Russia’s Weak Response to Finland’s Joining NATO

Eric Zuesse

On May 12th, Russia’s RT bannered “Finland’s NATO membership will trigger response – Moscow”, and reported that

Moscow has warned that Finland joining NATO would pose a direct threat to Russia’s security and its acceptance to the military alliance would prompt Russia to develop measures to ensure its safety. That’s after Finnish officials confirmed on Thursday their commitment to join the US-led bloc and announced plans to pen a formal application later this week.

“There is a current instruction from the president to develop a list of measures to strengthen our western flanks in connection with the strengthening of NATO’s eastern flanks,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov during a daily press briefing on Thursday. …

He added that Russia regrets Finland’s decision to join the hostile steps taken by the EU and warned that Helsinki’s attempts to join NATO would serve as a reason to develop respective mirror responses. …

Last month, the former Russian president and prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council implied that if Finland and Sweden became members of NATO, Russia might be forced to deploy nuclear weapons to the Baltic region in order to preserve “the balance of power.”

It wouldn’t “preserve ‘the balance of power’,” because U.S./NATO will then be in position to place America’s nukes on Russia’s border near its brain-center Moscow, whereas Russia isn’t in position to place its nukes on America’s border near its brain-center Washington DC. 

If Finland joins NATO, then America will station its missiles on Finland’s Russian border, 507 miles from Moscow, and that is 7 minutes away from blitz-nuking Moscow.

During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America threatened to initiate nuclear war against the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union would position nuclear missiles in Cuba, 1,134 miles from Washington DC, which would be about 10 minutes away from blitz-nuking Washington (but would have required much longer to reach Washington back in 1962).

Consequently, Russia now is in at least as dangerous a situation if Finland joins NATO as America was in during the Cuban Missile Crisis when America was threatening to launch a nuclear invasion against Russia if U.S.S.R. placed missiles in Cuba.

Furthermore: unlike America and the Soviet Union during the Cuba Missile Crisis, when BOTH nations were willing to negotiate a peaceful end to that Crisis, Russia is willing to negotiate a peaceful settlement this time around but America is not and has repeatedly refused to do so. Clearly, America is heading for conquest.

Consequently, Russia must now, if it is to adhere to the standards that both Kennedy and Khrushchev adhered to in 1962, make absolutely clear now to Finland’s Government that if and when Finland will join NATO, then Russia will have no alternative to blitz-nuking not only Finland but simultaneously nuking all other NATO-member nations.

Well, there actually IS an alternative: Russia’s Government can cede its sovereignty to America and begin negotiations on a surrender to the U.S. Government.

Russia’s current vaguely worded threat against Finland is just a vague way of doing that. However, another alternative exists for Russia, but one that Vladimir Putin seems not to be considering, at all, even though it really is the ONLY sensible one for Russia to do, and it would adhere to the model that JFK adhered to in 1962. But let’s first review what has led up to this Crisis, so as to place the Crisis into its proper historical context:

Russia’s first strategy against further enlargement of NATO was to demand, on 15 December 2021, to the U.S. Government; and, two days later, to America’s main anti-Russian military alliance, NATO; that NATO would never add any new member-nations — especially not Ukraine. This demand was firmly rejected, on 7 January 2022, by both America and its NATO arm. Worse yet for Russia: after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, hoping thereby to prevent at least that country joining NATO, both Finland and Sweden were so scared that they might be invaded next, that both countries expressed in early April 2022 a desire to join the anti-Russian alliance, and were welcomed by America and its NATO arm to apply to join. So, even if Russia wins its war in Ukraine, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have actually failed, because NATO seems now more likely even than before to increase — exactly the opposite of what Russia had been intending.

A more effective strategy by Russia might nonetheless still be possible. If so, I think that it would be something like this:

Russia will announce that its nuclear missiles will be targeted ONLY against the U.S. and its allies, including all NATO member-nations, no neutral or not-U.S.-allied nations. Consequently: Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and any other nation that isn’t in NATO or otherwise treaty-bound militarily with the United States, will not be targeted by any Russian nuclear missiles.

In other words: any new NATO member-nation will thereby become a target added to Russia’s list for destruction in any WW III that might transpire between the United States and Russia.

