NATO’s leadership formally invited Sweden and Finland to become members of the military bloc on June 29 after Turkey’s president signaled that he wouldn’t block their bids.
“Today we have decided to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO, and agreed to sign Accession Protocols,” NATO said in a declaration following meetings in Madrid. “The accession of Finland and Sweden will make them safer, NATO stronger, and the Euro-Atlantic area more secure.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on June 28 said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wouldn’t block the two nations from joining the alliance if they met his demands. Earlier this year, both Sweden and Finland announced their intentions to join NATO after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
All 30 NATO members would have to sign off on allowing Finland and Sweden to join. Both countries are European Union members, and they likely meet most, if not all, of NATO’s requirements to enter the alliance.
Finland shares a lengthy land border with Russia, while Sweden shares a maritime border with Russia. For years, the Nordic nations have resisted joining the bloc even during periods of Soviet aggression. Norway, meanwhile, has been part of NATO since 1949 and is considered a co-founder of the alliance.
Ratification in allied parliaments is likely to take up to a year, but once that’s done, Finland and Sweden will be covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause, putting them under the United States’ protective nuclear umbrella.
Turkey’s Role
On June 28, Erdogan told reporters that he had spoken with President Joe Biden over the phone before leaving for Madrid, saying that Finland’s and Sweden’s applications would be considered.“The PKK will be on our agenda in my bilateral meetings,” he said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Marxist group that has been deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States, and many other countries.
The move, meanwhile, is sure to irk Russia even further. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long said that NATO isn’t merely defensive in nature and said the alliance has been attempting to expand eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Russian media this week that Sweden and Finland joining NATO would force Moscow to place more weapons along its border, including nuclear systems.
“In the event of such an expansion of NATO, the length of its land borders with Russia will more than double,” Medvedev said. “It’s not the best prospect for them to have our Iskanders, hypersonic missiles, warships with nuclear weapons on their doorstep.”
