WASHINGTON (AP) — The first wonder for Finnish recruits and officers at a NATO-organized army training in the Arctic this spring: the sudden roar of a U. S. Navy helicopter strike force. mail.
The surprise of the moment: Leaving their headquarters, finnish Signal Corps communications personnel and others defeated the U. S. Marines. The U. S. , a Finnish-designated adversary in NATO training and members of the first U. S. professional expeditionary force. In the U. S. , in the simulated shooting that followed.
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Finnish camouflage for snow, weeds and Arctic scree likely prevented the Americans from knowing the command post was there when they landed, Finnish commander Lt. Col. Mikko Kuoka suspected. surprised by the result of the random skirmish, in an infantry-focused blog that records the result of an episode he later showed for The Associated Press. “It happened. “
As was made clear from the training, the incorporation of Finland and Sweden by NATO, what President Joe Biden calls “our allies in the Far North,” would bring military and territorial benefits to the Western defense alliance. Especially since the immediate melting of the Arctic due to the weather. Replacing is stirring up strategic rivalries in the most sensible part of the world.
Unlike NATO’s expansion of former Soviet states that received giant reinforcements in the decades following the Cold War, the alliance would bring two complicated armies and, in the case of Finland, a country with a remarkable culture of national defense. Finland and Sweden are in a region on one of Europe’s front lines and assembly posts with Russia.
Finland, which opposed Soviet Russia’s invasion on the eve of World War II, relied on fighters with snowshoes and skis, expert camouflage of snow and forest, and reindeer with weapons.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last February, coupled with his keen remembrance of the Kremlin’s nuclear arsenal and his repeated invocation of vast territorial claims from the time of the Russian Empire, have brought existing NATO countries into their collective defenses and brought new members on board.
Finland, until 1917 a Grand Duchy in this empire, and Sweden abandoned the long-standing national policies of non-alignment of the army. defense pact, stipulating that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Putin justified his western-looking invasion of Ukraine by saying he was repelling NATO and the West because, he said, they were invading Russia. A NATO that includes Finland and Sweden would be a final rebuke to Putin’s war, strengthening the defensive alliance at a strategically vital point. Region, which surrounds Russia in the Baltic Sea and Arctic Ocean, and clings to NATO off Russia’s western border for more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers).
“I spent 4 years, my tenure, trying to convince Sweden and Finland to join NATO,” former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson said this summer. “Vladimir Putin achieved this in 4 weeks. “
Biden has been among the bipartisan American and foreign cheerleaders of both countries’ offers. Reservations expressed through Turkey and Hungary prevent NATO approval from being a blockade.
In recent years, Russia has “rearmed in the north, with complex nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles and bases,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this month. north. “
Finland and Sweden would contribute a lot to this mix. But they are not without flaws.
Both countries cut army labor, cut defense investment and closed bases after the collapse of the Soviet Union eased Cold War-era fears. Just five years ago, the entire small Swedish national defense force may have compatibility in one of Stockholm’s football stadiums, one critic noted.
But as Putin became increasingly troubled, Sweden reinstated conscription and, in a different way, made the decision to rebuild its army. Sweden has a competent army and a high-tech air force. Like Finland, Sweden has a valuable national defense industry; Sweden is one of the smallest countries in the world to build its own fighter jets.
The Finnish defense force, on the other hand, is a legend.
In 1939 and 1940, Finland’s small, ill-equipped forces, fighting alone in what is known as the Winter War, made the country one of the few to attack the Soviet Union with independence intact. During the winter, Finnish fighters, occasionally dressed in white sheets to camouflage themselves and occasionally moving unseen on foot, snowshoeing and skis, lost territory to Russia but drove out the invaders.
The Finns expected up to 200,000 deaths among the invading forces against some 25,000 lost Finns, said Iskander Rehman, a member of the Henry A Center. Kissinger for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins.
This helped propitiate a Finnish creed of “sisu,” or courage. Finnish Winter War veterans have been drafted for U. S. Army Winter War training. “In the U. S. , Rehman said.
The Finnish charter makes joining the national defense a legal responsibility for each and every citizen. Finland says it can assemble a 280,000-man fighting force, based on near-universal male compulsory military service and a large, well-trained reserve, stocked with fashionable artillery, fighter jets and tanks, many of which are American.
It is very likely that the United States and NATO will strengthen their presence in the Baltic and arctic with the accession of the two Scandinavian countries.
“Just look at the map, if you load Finland and Sweden, it necessarily turns the entire Baltic Sea into a NATO lake,” with only two small parts of Russia bordering it, said Zachary Selden, former director of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly. Defense and Security Committee who is now a national security expert at the University of Florida.
Similarly, Russia will be the only non-NATO member among countries with claims to Arctic territory, and the only non-NATO member of the Atlantic Council, an eight-member foreign forum created for Arctic-related issues.
Selden predicts as a result an increased NATO presence in the Baltics, with a new NATO regional command, as well as U. S. military rotations, though it’s probably not a permanent base.
Russia considers its military’s presence in the Arctic important to its European strategy, adding ballistic missile submarines that give it a second-strike capability in any confrontation with NATO, analysts say.
The Arctic is warming much faster due to climate change than Earth as a whole, opening up a festival for access to Arctic resources as Arctic ice disappears.
Russia has built its fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, with the goal of escorting long-term maritime traffic through the molten Arctic, “to create this toll road for transit,” said Sherri Goodman, former first deputy secretary of defense. of the United States, now Wilson Center Polar Institute and Climate Center
Goodman poses long-term threats that NATO will want to confront as the melting Arctic opens up, such as the kind of dark, unofficial forces Russia has used in Crimea, Africa and elsewhere, and the greater threat of a. . . maritime nuclear accident.
NATO’s strategy will incorporate the strategic merit that Finland and Sweden would bring to such scenarios, analysts said.
NATO Arctic training of Kuoka’s U. S. counterpart this spring, Navy Lt. Col. Ryan Gordinier, wrote in an email provided through Navy spokesmen that he and his Marines were “impressed” by the Finnish infantry’s ability to succeed in positions in a different way inaccessible on foot. snowshoes and skis, and move undetected in the snow.
“He made us take a break,” and also any genuine opponent, Gordinier wrote.
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Associated Press editors Lolita C. Baldor in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Karl Ritter in Stockholm and Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.
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