Should We Commit to Fight Russia — for Finland?

Why would we voluntarily agree to give Sweden and Finland these war guarantees? Why would we commit to go to war with Putin’s Russia, a war that could, and likely would, escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially if Russia were losing?

The prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin, both signaled Wednesday that they will likely be applying for membership in NATO.

The “prospect” is most “welcome,” says The Washington Post: “Finland and Sweden Should Join NATO.”

The editorial was titled “A Way to Punish Putin.”

Before joining the rejoicing in NATO capitals, we might inspect what NATO membership for these two Nordic nations would mean for the United States.

Finland is a nation the size of Germany, but with a population only 4% of that of Russia and a border with Russia that is 830 miles long.

Should Finland join NATO, the United States, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, would be obligated to go to war with the world’s largest nuclear power to retrieve Finnish lands that an enraged Russia might grab.

Moscow has already indicated that, should Sweden and Finland join NATO, Russia will introduce new nuclear weapons into the Baltic region.

Why is it wise for us to formally agree, in perpetuity, as NATO is a permanent alliance, to go to war with Russia, for Finland?

Given the war in Ukraine and concomitant crisis in Eastern Europe, it is understandable why Stockholm and Helsinki would seek greater security beneath the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

But why would we voluntarily agree to give Sweden and Finland these war guarantees? Why would we commit to go to war with Putin’s Russia, a war that could, and likely would, escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially if Russia were losing?

Finland was neutral during the Cold War. Sweden has been neutral since the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.

How did we suffer from their neutrality?

In Helsinki and Stockholm, the benefit of a U.S.-NATO commitment to go to war for Finland or Sweden is understandable.

But how does it benefit our country, the USA, to be obligated to go to war with a nation that commands the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons — over some quarrel in the Baltic Sea or Gulf of Finland that does not affect us?

Asked for his view on Sweden and Finland’s campaign to join NATO, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had a note of warning:

“We have repeatedly said that the (NATO) alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation and its further expansion will not bring stability to the European continent.”

Should Putin’s Russia clash with Finland or Sweden today, the U.S. is free to respond, or not to respond, as it sees fit, depending on our own assessment of risks and rewards.

Why not keep it that way? Why surrender our freedom of action in some future collision involving our main adversary?

History holds lessons for us here.

In March 1939, six months after Munich, when Czechoslovakia disintegrated into its ethnic components, Britain issued an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland, then negotiating with Germany over the port city of Danzig taken from Germany by the victorious Allies after World War I.

When Germany, on Sept. 1, 1939, invaded Poland, Britain was obligated to declare war on Germany over a matter that was not a vital interest of Great Britain or its worldwide empire.

Lest we forget, it was the Bucharest Declaration of 2008, opening the door to membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, that led to the recent crises in Eastern Europe and the current war.

The Russia-Georgia War of August 2008, the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and Putin’s annexation of Crimea and claiming of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine all proceeded from NATO’s decision in 2008 to open the door to membership for Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today is partly due to the U.S. and Ukraine’s refusal to rule out NATO membership for Kyiv.

No NATO nation today has a border with Russia nearly as long as that of Finland. If Finland joins NATO, will we put U.S. boots on the ground along that 830-mile border with Russia? Will U.S. warplanes fly in and out of Finnish airfields and air bases up to the border of Russia?

Collective security is said to be a good idea.

But the core of NATO security is provided by U.S. war guarantees, while most of the collecting is done by our 29 NATO allies, which could become 31 by summer’s end.

Otto von Bismarck predicted that the Great War, when it came, would be ignited by “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.”

And World War I was indeed triggered by the assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo in June 1914. The Germans came in in part because the kaiser had given Austria a “blank check” for war.

What enabled America to stay out of both world wars for years after they began was our freedom from “entangling alliances” when they began.

But today we not only lead an alliance of 30 nations, but we are adding two more members, one of which has a border of 830 miles with Russia.

How long does our luck last?

12 replies
  1. conrad gaarder
    conrad gaarder says:

    Men in the West simply must, for the sake of the civilization, bring to heel the Anne Applebaums of this world.

  2. John Alder
    John Alder says:

    Lunatics are running the asylums known as NATO and America. They are setting up the chessboard for world war three but are oblivious to the fact that Putin is a master at chess and the USA and it’s senile president are playing checkers. This will end badly for America.

