Finland set to join NATO after clearing final hurdle - What comes next?
2 min read 31 Mar 2023, 10:53 PM ISTFinland received the green light to join NATO when Turkiye ratified the Nordic country's membership late Thursday, becoming the last country in the 30-member Western military alliance to sign off.
PremiumFinland cleared the final hurdle before NATO entry this week, with Turkey ratifying itse membership on Friday. The European country had launched a 10-month campaign to join NATO soon after war broke out in Ukraine. The development will add an extra 1,300 kilometres to the alliance's land border with Russia and is also expected to bolster Sweden's hopes for entry into the military grouping.
The ratification comes less than two days before a parliamentary election in Finland. Prime Minister Sanna Marin's Social Democrats fight to secure a second term running the government, and currently remains locked in an extremely close race between three parties. Marin had played a prominent role - along with President Sauli Niinistö - in advocating for Finland's application to join NATO.
"Finland is now ready to join NATO. We look forward to welcoming Sweden to join us as soon as possible," read an update shared by President Sauli Niinistö following the ratification.
There are however a few more steps and proceedures that the country has to follow before it finally joins the 30 other NATO nations. Turkiye and Hungary - the final nations to ratify Finaland's membership will now dispatch acceptance letters to the US (which is the safekeeper of NATO). These letters will then be filed within the US State department archives and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will be notified that the conditions for inviting Finland to become a member were met. Following this, NATO will send a letter invite to Finland. The latter will in turn send a signed acceptance document to the US State Department.
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The inclusion of Finland within the US-led alliance will effectively double NATO's border with Russia. Coming against the backdrop of the Ukraine war, it will changes the military calculus from the Baltic region to the Arctic and also pose a challenge for NATO strategists.
Finland's membership could help NATO to dominate the Baltic Sea and alleviate longstanding concerns about how to protect Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from a possible attack by Russia. To the north, the alliance will also be able to defend the thin strip of Norwegian territory linking to Russia with greater ease.
Concerns however remain over the 65-kilometre Suwalki Gap between the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus, where a lightning strike could sever the Baltic allies from the rest of NATO.
It is pertinent to note here that Moscow had cited the need to stop further NATO expansion as one of the leading reasons for launching an invasion of Ukraine. As such, speculative reports have suggested that Moscow will not let the NATO expansion happen quietly. While its response has been more muted than expected, the Kremlin has pledged to bolster its forces close to the frontier in the coming years.
Last year, Putin had issued repeated warnings to Sweden and Finland, asserting that his country would respond ‘symmetrically’ to any deployments. The Russian foreign ministry had also dubbed the NATO offer a “destabilising" effort that will increase tensions in the region.
(With inputs from agencies)
