Finland’s accession to NATO. It changes the military landscape from the Baltic to the Arctic

With its common border with Russia, which is one thousand three hundred and forty kilometers long, Finland has today become the thirty-first member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after a military non-alignment policy it adopted for three decades, which constitutes a strategic turning point resulting from the war in Ukraine. In a ceremony full of indications, the Scandinavian country will become a new member of the alliance on the anniversary of its founding on the fourth of April 1949, and after handing over the documents of accession to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, guardian of the founding treaty of the defense alliance, the Finnish flag will be raised in the main courtyard at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels at 1:00 GMT, between the flags of Estonia and France, in alphabetical order. Thirteen months after the start of the war in Ukraine, Finland’s accession to NATO indicates that the defense alliance led by the United States is doubling the length of its borders with Russia and changing the military landscape from the Baltics to the North Pole, and the new image of the alliance will be completed after Sweden’s accession to it. Finland had applied to join the alliance with Sweden in May 2022 after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, but its request faced obstacles due to Ankara’s opposition to Sweden’s accession, and Sweden’s request for Turkey’s ratification is still awaiting, due to several sticking points, including Ankara’s concerns because of what it describes as a lack of cooperation. In the field of combating terrorism, it is mentioned that all NATO countries must unanimously agree to the accession of the new countries, but after months of negotiations mediated by NATO, Turkey voted in favor of Finland’s accession to NATO last week. Ankara and Budapest are still obstructing Sweden’s accession to NATO, but NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg expressed his full confidence that Sweden will become a member of the alliance as well, and said that he will work for this step to happen as soon as possible, noting that the accession of the two Scandinavian countries to the alliance is an indication of The door of NATO will remain open, and he said that Ukraine will also become a member of the alliance. Western analysts believe that the war in Ukraine, which erupted against the background of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev over the latter’s quest to join NATO, had counterproductive results for Russia, which calls for NATO not to extend towards its borders, as it contributed to changing public opinion and prevailing trends in Finland and Sweden. , and the two countries came closer and closer to the idea of ​​​​joining the alliance, and the alliance had included, during the period between 2004 and 2009, countries from Eastern Europe, most of which were under the banner of the former Soviet Union, namely: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, which increased the number of its countries to thirty countries.