When a pro-NATO group in Finland began circulating a petition last week demanding a referendum on whether the traditionally non-aligned country should join the U.S.-led transatlantic defense alliance, the response was overwhelming.
The 50,000 signatures required to prompt a referendum debate in parliament were obtained in a matter of hours in a country of only 5.5 million.
The referendum fervor was reflected in a poll released Monday by Finland’s state broadcaster Yle. For the first time in decades of asking Finns the same question, a majority of those polled – 53% – said they favored joining NATO. Just a month ago the Helsingen Sanomat newspaper put that number at less than 30%.
What caused what former Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb called a “historic shift”?
In a word, Russia.
“It’s quite straightforward, actually. It’s the Russian aggression on Ukraine that’s behind this,” says Hanna Ojanen, an expert in European security integration at Finland’s University of Tampere.
“People already worried about [Russia] abstractly, and placed it somewhere among Finland’s many threats,” she says. But now, with Ukraine standing alone against its powerful neighbor, “people understand what it means even if you do have a strong partnership with NATO but are not a member,” she adds. “There will be no NATO troops coming to defend you.”
The surging interest in NATO among Finns is just one example of how Russian President Vladimir Putin may be getting the opposite of the retreat of NATO and the weakening of European and transatlantic unity that had appeared to be central aims of his war on Ukraine.
Mr. Putin has worked for years to undermine Europe’s collective institutions, especially NATO but also the European Union. Both have expanded eastward as Central and Eastern European countries increasingly looked westward for models of security and prosperity – as well as values like democracy, civil liberties, and human rights.
EU: Ukraine is “one of us”
But by unleashing a war and invading a sovereign state in the middle of Europe, Mr. Putin is accomplishing the opposite. Not only is NATO expansion on the table in a way it hasn’t been in years, but also the usually slow-moving and bureaucratic EU is showing new vigor: extending $500 million in military assistance to Ukraine in what is a first to a fellow European nation.
Sounding almost as if she were addressing Mr. Putin directly, the EU’s chief executive, Ursula von der Leyen, described Ukraine in a speech last week as “one of us, and we want them in the European Union.”
For many officials and regional experts, Mr. Putin has “miscalculated” and is unwittingly uniting Europe and solidifying transatlantic ties.
“This war has essentially been undertaken by Russia to affect the trajectory of Ukraine and prevent it from moving farther and farther West,” says Rajan Menon, an expert in post-Soviet states and director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank promoting restraint in U.S. military engagement. “But from what we’re seeing from some European leaders and institutions, that may have backfired.”
Another voice in the “Putin miscalculated” chorus: President Joe Biden.
“Not only is NATO more unified, look what’s going on in terms of Finland, look at what’s going on in terms of Sweden, look what’s going on in other countries,” the president told social media influencer Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview last week.
Indeed Sweden is another case in point. Long an adherent of the idea that it was better off remaining outside any military alliances, Sweden is mirroring its close defense partner Finland and leaning increasingly toward seeking NATO membership.
Finland, Sweden at NATO gathering
In part to underscore the reinvigorated transatlantic ties, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels Friday, before moving on to planned stops in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe.
The State Department noted that the foreign ministers of Finland and Sweden would attend the NATO meeting. Finland, which shares an 800-mile-long border with Russia, fought two wars against the Soviet Union during World War II before declaring neutrality. Sweden remained neutral during World War II, and hasn’t been at war on its soil for more than 200 years.
Much of “the big shift” in Sweden’s thinking has come just in recent weeks, says Magnus Christiansson, an associate professor in defense strategy at the Swedish Defense University in Stockholm.
“The greatest driver of this is Vladimir Putin himself,” he says. “His intent is to make Swedes afraid of joining NATO, but the exact opposite is happening in public opinion.”
A poll published Friday by Aftonbladet newspaper showed that for the first time, a majority of Swedes favor NATO membership. Support for joining rose to 51%, up 9 points from a survey by the same pollster, Demoskop Institute, one month ago.
Other polls have found the biggest shift is among once-predominant “undecideds” who have swung in favor of NATO membership. And that can be directly attributed to Russia’s week-old assault on Ukraine, Dr. Christiansson says.
Swedes have long been content with the country’s outside-the-tent relationship with the transatlantic alliance, he says. But the war – and stepped-up Russian threats against Sweden, including the incursion Wednesday of four Russian fighter jets into Swedish airspace – is a reminder that comes at a cost.
“When events are taking everyone back to the guarantee of Article 5” – the NATO charter provision on members’ collective defense – “you realize just what the cost is of not being at the members’ table,” he says.
Perhaps most striking for Dr. Christiansson is how public opinion is percolating up and affecting the country’s political leadership. The governing Social Democrats have been “dead against” NATO membership, he says, “but over the last week we’ve been hearing Social Democrats saying, ‘We need to rethink our relationship with NATO.’ It’s amazing.”
“On the side of democracy”
While the Nordic swing favoring NATO membership may be largely a practical matter of national security, experts like Dr. Christiansson say underlying factors, such as a desire to uphold long-held principles and ideals like political freedoms, should not be discounted.
“What we’re seeing is the strengthening of a transatlantic unity that is based on the fundamental ideas at the root of our lifestyle,” he says. “Swedes really understand that the freedom and liberty we enjoy in Europe is very much dependent on our ties to the United States.”
Tampere University’s Dr. Ojanen says that the “very down-to-earth” Finnish people would normally see matters of defense “in very concrete terms.”
“Ideals would not be the first thing people in Finland would talk about,” she says. “But if it really came to a point where democracy was threatened, then it would have a huge impact. It becomes more important,” she adds, “to show if you are on the side of democracy or not.”
Indeed, it is the way Russia’s war in Ukraine has come to be seen as a threat to European democracy and freedom that is at the heart of the unprecedented actions from the EU – the economic and political community of which both Finland and Sweden are members.
“This is a watershed moment for the EU,” says Sven Biscop, director of the Europe and the World Program at Egmont Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels.
Noting the EU “has never faced a situation like this before,” he says the Ukraine war presents an opportunity for the EU to emerge as a key player safeguarding Europe’s security.
Citing Sunday’s decision by the EU to provide Ukraine with military aid, Dr. Biscop says the EU is showing it will fight back against Mr. Putin’s attacks on European institutions.
“There’s a realization that if you want to be a geopolitical player,” he says, “these are the kinds of things you are going to have to do.”