May 19, 2022, 10:37
Finland and Sweden have announced that they will apply for NATO membership. This move will remove the brands of "neutrality" from the two Nordic countries. It may seem like a major change in European geopolitics, but there is a certain inevitability in the essence - the two countries originally belonged to the old European bloc.
The two countries had chosen neutrality out of fear. And right now, out of the same fear, they have decided to defect to NATO. The source of their fear is the ever-present "threat" of the "polar bear" in their immediate neighborhood.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has fueled their existing fear, but it has also provided them the opportunity they have been waiting for decades - to join their European cousins in containing Russia's resurgence.
Both countries have never seen Russia as a partner to work with, and although they have adopted some policies to promote cooperation with Russia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, they have done so only as a stopgap measure. They have never regarded Russia as "one of us."
During the WWII, Sweden chose "neutrality" and, under the guise of neutrality, exported large quantities of iron ore to Nazi Germany, which provided a constant supply of steel for the German war machine. Finland itself achieved independence (1917) at a time when the Russian Empire was collapsing due to WWI, and the Nordic country tried to hold hands with Germany in WWII in order to regain its lost ground.
This reminds me of what my landlord said almost 40 years ago when I was studying in Sweden. He was an immigrant from Hungary and at that time Sweden was discussing whether to join the EU. He said that if the two Germanys were unified and became a member of NATO, why couldn't Sweden? In his opinion, Sweden's accession to the EU was inevitable, and sooner or later it would also become a member of NATO.
The geopolitical landscape of Europe did not start to change because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It started to change after the unified Germany became the most powerful country in Europe.
Then West German chancellor Helmut Kohl said that the eastward expansion of the European Community should not stop at the Elbe.
After the disintegration the Soviet Union, NATO, instead of shrinking or disbanding, began to expand eastward in parallel with the EU. It changed from a defensive military organization to a bloc that could launch military intervention under the banner of "democracy." Its expansiveness became more and more evident.
While EU member states pledged to support each other in the event of an external attack, this commitment remained largely on paper as NATO existed in lieu of the EU's collective defense. And with the accession of Sweden and Finland, especially with the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the EU's collective defense will probably accelerate and the ability to carry out external military intervention will be strengthened.
The accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, while adding to the overtones of NATO's ideological alliance, also exposes the potential ideological inconsistencies among the NATO member states. It is for this very reason that Turkey is opposed to the two countries' membership in the alliance. If this issue would deter Sweden and Finland from joining NATO, it also risks stimulating the EU to accelerate the principle of collective defense.
Sweden and Finland chose to join NATO when Russia was relatively weak and was being "swarmed" by Europe.
Will these two countries ever say goodbye to their fear? Let's not forget the fact - when NATO bases appear on the soil of the two Nordic countries, Russia will have no choice but to directly change the balance in the region with the future deployment of its nuclear and strategic forces. Of course, it will also make them rethink what it would mean to lose their "neutrality" labels.
''If the hot war between Ukraine and Russia ends up...'' A hot war would involve the use of nuclear weapons ( thus the current state of a global cold war where such nuclear weapons have not been used since World War 2 ). If there was an actual hot war in Europe during this conflict then there would be very little left of either continental Europe or western Russia worth discussing. The entire region would be a huge, denuded wasteland.
US has all intentions to rise and command the world. Europe has willingly submitted to its demands with full compliance. Soon the water and land will be boiling hot. Great fires will torch the land. Scorched marks remained as historical signs of part glory.
US leads the world to see the sheer stupidity of its European cousins who once thought of domineering the world.
Finland and Sweden joining Nato means both are throwing in their lot with EU defense under the US strategic nuclear umbrella.
Should Nato go to war with Russia, both will be drawn into the maelstrom.
Their calculation could be this - any war, should it happen, won't be nuclear because of assured mutual destruction.
So, looking at the effectiveness of Nato-US conventional arms in the Ukraine conflict, they reckon they will have a better chance of getting such arms and support should a conflict with Russia happen, taking Ukraine as an unfolding lesson.
If the hot war between Ukraine and Russia ends up as a cold war between a unified Europe and Russia, then Russia may finally defocus from trying to be part of its West and consider itself a member of the East in order to survive economically.
(But it should not follow the example of Australia which is in the East but thinks it belongs to the West).
However, this will present another problem.
Russia eastwards with China will migrate all military projections by the West to Asia.
Should Japan and South Korea nuclearize, then North Korea's nuclear capability will be balanced out.
Which means the US can then tighten its two Pacific rings now with an Asian branch of Nato supplemented by Quad and Aukus to try and close off China's eastern seaboard, furthermore emboldening Taipei.
Read in between the lines as well - technology decoupling. US-Europe-Japan-South Korea upstream versus China downstream.
Should all that appear imminent, India may sway away from its autonomy and embrace US arms over its present Russian armaments, all the more to override economically-weak Pakistan and Afghanistan by way of further instigating Baluchistan.
Tensions will rise and the tipping point may next be over the matter of cross-border downstream water supply.
Meanwhile a new power bloc may rise called Essential Minerals. It will comprise Africa and South America.
The US-Australia-Canada-Japan-UK will try to split Africa while keeping South America under its orbit, mining-wise.
Seeing all this, the Middle East will try its best to remain relevant in a world which, after all the fuel-burning military conflicts, will have to return to zero-carbon some day, albeit delayed.
We will thus have an odd situation - a global geopolitical singularity - where power dynamics between nations converge quickly to new alignments that however get dragneted in dicey alliances which will split the interconnected world into blocs by perceived interests even if not blocs by geography.
It was said WWI was caused by serendipity of all the players in Europe not wanting to go to war but yet in the end collective stupidity upended the result.
It will be an apocalyptic world of sanctions and protectionism.
International passports and currency exchanges will become irrelevant.
The financial system will be balkanized.
Companies will go back to barter.
Platforms will become brokers.
The wheels of supply chains all over the world will grind to a halt.
History just before the final storm will record it is the US which started it, this malady of the world.
Purportedly championing individual rights, it simply will not countenance any sovereign right not subscribing zero-summed to its overriding interests.
So it takes a leaf from its past colonizer - England - whose mantra of its empire was Divide-then-Rule.
But the US has a new version. It changed the mantra to Unite-Selectively-then-Rule-By-Proxy.
It forms alliances but with it as sole eager-beaver puppetmaster.
Or with some countries like the UK and Australia, the organ grinder (they being the monkeys).
It refuses to accept that the individual right of citizens to progress their lives will collectively and inevitably become the soveright right OF their nation to peace and prosperity BY their own earned destiny.
ren
''Sweden and Finland chose to join NATO when Russia was relatively weak and was being ''swarmed'' by Europe.''
This event is happening now, not in the past. Russia is demonstrating an unusual way of showing its ''weakness'' by attempting to invade the Ukraine, rather than somehow being ''swarmed by Europe''. The boot is clearly on the other foot at the moment.
Fear!!
It'll be multiplied by a factor of 10.
Them People never been asked in a referendum if they'd take up arms to fight for America's NATO.
You had to reside up there for a dozen years to understand the Locals.
The Western media is in NATO's deep pocket; so is the Western world in general.
Sorry to say so, but that's the sad truthful
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