While no action is imminent on Ukraine’s request—to which NATO allies in 2008 pledged that it would eventually become an alliance member—the embattled nation should be enrolled quickly, even before it’s accepted into the European Union (EU), several panelists stated during a four-hour Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) forum in Washington on April 5.
In June 2022, the European Commission recommended Ukraine be granted candidate status for accession to the 27-nation EU once seven conditions—all related to rule of law and corruption—were resolved.
“I believe what Vladimir Putin has done has set Ukraine on an irreversible course towards the European Union,” said German Marshall Fund President Heather Conley, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state. “I would think that NATO is a faster process than the EU and we know historically, typically, NATO has come first, before EU membership.”
“If a country is at war and it is a European country looking to EU and NATO, [there is] a clear way forward, which is the way the discussion needs to go,” said German Air Force Gen. and NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Chris Badia.
French Navy Vice Adm. Hervé Bléjean, director general of EU’s military staff and director of EU’s Ukraine Assistance Mission, agrees.
“There is a kind of feeling that we owe them something,” he said. “They are defending our common values, the next EU borders, the next NATO borders.”
While more than 50 nations are funneling military assistance to Ukraine, NATO’s direct support to Kyiv has been limited to nonlethal aid.
Ukraine requested “accelerated accession” to join NATO in September 2022, but some members are uncertain about enrolling it in the alliance while it’s engaged in a war with Russia.
“I have no doubt that Ukraine will become an EU full member,” Bléjean said, expressing a “personal view.”
“I cannot put a date on it, but I would bet it would happen sooner than expected.”
“It’s very, very difficult to see it now but at the end of this, we are going to have a Ukrainian military that is one of the highest in NATO interoperability and one of the highest-performance militaries in Europe,” Conley said.
“It will add value to the alliance so there are lots of reasons to think about this in a broader perspective.”
Not every member of NATO is in the EU, such as the United States and Canada. Not every EU nation is in NATO, such as Ireland, Austria, Cyprus, Malta, and, for now, Sweden.
“It is not a beauty contest in terms of NATO and EU,” Bléjean said, “but it is in the interest of NATO to have as many of the allied nations being part of the EU and vice versa.”
What Finland Brings
UK Rear Adm. Tim Woods, a defense attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, called Finland’s addition to NATO “fantastic news.”“Finland has a lot to teach us—they’ve been staring the Russians, and before that the Soviets, in the eye for a long time and evaluating that relationship carefully in applying a carefully balanced deterrence and not provoking” the Russians across their 830-mile common border.
Woods said Finnish armed forces “are hugely professional, well-drilled so, yeah, a much-welcome addition to NATO.”
“Sometimes the symbolism of an event in international affairs is as important as the fact of the event,” said John McLaughlin, a former acting and deputy director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
“Finland carries a symbolic meaning that exceeds the size of the country, or the fact that it has joined.”
Finland has “one of the strongest militaries now in the NATO alliance,” said U.S. Navy Adm. Christopher Grady, vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Its NATO admission will “create dilemmas for a potential adversary. I think it is pretty exciting. Congratulations to Finland and welcome aboard,” he said.
A former commander of the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, which operates in Europe and the Mediterranean, Grady said Finland gives NATO a 360-degree operational capacity ranging from North Africa to the Black Sea to the Arctic.
All agreed that Sweden’s request to join NATO will also be approved, despite objections from Turkey and, perhaps, from Hungary.
“We only hope Sweden follows suit in the near future,” Woods said, noting that, with Sweden and Finland in NATO’s fold, Russia’s ambitions in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic can be checked.
“What [Finland and Sweden] can teach us, what the Baltic states and Poland can teach us, is about total defense. And when push comes to shove, [Finland and Sweden] can mobilize very quickly every aspect of society,” he said. “You know, we can’t guarantee there won’t be another strategic miscalculation by Putin. So, we can mobilize very quickly in organizing to stop a further [Russian] invasion into Eastern Europe.”
The Baltic and Arctic
Grady called the Baltic “a very challenging operational environment” because much of it freezes for at least six weeks each winter and it’s a confined body of water that aircraft carriers and submarines avoid.“So we have to think differently about defense and differently about projecting power” in the Baltic, he said. “We can use 44 strike fighters coming off an aircraft carrier, that’s one way to do it from outside the Baltic. That’s doable.”
Finland’s, and hopefully Sweden’s, enrollment in the alliance “is a real advantage,” Grady said, and NATO’s “access to their bases” could change the dynamics in the Arctic as well.
“We really do have to just take this historic moment and say, ‘Wow,’” Conley said, noting Moldova is also considering seeking NATO admission.
“Yesterday was an amazing day where we now have a NATO ally that is strategic [in] commanding heights in the Arctic.”
Poland’s ambassador to the United States, Marek Magierowski, said, “Finland’s progression [into NATO] is also vital” for Europe’s energy security and in providing bases to counter Russia’s “Kaliningrad enclave,” a 5,000-square-mile area previously in Germany’s Prussia and northern Poland that the Soviets seized in World War II and continue to occupy.
Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg, is Russia’s only port on the Baltic that remains ice-free in winter and is “basically a huge military base or an unsinkable aircraft carrier” for the Russian military and “a threat to the whole region,” he said.
“Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1942, the ‘winter war.’ So they know, they remember—mentally and physically—how unpredictable Russia is as a neighbor,” Magierowski said.
Finland and Sweden joining NATO is yet another confirmation that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is backfiring, Woods said.
Before the invasion, “there was no mention of Finland or Sweden joining NATO. If you said in February of 2022, some 14 months later, that Finland would be a part of NATO, no one would have believed you.”
