FINLAND Having Second Thoughts about Joining NATO
The President of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, said today "Finland will not join NATO without Sweden." Looks like Finland is having second thoughts.
Sweden is having serious trouble when it comes to joining NATO. It seems the Swedes took-in a whole slew of Middle East Refugees years back and among them are people that the nation of Turkey feels are a terrorist threat: PKK. a.k.a. "Kurds."
Turkey is invading parts of Syria for the past two years, trying to clear all Kurds out of northern Syria along the Turkish border because Turkey perceives the Kurds and their political movement called "PKK" within Turkey, as a terrorist threat.
So Turkey will not vote to approve Sweden (or Finland) until those alleged "terrorists" are somehow purged from Sweden (and perhaps Finland).
In order for a country to join NATO, the vote by existing NATO members must be unanimous. If Turkey holds to its position, that it will not vote to admit Sweden (or Finland) then neither of those two countries will be able to join NATO.
Since Sweden seems to be in the most jeopardy from a Turkish "No" vote, the President of Finland took this opportunity to say "Finland will not join NATO without Sweden."
But his comment is likely not related AT ALL to Sweden. You see, it appears to many keen observers, that Finland now realizes it has made a series of very bad decisions about its large neighbor to the east, Russia.
Those bad decisions included applying economic sanctions against Russia over the ongoing Ukraine Special Military Operation, and Finland refused to pay for Russian natural gas and oil in Rubles, which resulted in Russia cutting off energy supplies to Finland. Finland thought they could make it without Russian natural gas, and now it appears they cannot.
Without Russian natural gas and oil, the Finland economy is starting to keel-over. As in other western countries that Sanctioned Russia, fuel prices in Finland are now skyrocketing. That is causing prices for things like food, to skyrocket because all the food has to be transported by truck, and fuel costs for trucks have skyrocketed.
Moreover, Russia has begun moving considerable military hardware toward the border of Finland. The Russians say they have to make certain that their border is protected from NATO and if Finland is going to join NATO, then Russia has to increase its security along the Finland border.
While the movement of Russian troops is not really a concern; there are no hostile issues between Russia and Finland, the move takes place as the Russian Army is literally chewing-up and spitting-out the much larger army of Ukraine.
Neither NATO nor non-NATO countries like Finland and Sweden, ever thought that Russia was as powerful as they clearly are. Moreover, NATO trained the Ukraine Army for eight full years before hostilities broke out between Ukraine and Russia. And with all that high-tech, modern, NATO training . . . . Ukraine is getting its butt kicked.
So whatever representations NATO made to Finland and Sweden about how NATO could protect them from Russia, are all starting to ring hollow at this point.
Perhaps the President of Finland sees this as a very convenient chance to walk-back his nation's effort to join NATO. After all, things between Russia and Finland are not bad at all. But life in Finland without Russian gas and oil, is not good at all
Maybe the Finnish President sees the obvious writing on the wall, and realizes it would be far better for Finland to walk away from NATO, and stay away . . . far away.