Russia’s efforts to reverse NATO’s eastward expansion by invading Ukraine are only stimulating NATO’s growth.

(Originally published April 14 in “What in the World“) U.S. President Joe Biden authorized an additional $800 million in weapons to Ukraine, including ammunition, artillery, anti-personnel drones, armored personnel carriers, unmanned boats and Soviet-era helicopters that were originally meant for Afghanistan before its fall to the Taliban. The European Union, meanwhile, pledged an additional 500 million Euros ($544 million) in military aid, including lethal arms, to Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed both Finland and Sweden into questioning whether they ought to end decades of non-alignment and join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Finland’s prime minister said the country, long a model of the kind of neutral buffer state keeping Russia and NATO from direct confrontation, will decide whether or not to join within weeks. Commentators have hailed the potential move as an own-goal by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose stated aim in Ukraine is to roll back NATO’s eastward expansion and secure Russia’s frontier. Now he may face NATO forces on Russia’s long Finnish border. But expanding NATO will undoubtedly prove Putin’s point that NATO poses an existential threat to Russia that must be counteracted by any means possible.