Security policy NATO enlargement has never led to a serious international crisis, the expert recalls

Over 1,300 kilometers of the new NATO border with Russia, a fully NATO-compatible armed forces and a Russian offensive war in Ukraine.

The possible accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO can be seen in many ways as a precedent for which there is no good comparison between the nine previous enlargements of the military alliance, both in terms of candidate countries and international circumstances.

French expert in international security policy Francois Heisbourg recalls, however, that there is something in common in all the enlargements that are different in themselves: the Soviet Union or Russia have always protested against them, sometimes loudly and sometimes a little quieter. Nevertheless, all enlargements have finally taken place and there has been no serious international crisis.

“So kind of like the blockade of Berlin or the missile crisis in Cuba,” Heisbourg explains.

“Is this coming? [laajentumis]different from time to time, well it will be known for sure later. But clearly such a formula has existed, ”he continues.

Heisbourg was one of the authors of the Government’s report assessing the effects of Finland’s possible NATO membership in 2016 and has followed events in Finland ever since.

Finnish expert Henri Vanhanen highlights, as exceptional factors, international circumstances and discussions on security arrangements at the time of application.

“If Finland and Sweden join NATO with security assistance and a rapid process, it would in any case represent a change in the security of the applicant country before accession – even if it is not an article of security guarantees like the five,” Vanhanen writes in an e-mail.

According to him, it will be interesting to see whether this is just a matter of flexibility because of the circumstances or whether this will continue to be the case for those aspiring to NATO.

Old man According to Finland and Sweden, it should also be noted that this would be a much larger geostrategic change from the perspective of NATO’s defense planning, for example, than in a couple of previous enlargements in the Balkans. The lengthening of the NATO-Russia border would change the current situation in Northern Europe, Vanhanen says.

Vanhanen, who has long worked as a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute, is currently on leave and works as a foreign policy expert for the Coalition Party’s parliamentary group.

Twelve the state was founded by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.

Since its inception, 18 countries have joined NATO in nine different enlargements, sometimes one by one, sometimes in larger clusters: 1952 (Turkey and Greece), 1955 (West Germany), 1982 (Spain), 1990 (former GDR states) 1999 (Poland, Hungary , Czech Republic), 2004 (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania), 2009 (Albania, Croatia), 2017 (Montenegro), 2020 (Northern Macedonia).

According to Heisbourg, the first enlargement to the eastern Mediterranean was barely controversial and the process went smoothly. The situation was different later in the 1950s for the Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany, because the wider issue of German rearmament after World War II was at stake.

“The Soviet opposition was, of course, furious, but it did not result in a major crisis. The countermeasure was the establishment of the Warsaw Pact, which was not insignificant, of course, but no one in the West tried to prevent it, ”Heisbourg says.

To Germany had to return after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany in 1990. The so-called In the 2 + 4 agreement The United Germany was allowed to join the alliances it wanted, allowing NATO membership to be extended to the new eastern states.

The agreement also guaranteed that no nuclear weapons or foreign NATO troops would be brought into the territory of the former GDR. This phase is seen as the starting point for Russia’s repeated claim that the West has promised that NATO will no longer expand further east. No such agreement is included in any agreement.

Spanish according to Heisbourg, joining NATO was not as interesting to the Russians as to Germany, but the process itself was quite special. Indeed, membership was negotiated and confirmed in 1982, but then in Spain the government changed and four years later in 1986 membership of NATO was subject to a referendum.

“Proponents of membership clearly won (by 57 to 43 percent), but no one knows what would have happened if the non-side won,” Heisbourg laughs.

In the 1990s, NATO began to consider the feasibility of possible further enlargement in good time before the accession processes of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. Some Member States, including the United States, feared that further enlargements would have a negative impact on the unity and solidarity of the Alliance and, of course, on relations with Russia.

Heisbourgin in particular, the United States was indecisive and in 1994 NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program was developed as a kind of substitute for membership.

However, the NATO report concluded that the new memberships would support democratic reforms in those countries and, more broadly, stability and security in the Euro-Atlantic area.

Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland (Visegrad countries) were invited to start accession negotiations in 1997. In the same year, NATO and Russia signed an agreement on mutual relations. agreement, which enshrines the right of all countries to decide independently on their own security solutions.

The Visegrad Troika was admitted to NATO in 1999. According to Heisbourg, the United States, which was reserved for enlargement, had deliberately kept the ground relatively small.

In the same year, 1999, the NATO Washington Summit established a special Membership Action Program (MAP) to help aspiring countries prepare for membership before the actual negotiations. This program was joined at that time by all seven countries of the former Eastern bloc, including the Baltic States, which began actual accession negotiations in 2002 and were accepted as members in 2004.

Old man recalls that the two NATO enlargements to the east mentioned above took place at a time when the threat of a major war had receded and Russia, on the other hand, had to focus on its internal problems. Thus, Russia’s desire to protest was more limited than later in the Balkans, although the accession of Montenegro and northern Macedonia to NATO was of much less geostrategic significance for Russia.

According to Heisbourg, from the point of view of the Finnish and Swedish NATO processes, it is worth remembering that the first enlargements had virtually no criteria other than those set out in Article 10 of the NATO Treaty: security in the region.

“I don’t think just anyone cared about the compatibility of the armed forces when Turkey and Greece joined NATO. It was not until the 1990s that more attention was paid to these issues, ”says Heisbourg.

According to him, many members of the US Congress opposed the ratification of the membership of the first Eastern Bloc countries in 1999, fearing that countries relying on Soviet equipment would only burden NATO.

Membership processes have lasted different lengths of time in NATO, depending on the circumstances or the countries themselves. The possible accessions of Finland and Sweden can be expected to be clearly at the fastest end, and the duration is not dictated by the obviously smooth negotiations but by the ratifications in the parliaments of the 30 member states.

Heisborg says he responded to those who asked about the duration of the ratifications that they should be over by January 2023. At that time, a new Congress will be convened in the United States after the by-elections, which could significantly slow down progress.

“Even if Congress is quite happy with the enlargement, there will be a lot of new people coming in and everyone will be most interested in the next presidential election,” Heisbourg explains.

Several Heisbourg, who has followed the security policy of Finland and Sweden for years, says he has so far assumed that the longest lasting phase of a possible membership process would not be ratifications but domestic political debate – especially in Sweden, because in NATO

“Apparently the Swedes have now decided that they do not want to lag behind the Finns, so the domestic debate is going fast in both countries,” Heisbourg says.