The Baltic Sea will become an “internal basin” of the NATO bloc after Finland and Sweden join the alliance, with every country bordering the sea barring Russia and its exclave of Kaliningrad to be part of the alliance, Polish President Andrzej Duda has boasted.
“The Baltic sea is essentially poised to become NATO’s internal basin. Two very powerful nations with a long and strong military tradition will become part of NATO soon, extending the Russia-NATO border by 1,400 kilometers, which is no doubt bad news for Russian authorities,” Duda said during a meeting of Poland’s security council on Monday.
Expressing hope that Finland and Sweden are accepted quickly and that their membership is ratified by NATO’s 30 members, Duda stressed that there was “no need for an explanation on how important this decision is for us.”
Late last week, Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko called the push to incorporate the pair of Nordic countries into the Western alliance “one of the saddest episodes in the evolution” of Europe’s security architecture, and warned that Moscow will be forced to beef up its defenses to compensate for new threats.
“This will severely worsen the military situation in the Baltic Sea region, which, as a result of NATO’s expansion…would be turned into an arena if not of military confrontation, then completely unnecessary military rivalry,” Grushko said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last Wednesday that although Moscow does not have the same type of “problems with Sweden and Finland” as it does with Ukraine, the two countries “should plainly and clearly realize that [while] there were no threats before, now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, [Russia] will have to respond in a mirror fashion.”
Finland and Sweden completed accession talks at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday, with the bloc indicating in a statement that “both countries formally confirmed their willingness and ability to meet the political, legal and military obligations and commitments of NATO membership.” Allies are due to sign accession protocols on Tuesday, after which they will go out to all 30 member countries for ratification.
The pair of Nordic nations broke with generations of neutrality by announcing their bids for NATO membership this spring after Russia began its military operation in Ukraine. Until now, Sweden had maintained strict bloc neutrality since the 19th century, and has not taken part in any large-scale war in Europe since 1814. Finland became neutral at the start of the Cold War, and continued this policy for decades after 1991.
The countries’ neutrality did not prevent them from leaning in NATO’s direction after the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern bloc. They joined the Western alliance’s ‘Partnership for Peace’ program in 1994, and took part in the US-led occupation of Afghanistan, as well as 'peacekeeping' operations in the Serbian breakaway region of Kosovo after 1999. Both countries’ armies, navies and air forces also regularly take part in NATO-led military exercises in the region.
The planned incorporation of Finland and Sweden into NATO is the latest round of the bloc’s eastward push. Since 1990 and Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch east” promise to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, the Western bloc has undergone three major waves of eastward expansion, swallowing up the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1999, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic states in 2004, and Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia between 2009 and 2020. After Finland and Sweden’s accession, there will be just nine countries in Europe, Russia included, that are not part of the US-led North Atlantic alliance.