[…] The case for Finland is especially problematic. Washington should withhold its support, at least until existing European allies make a convincing case that they will bear any added burden. The United States can have good and mutually beneficial relations with Finland without threatening nuclear annihilation of Russians—the core promise on which NATO runs—on its behalf. Nor does it leave Finland very insecure: Finland’s long-time neutrality has been a great security success, and it is still safe.
These considerations should at least be heatedly debated in the thirty NATO states whose unanimity is required to admit new members. Citizens of these countries, mostly vibrant democracies, have a say in who they agree to potentially fight to defend. Instead of honoring that democratic reality, or even cynically genuflecting to it, U.S. and NATO leaders simply assert that the alliance will support the new applicants’ membership. NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg declared ex cathedra that Finland’s accession will be “smooth and swift.”
It perhaps shouldn’t be surprising that Stoltenberg, a Norwegian, is so aggressively pushing for NATO to expand to Finland and perhaps Sweden. One enduring reality of NATO is that frontline states have always energetically supported pushing NATO’s border further away to a new frontline state. But the secretary-general doesn’t get a vote. The fact that he thinks the decision is up to him is a sign of NATO’s isolation from the publics whose labor allows it to exist. Läs artikel