The best guess has been that Turkey was going to drop its refusal to agree that Sweden and Finland should become members of NATO. That now appears to have happened, somewhat earlier, perhaps, than anticipated.
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said on Tuesday that Turkey has agreed to support Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership bids, removing a major hurdle to the two countries joining the alliance.
Niinistö said in a statement that a joint memorandum on the matter was signed by Turkey, Finland and Sweden on Tuesday in Madrid ahead of what is shaping up to be a critical summit.
The joint memorandum underscores the commitment of Finland, Sweden and Turkey “to extend their full support against threats to each other’s security,” Niinistö said.
“The concrete steps of our accession to NATO will be agreed by the NATO allies during the next two days, but that decision is now imminent,” he added.
This is good news (more details of what’s been agreed can be found here). Last month, NR argued that both countries should be welcomed into the Atlantic Alliance:
For reasons of geography alone (and they have more to contribute than that), they will bolster the defense of NATO’s exposed Baltic flank. As things currently stand, the Baltic states are linked to Poland, and thus the rest of NATO, by a narrow corridor (near the Polish city of Suwalki) that separates Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave from Moscow’s Belarusian client-state. Should Russia seal that “Suwalki gap,” the Balts would, for most practical purposes, be on their own.
Bringing Finland, just a few miles across the Baltic Sea from Estonia, into the alliance would go a long way to reducing the danger that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia could be cut off from their allies. It thus ought to reduce the danger that today’s less risk-averse Russia would be tempted to try its luck by “detaching” the Baltic trio and then daring the rest of the West to respond.
Since then, the argument in favor of accepting the Nordic duo has only increased. The war in Ukraine continues, and the euphoria that accompanied Ukraine’s early, welcome, and unexpectedly successful resistance has now been displaced by the realization that what lies ahead is (in all probability) either a relentless war of attrition or a “frozen” conflict that will be unlikely to remain frozen for very long. Neither outcome would be good for Ukraine, and it would be reckless to assume that the consequences could be confined within that country’s borders.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin recently made comments suggesting that Narva, a city in Estonia’s east (and by extension the rest of Estonia and most of Latvia), is, on his typically aggressive, typically inaccurate, reading of history, on Russian land. Trolling, to be sure, yes, but there’s trolling and trolling, and at some level those words were a reminder that Russia’s dictator is forever probing, always checking for weakness.
As if that were not enough, Russia and Lithuania are now at odds over a Lithuanian “blockade” of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, the north-eastern portion of the old (German) East Prussia, which was annexed by the Soviets at the end of the Second World War (the rest of East Prussia was handed to Poland). Once a contiguous part of the USSR, the Kaliningrad oblast (region), which has a population of around a million, is these days wedged between two EU and NATO members, Poland and Lithuania. Acting in compliance with EU sanctions on Russia, Lithuania is now refusing to allow certain Russia goods, including coal and certain metals, to be imported across its territory into the oblast (notably by rail: there is a connection that runs between Kaliningrad to Belarus, a Russian client state, and from there to “mainland” Russia).
The way that the EU sanctions affect the flow of goods between two parts of Russia was probably not properly thought through by Brussels. That said, their impact on the oblast should not be exaggerated, although, inevitably, it has been. Russia is threatening reprisals that “will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.” Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian leader, has described the Lithuanian move as “akin to a declaration of war.”
Whether and how this situation will be resolved remains unclear, but, along with Putin’s remarks about Narva, it is a reminder of the strategic value of the narrow land link between Lithuania (and, by extension the other Baltic states) and the rest of NATO, a link that will be rendered (somewhat) less valuable, and thus (somewhat) less tempting to Moscow should Finland and Sweden join NATO.
Admitting a new state to NATO requires the approval of all the alliance’s existing 30 member states. Given the internal politics of some of these, the sooner the formal approval process can be completed the better. So far (and some threatening displays aside), Putin has taken, by his standards, a relatively relaxed approach to the prospect of Finland and Sweden joining NATO, but that doesn’t mean that Moscow will pass on the opportunity for some mischief-making during the period in which their membership is, hopefully, finalized.