Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Turkey today ratified Finland's petition to join NATO. The vote in Turkish parliament, which was hardly a sure thing, now goes to president Tayyip Erdogan, who has signaled he will sign it. Erdogan's approval was also hardly a sure thing. He demanded, and won, a few concessions from Finland as a condition of the vote. Turkey is the last of 30 NATO member countries to approve Finland's petition. Finland may officially be inducted at the next NATO member meeting in July. Example news coverage: Reuters article 30 Mar 2023.

This may sound like wonky, unimportant international news, so let me put it in context. It's about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

1. One of Russia's stated goals for invading Ukraine was to prevent a country on its border (i.e., Ukraine) from joining NATO.


2. Russia's invasion prompted more countries to want to join Russia; principally Sweden and Finland.


3. Finland joining NATO greatly increases the Russia's border with NATO members. See map below.


4. Own goal: Russia.

Prior to Russia's invasion in 2022 the country had very little border with NATO states. There was a bit with Estonia and Latvia. Counting in Kaliningrad, it shares a bit of border with Lithuania and Poland. And if you consider Belarus basically part of Russia (it has basically a sock-puppet government) it has more border with Lithuania and Poland.

One of Russia's stated goals/justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022 was to limit its border with NATO. Russia contended (i) Ukraine was going to join NATO, (ii) NATO represents a military threat to Russia, and therefore (iii) it had to annex Ukraine to keep NATO further away.

Claim (i) was false. Ukraine did not want to join NATO— though it started talking about it more seriously as Russia built up for the invasion. Claim (iii) is ridiculous logic as if Russia did annex Ukraine it would add borders with NATO member states Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.

...Not that any of this would justify invasion even if it were true, but it didn't even make sense. And now Russia has achieved the opposite of its stated goal. Finland and Sweden, which were content being outside of NATO prior to 2022, petitioned to join. Now with Finland's membership imminent (Sweden's is still blocked on approval from Turkey) there soon will be hundreds of new miles of NATO member countries on Russia's border. Russia's aggression provoked the opposite of one of its stated goals.