Nato prepares to add Finland, Sweden to northern defenses

Bloomberg

Nato members rallied around Finland and Sweden after they announced plans to join the alliance, marking another dramatic change in Europe’s security architecture triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Parliaments in the Nordic nations debated the membership, with a large majority of lawmakers in each country now backing the bid. Over the weekend, most Nato foreign ministers who had gathered in Berlin embraced the bloc’s northern enlargement, a process that requires unanimity among the 30 allies.
With Nato membership “if we come under attack, we will get help. If another member state is attacked, we will help,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin
told lawmakers. “Nato’s security guarantees would increase the deterrent impact of Finland’s defenses considerably.”
“One of the main tasks of Finland within Nato would be to ensure its own defenses,” she said.
The one country to voice concerns admitting the pair was Turkey, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu unhappy that Finland and, particularly, Sweden have had interactions with Kurdish extremists who have been active in eastern Turkey.
Sweden is sending a team of diplomats to Ankara for talks and Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said he expects to work through the last-minute wrinkles in the enlargement plan. “Turkey has made it clear that their intention is not to block membership,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Berlin.
He said he was confident Turkey’s concerns won’t delay the membership procedure, and that his aspiration “is still to have a quick and swift process.”
Governments in Helsinki and Stockholm are set to deliver their formal applications at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels later in the week once their respective parliaments have signed off. In Sweden, lawmakers spoke for a couple of hours, while in Finland the debate looked set to run into Tuesday before a plenary vote is likely. Speaking to reporters in the Finnish capital, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress aims to ratify Finland’s accession into Nato before the August recess.
There’s “strong” bipartisan support for its entry and a vote “won’t be close,” he said, after meeting with President Sauli Niinisto, adding “Finland punches above the weight of many existing Nato members.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he’s “very confident” the allies will agree to back the expansion. Canada’s foreign minister, Melanie Joly, said “the opportunity is greater than any bilateral issues” and called for a fast process to admit the applicants. The move is another plank in the transformation of the
European security landscape after Russia’s attack on Ukraine prompted Germany to abandon its postwar reticence over defense spending and embark on a massive revamp of its military.