{"id":252089,"date":"2022-04-11T07:00:32","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T07:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=252089"},"modified":"2022-04-12T06:50:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T06:50:28","slug":"finland-preparing-for-russian-consequences-if-it-joins-nato-top-mod-official","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=252089","title":{"rendered":"Finland preparing for Russian \u2018consequences\u2019 if it joins NATO: top MoD official"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Introduction \u2013 April 11, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>First it needs to be understood why Russia is so opposed to many of its neighbours like Estonia and Latvia being part of the NATO military alliance. Now Finland wants to join them. This puts more pressure on Moscow as all three are effectively in Moscow\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n<p>This will allow NATO to deploy troops and military hardware right on Moscow\u2019s western flank. It would be like putting a Russian armoured division right on the Mexican border with the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a day\u2019s drive from Latvia to Moscow so NATO forces would almost literally breathing down the Kremlin\u2019s neck. So that if the U.S. decided on a first strike, Russia would have little time to defend itself or, more importantly retaliate. Rendering the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which has kept the world from nuclear conflict for decades, obsolete.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/embed?pb=!1m14!1m12!1m3!1d17178077.64527864!2d26.797838185850985!3d58.293300878341505!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!5e0!3m2!1sen!2suk!4v1649660415308!5m2!1sen!2suk\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2022\/04\/finland-preparing-for-russian-consequences-if-it-joins-nato-top-mod-official\/\"><strong>Finland preparing for Russian \u2018consequences\u2019 if it joins NATO: top MoD official<\/strong> <\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Aaron Hehta \u2013 Breaking Defense April 8, 2022<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>By all signs, Finland is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/finland-apply-join-nato-this-year-b8576c7e-7444-4440-9ba6-4b287abb6626.html\">heading towards<\/a> a decision on joining the NATO alliance within the next few months, if not weeks. And in the process, a top Finnish defense official tells Breaking Defense, the country has to prepare for the reality of a furious, but unpredictable response from <a href=\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/tag\/russia\/\">Moscow<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course, Russia will react, but we don\u2019t know how. And we need to be prepared\u201d should Finland decide to join NATO, said Esa Pulkkinen, the permanent secretary at Finland\u2019s Ministry of Defense. \u201cWe need to be ready, of course, to face consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>NATO\u2019s vaunted Article 5 protections do not kick in for aspirant members, only ratified ones. That means from the moment Finland \u2014 and perhaps its neighbor Sweden \u2014 declares the intention to join NATO until the moment every alliance member has ratified their ascension, there is no guarantee other nations will come to their aid in response to military action by Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>Pulkkinen, a retired lieutenant general who now serves as the top civil servant in Finland\u2019s defense ministry, is at the center of the question of how Finland could handle any potential Russian threat. Speaking to Breaking Defense this week in Washington, he acknowledged that Russia\u2019s reaction is just one of many aspects that have to be weighed in the NATO discussion.<\/p>\n<p>And while Pulkkinen downplayed the likelihood of Russia launching a second full invasion of a European country, he also said his country couldn\u2019t afford to rule it out completely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou cannot rule out anything. I mean, that\u2019s something that you need to do, assess the risks. You should not exclude anything. But that risk assessment, I think, is taking place in Finland now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Already Russia has issued warnings, like in the first week of the Ukraine conflict when a top Russian spokesperson said that the Finland and Sweden joining NATO would have \u201cserious military and political consequences, which would require our country to make response steps.\u201d Russia\u2019s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were seen, in part, as a way to block those nations from moving to join the Western alliance. Which means any decision to join NATO could set up a perilous moment when Russia\u2019s best strategic course, at least in Moscow\u2019s eyes, might well be to attack.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/2022\/04\/finland-preparing-for-russian-consequences-if-it-joins-nato-top-mod-official\/\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finland may only be weeks away from joining the Western military alliance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=252089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252090,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252089\/revisions\/252090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=252089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=252089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=252089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}