Foreign Finland has officially joined the NATO military alliance, ending seven decades of relative peace in Europe. This move also marks the dissolution of Nordic neutrality, leaving no more neutral territory to separate Russia and NATO military lines. The Arc of Confrontation has suddenly doubled overnight, and Europe is now facing potential conflict and turmoil.
The Yalta consensus, which maintained peace with tension between the big three at the end of the Second World War, has been broken. Western leaders welcomed Finland into the military alliance with open arms, while Russia responded with massive combat training, including aerial bombings and the deployment of soldiers and nuclear-capable missiles along the Finnish border.
The Baltic Sea has effectively become a NATO lake, and Russia's stakes in controlling the Crimean Peninsula have gone up. Kaliningrad, the headquarters of Russia's Baltic Sea Fleet, has been deemed the world's most dangerous place by some military strategists. It houses an estimated 12,000 soldiers, military equipment, tanks, ships, and aircraft, along with nuclear-capable Iskander missile systems. Russia's strategic location allows it to project power into the heart of Europe.
Europe has not learned the bitter lesson that hostile military alliances never establish peace of any kind. The war in Ukraine has exposed the terrorist fault lines on the European continent, and the steady expansion of the NATO military alliance to Russia's doorstep has sowed the seeds of future conflict.
Finland, previously ranked as the world's happiest nation, now finds itself on the front lines of the ongoing tensions between Russia and the West. It remains to be seen what the future holds, but one thing is clear: Europe must learn from its past mistakes and work towards finding a lasting peaceful solution to this ongoing crisis.
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