The Kremlin lunatic’s paranoid narrative relies on the alliance’s post-Soviet expansion; admitting Finland and Sweden feeds it

(Originally published May 19 in “What in the World“) Here’s a shocker: peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are at a standstill. The surprise isn’t that they’ve ground to a halt; the surprise is that the two nations were still talking at all. Russia submitted a draft peace accord in mid-April that proposes it maintain control over Ukrainian territory. Ukraine hasn’t responded, demanding instead that Russia pull back to its borders. The fighting goes on, with the Russians now in control of the Black Sea port of Mariupol and a land bridge to Crimea and the Ukrainians pushing the Russians back to retake Kharkiv on the Russian border. I’ll let the reader guess which is more strategically important.

While U.S. President Joe Biden has sagaciously held back on supplying Ukraine with weapons that it could use to take the fight to Russia, like the long-range Multiple Launch Rocket System that Kyiv has been requesting, he has reopened the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. That will help host the parade of American politicians traipsing through the Ukrainian capital for photo-ops, but also provide more soft targets for Russian artillery and airstrikes to give Biden the pretext needed for the U.S. to enter the war directly.

Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami echoes the logic of Jeffrey Sachs in a piece arguing that the West and Ukraine must accept a negotiated settlement that likely includes the loss of Crimea and at least autonomy for the Russian-speaking Donbas region. Time, he points out, is on Russia’s side in the war, even if it grinds to a stalemate. Every day Ukraine’s economy is stalled by conflict is another day without its wheat or sunflower oil for the world’s hungry poor facing a food crisis.

As noted in this space many times before, Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot accept defeat without fear of losing his position and possibly his life. That makes the prospect of a nuclear war, as U.S. intelligence officials have warned, very realistic. Those who foresee a coup against Putin haven’t thought through what the world might look like in a Russian power vacuum. The West not only doesn’t have a clear strategy beyond wishful thinking for Putin’s removal; it also appears to have no plan for a post-Putin Russia.

Yet the West keeps moving to corner Putin, where he’ll be at his most dangerous. Finland and Sweden have now officially applied for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. President Sauli Niinisto of Finland and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson will meet U.S. President Joe Biden next week in Washington to discuss their NATO membership. Biden has already endorsed their applications and issued a non-binding pledge to defend both until their membership is approved. Turkey, however, remains opposed on the grounds that both countries harbor Kurdish militants. Ankara’s opposition could provide Biden with a face-saving way of preventing the emergence of a Nordic front. Turkey’s opposition also illustrates the problem of an ever-expanding treaty alliance: dilution and disunity.

Some analysts point to the addition of Sweden and Finland as a major advance in NATO’s advantage over Russia, since the addition of Finland’s 1,300km land border with Russia will force Russia to defend it. The same analysts also point out that now NATO will have to divert resources to defending the very same border, which includes Finland’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets. If war broke out between NATO and Russia elsewhere, NATO would face the same difficulties crossing that border as Russia does coming the other way. Moscow’s experience invading Finland in World War II didn’t go too well, though it did manage to seize territory that Russia holds to this day.

NATO also gains Sweden’s Gotland island, a veritable fortress against Russian naval forces moving through the Baltic Sea. However, because Sweden was already a NATO ally, Gotland wasn’t on the wrong side of the European defense balance sheet anyway.

With NATO membership, both Finland and Sweden ostensibly head off the possibility that Russia invades—as it did in Ukraine—to prevent them from joining NATO. Neither country holds historically Russian cultural importance or strategically vital territory like access to warm-water ports, so Russia loses nothing.

But all NATO gains from Swedish and Finland’s membership is the need to invest in defending two very large territories against Russian incursion, as any invasion of one NATO member is tantamount to an invasion of them all. In other words, the collective liability posed on NATO’s individual members, particularly the U.S., will become much larger. And it helps reinforce Putin’s narrative, that NATO is out to get Russia, poses and existential threat and moves his finger that much closer to the button.