  3. Richard McCulloch
    Richard McCulloch says:

    This course is also not in the best interests of Sweden and Finland. Since the Second World War both the USSR and the Russian Federation have maintained good relations with both countries and have certainly never threatened them in any way. There was the “Whiskey on the rocks” incident in 1981, a discovered incursion by a Soviet “Whiskey” class sub into the waters of the main Swedish naval base at Karlskrona, and the Swedes secretly agreed to allow US to station Polaris subs off their west coast in exchange for jet engine technology, but the Russian stance remained non-threatening. If the two countries join NATO Russia has already made it clear they will then regard them as a hostile threat. Instead of being a “nuclear-free zone” as it has been for the last 70 years, the the cities and military bases of the Baltic area will be added to the Russian target list for nuclear strike in case of war. Also the Russians will increase the forces they deploy to the area and change their war plans to include Sweden and Finland.
    So why are these two women Prime Ministers, both leftist Social Democrats, seeking to abandon the much more favorable and much less threatening status quo? Russia has not threatened them nor indicated any hint of a threat before this initiative was announced. If they perceive a threat it is only in their own imagination, some delusion based on the hysterical wave of anti-Russian agitprop. Is this imaginary threat, this unfounded fear, causing them to place their countries in a truly threatening situation?

    • Emicho
      Emicho says:

      Nobody should be surprised that after all these decades resisting joining the NATO suicide pact, when they are finally persuaded into it, surprise surprise, it’s just a pure coincidence it’s two women leaders making the decisions.
      Honestly, the Americans would have overwhelmed them with images of their massive, throbing minuteman, and these broads would have went weak at the knees.
      This isn’t a joke. Who can actually claim that this isn’t the pathetic level that we operate at in the West? Have you seen some of these European women ‘leaders’?
      Maybe Americans don’t get this, but look at American leftist female public figures. (The only female figures in Europe who are allowed anywhere near public power are leftist.)
      Do any of them have the interests of normal working Americans at heart? Or does their motives lie in ambition, weird ideologies(mental illnesses) and just naked power over others?
      And saying “well maybe the Russians should have shown the girls their own phallic symbols of power?” This doesn’t wash. The Russians are only now beginning the grasp the depths of decadence we have sunk too, and even if they had before, it’s absurd to expect a serious nation of serious people to institutionalise in their diplomatic corps any sort counter propaganda to this sort of thing. To do so would be self defeating, as like all decadence, you cannot contain it, it eventually spills over and gets everywhere.
      It looks bad, losing these two neighbours to your enemies evil alliance, it is a problem, but training a section of your population to basically act in a Jewish way to counter enemy propaganda would bring much more serious long term issues.

  4. Roberto Blanco
    Roberto Blanco says:

    OT

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/internet-entrepreneur-kim-dotcom-hunter-biden-will-go-to-jail-over-laptop-joe-will-resign/

    “Trusted media partners”?
    https://wikileaks.org/-Partners-.html

    One only has to research how many Jewish
    names are behind the so-called Tor browser.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0r3F3md-Bo

    Maxey showed emails between Hunter Biden and former
    FBI chief Louis Freeh asking him to help corrupt French-Israeli
    billionaire Beny Steinmetz, who was arrested in Romania and
    convicted of corruption in Switzerland in 2021. Steinmetz is an
    associate of the notorious Israeli “dirty campaigning” SPÖ con-
    sultant Tal Silberstein, who is often said to have played an (un-
    confirmed) role in the Austrian Ibiza affair. Silberstein was sen-
    tenced in absentia to 5 years in prison in Romania in 2020.
    https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Tal_Silberstein

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/world/europe/beny-steinmetz-guilty-switzerland-guinea.html

    Maxey also tried to reach Delaware Attorney General (((David
    Weiss))), who is leading the fraud and tax investigation into Hun-
    ter Biden, and spoke with one of the prosecutors there. “I of-
    fered him my cooperation, but he never returned my calls.”
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Weiss
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weiss_(surname)

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10689445/Whistleblower-handed-Hunter-Bidens-laptop-congressmen-fled-Switzerland.html

  5. Roberto Blanco
    Roberto Blanco says:

    “Regarding the Waldorf schools, the decree of Reinhard Heydrich states: “The teaching methods based on the pedagogy of the founder Steiner and applied in the anthroposophical schools still in existence today pursue an individualistic education oriented toward the single person, which has nothing in common with the National Socialist educational principles.” https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Waldorfschule#Zeit_des_Nationalsozialismus

    “After the Second World War, especially Steiner’s statements on the race question and Judaism were criticized. Since about two decades, especially in Germany, Steiner’s views on human races have been exposed again and again.” https://de.zxc.wiki/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner#Rassismusvorw%C3%BCrfe

  6. peter mcloughlin
    peter mcloughlin says:

    The move will bring mankind closer to the nuclear apocalypse it managed to avoid in the Cold War. Everyone must heed the warning of history: all great powers eventually face the conflagration they seek to avoid, in this case the annihilation of civilization. That’s the daunting challenge.
    https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/

  7. Box Hill
    Box Hill says:

    “And World War I was indeed triggered by the assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo in June 1914. The Germans came in in part because the kaiser had given Austria a “blank check” for war.”

    The local war between Austria and Serbia was escalated by the Russian Empire, who mobilized third, not by Germany.

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