With NATO move, is normally neutral Finland boosting security?

Almost as soon as the Ukraine war broke out, Finland, which shares a border with Russia, embraced the Western military alliance.

Finland and Sweden’s path to NATO marks a major step forward in the military alliance’s growth – and has sparked a sense of unity among many existing members.

Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin

Aside from Turkey, the United States and most other members of NATO, which has not expanded on this scale since the 1990s, have welcomed these two Nordic countries to Europe’s premier security organisation with open arms.

Although officially “neutral” for decades, Finland has long coordinated with NATO while also maintaining its traditional coexistence with neighbouring Russia.

The move comes with some risks for Finland, yet the government in Helsinki and most of the public believe that the benefits will outweigh them.

Helsinki has mostly enjoyed amicable relations with Moscow because of its past neutrality towards its neighbour.

Before November 2021 when Russia was building up troops along the Ukraine border, Finland did not perceive Moscow as a grave threat.

But as alleged Kremlin-driven disinformation campaigns and violations of air space and cyberattacks grew, Finland and other countries in the Baltic region began to rethink their geopolitical positions.

Between November 2021 and February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow was pushing for “security guarantees” while demanding an end to NATO enlargement, which upset Finnish officials.

“As Russia looked more and more likely to attack Ukraine, the rational fear was that Russia was developing and imposing a new norm, a new rule, for Europe,” Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

“Even though governments in Europe understood that Ukraine and Belarus have a particular significance for Moscow, nobody could be sure how extreme Moscow was becoming. Perhaps … the Baltic states could be ‘on the menu,’ maybe even Finland.”

Then Russia’s overt invasion of Ukraine resulted in Finland’s government and most of the public wanting to join NATO.

“The [Russian] invasion of Ukraine has reinforced the notion that Putin’s Russia was an aggressive revisionist power, and therefore the Cold War model of neutrality no longer applied,” explained Eldar Mamedov, a foreign policy adviser in the European Parliament, who spoke to Al Jazeera in a personal capacity.

“Even though Finland, like Sweden, already enjoyed close cooperation with NATO and high levels of military interoperability, joining the NATO means availing yourself of the ultimate security insurance – Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Finnish political class, backed by the bulk of the public opinion, decided that the moment has come to close that remaining gap.”

The shock of the Ukraine war has impacted Finland massively.

In January 2022, public support for NATO membership in Finland was at 28 percent, according to a Helsingin Sanomat newspaper’s opinion poll by Kantar TNS. At the time, that was a record high. But that figure soared to 61 percent in late March.

In response, the government led by Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democrat Party, which historically has not had a particularly pro-Atlantic stance, shifted its security and defence policies in favour of joining NATO.

Finland’s ascension will add 835 miles (1,345 km) to the Russia-NATO border while turning the Baltic Sea into a “NATO lake” – moves that essentially guarantee hotter tensions with Moscow.

“It is likely that there will be a long period of very limited contacts and an overall change of Russian attitude towards Finland,” said Hanna Ojanen of the University of Tampere.