Consequently, if  Finland or Sweden join NATO, then that nation’s likelihood of becoming annihilated if and when a Third World War starts, will enormously and suddenly increase, merely on account of that nation’s having become a NATO member.

Furthermore, Russia will simultaneously be announcing that if any nation wishes to have an assurance that Russia will never, under any circumstance, invade it, then Russia will welcome from that nation a request for such an assurance from Russia; and Russia will include in that announcement explicit invitations not only to Finland and Sweden, but to all other nations which have, at some time, expressed an intention or a possible future intention to join either NATO or one of America’s other anti-Russia military alliances, such as AUKUS. In this regard, Russia will also state that if ever Russia were to provide to a nation such an assurance and subsequently to violate it, then Russia would not only be violating its own tradition of rigidly adhering to international treaties that it has signed, but would also thereby be forfeiting any and all of its rights under international law, by doing so. In other words: Russia would, in advance, be surrendering to any country that it would subsequently be violating by its having invaded the country that it had promised never to invade. This in-advance promise to forfeit all of Russia’s rights under all international laws in any such circumstance, would be a surrender in-advance, under all existing international laws; and, consequently, under the arrangement that is being proposed here, there would be no nation in the entire world that has, or ever did have, so strict an international legal obligation as Russia would be having under this proposed arrangement.

Finally: this proposed arrangement will be offering, to all existing member-nations of NATO and of America’s other anti-Russian military alliances, a promise that if and when any such existing member-nation will quit that anti-Russian military alliance, Russia will be happy to — at the moment that this is done — automatically provide to that nation the same legal commitment never to invade that nation, as has just been described here. In other words: the proposed arrangement will be offering, to the entire world, a stark and clear choice between two options: on the one hand, being allied with the most aggressive nation in all of the world’s history — the nation that sanctions, coups, and outright invades, any nation that fails to cooperate with its goal to replace the United Nations as being the ultimate arbiter of international laws, by the United States as being, instead, the ultimate arbiter of what it calls “the rules-based international order” (in which all of those ‘rules’ come ultimately from whomever rules the U.S. Government).  Versus, on the other hand: building upon and remaking the U.N. into what had been the original intention for it by its creator and namer, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which was for the U.N. to replace the historically existing (until now) rule-of-force by-and-between contending international empires, by, instead, a peaceful and democratic international order, in which there will be a “United Nations” which will be a worldwide federation of all nations, in which international laws will be produced by the global legislature of duly authorized (under each individual nation’s own internal laws) representatives; and adjudicated by the global Supreme Court, and enforced by the sole global possessor and user of strategic weaponry, the U.N. itself, so that penalties that are ruled by this global Court of international relations can be enforced against the Government of any nation that has been ruled by this Court to have violated the rights of any other nation’s Government. In this understanding of the U.N.’s proper scope of power and of authority, the U.N. will have no authority and no power regarding the Constitution or laws of any nation that apply only internally to a given nation, but ONLY to international laws, which pertain only to international relations, never to a nation’s internal matters. FDR’s objective was to make another World War — another war between empires — impossible, by eliminating all empires, and replacing all of them by an international democracy of nations. Russia, in the proposed arrangement, would be striving to achieve, for the entire world, what FDR had planned for the post-WW-II world, but which tragically became promptly changed and abandoned by his immediate successor, Harry S. Truman — the founder (on 25 July 1945) of the present global U.S. empire (and of its hamstrung currently existing — Truman’s — U.N.).

There still might be time enough for Putin to make that offer, not only to Finland, but to the world.

NOTE: Finland was an ally of Nazi Germany in WW II, invading the Soviet Union during 1941-1944, in Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa”, aiming to conquer it and enslave the Soviet peoples to Hitler’s Nazi regime. This time, Finland would be serving the U.S. regime to conquer Russia. Unless, perhaps, Putin makes this offer, and Finland accepts the offer.

UPDATE: Late on May 13th, RT headlined “First phone call between Russian and US defense chiefs since start of Ukraine conflict: Lloyd Austin has urged his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine”, which might mean that Biden now feels so confident of America’s having trapped Russia so that now he’s hoping that Russia will capitulate.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.