Sea, explains Juliette Gheerbrant of the RFI Europe service.
In the very north of the continent too, Finland within NATO is strengthening the defense of the Norway-Russia border, and more generally the weight of the transatlantic alliance in the Arctic region against the interests of Moscow but also of Beijing. Concretely, Finland already had strategic agreements with its Baltic neighbors and with NATO, but from now on, Helsinki will also benefit from the mutual assistance of the allies in the event of aggression, and from their nuclear deterrence.
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In the same logic, the allies have planned to discuss this Tuesday increased military spending in the long term, yet another geostrategic consequence of the invasion of Ukraine.