--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This whole war between Russia and Ukraine got started because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. But now, very much because of Russia, two close-by countries, one it straight-up shares a border with, and one it shares a sea with, are trying to join NATO. Finland is the former, Sweden is the latter, and it's not just border stuff.
--:-- Jen Kirby: If Finland and Sweden get into NATO, that'll make Russia the only Arctic country that isn't part of NATO. I think it's going to fundamentally allow the U.S., Europe, NATO to reconceptualize all of defense and security in northern Europe, including the European portion of the Arctic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The increasingly isolated Russia now that the Nords have entered the chat.
--:-- Jen Kirby: ahead on Today Explained. autonomously anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying. But are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Today Explained, Sean Rameswaram here with Jen Kirby, who does foreign stuff at Vox. She's joined us to talk about the hottest NATO news. Finland and Sweden announced last week that they are going to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also known as NATO, a 30-member alliance which the United States and lots of European countries are a part of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, the Social Democratic Party has concluded that Sweden should join NATO. We have been talking here in Finland at least 30 years about NATO membership. And they formally submitted their application last Wednesday to join.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Every nation has the right to choose its own path. You have both made your choice of the thorough democratic processes. And people saw this maybe coming. This wasn't a total surprise. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, public opinion in Finland especially, but also Sweden, really shifted in terms of support for joining NATO.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And political leaders in both countries started to make pretty big hints that they might pursue membership. Both Finland and Sweden are close partners of NATO, so it wasn't a huge leap. But things really started to escalate quite quickly in the past few weeks.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And that's because of the war in Ukraine? Yeah, absolutely. And, of course, as these processes happen, Finland and Sweden were going around to other NATO countries, making sure that if they did want to apply to NATO, other people would let them in, and also making sure that the parliament, different political parties were willing to support it, because both of these countries have famously stayed out of NATO for a very long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right. As you alluded to there, these two countries are sort of famously neutral, right? These Nordic states?
--:-- Jen Kirby: Yeah, they are. We technically say that they are militarily non-aligned, but to give a little bit of history. Sweden has been kind of famously neutral for centuries. Our 200-year-long standing policy of military non-alignment has served Sweden well. They've stayed out of the world wars in Europe, and this has been a long-standing policy and really part of their identity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Finland is a little bit more complicated. In 1939, they were invaded by the then Soviet Union. This is not a war, but the most ruthless aggression upon a peace-loving, hardworking, and deeply religious people. And they were able to fend them off.
--:-- Jen Kirby: The Finnish nation is firm and united in the defense of her liberty and of her democratic institutions. It still created sort of this issue for them because Finland, of course, shares an 800-mile border with Russia. So quite a lot of territory.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so during the Cold War, they basically had to sort of sit on the sidelines, not so much out of choice, but sort of out of necessity to keep the Soviet Union from having any other adventures in Finland.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And so the Soviet Union meddled a lot in domestic politics. But then after the Cold War, both Sweden and Finland in the 1990s joined the European Union. And it's obviously a political and economic community, but there are defense guarantees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And in many ways, by joining Europe, they became aligned with the West. They just formally avoided any military alliances, even though at the same time they were becoming closer and closer partners with NATO itself.
--:-- Jen Kirby: So what's the deal here? Do you just like fill out a form and wait to hear from the NATO bosses? How does it work?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So on Wednesday, Finland and Sweden went to Brussels. They handed in their applications. There's pictures of them, these little papers with their flags. Cute.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Was it a color printer? Were the flags in color? I hope so.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm curious if they accept NATO applications online, but not clear to me.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Since it is a treaty, and of course the founding kind of foundational principle of NATO is the mutual defense clause, which is an attack on one is an attack on all. So they have to all formally bring them into the tent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so what they did this week was try to kind of start to accelerate the process. As we said before, Finland and Sweden are really close partners of NATO. They're basically as close as you could get to without actually being in the alliance.
--:-- Jen Kirby: They exercise with NATO troops. Troops from the Queen Royal Hassas are embedded into a Finnish armoured brigade. They do missions together like in Afghanistan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There much more to ISAF than just the Brits and the Americans. Dozens of countries are contributing troops to the coalition effort here in Afghanistan.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And Estonia, for one, is punching well above its weight. They're already pretty closely there. And they're, you know, strong democratic countries. So there's not really any issues in terms of governance there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they kind of meet all of the criteria. They're like the ideal members. for NATO. And so everybody thought the application process and the ascension process into NATO was going to go very smoothly.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Great. And there are what? There are 30 NATO nations, Albania, off the top of my head here, just kidding, I'm looking at a list, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did anyone have beef with Finland and Sweden joining the club? At the lower end of the alphabet, Turkey had some objections.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Turkey had beef? Turkey had some beef. Why? What did Finland and Sweden do to Turkey?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It kind of came as a surprise. Erdogan has objected to Sweden's granting of asylum to members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which he has said is a terrorist organization, but obviously is a complicated domestic political matter.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And so he's indicated that if they continue to do that and support, and I'm using air quotes here, terrorists, that he will block both Finland and Sweden's membership.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Huh, drama. He believes that they're basically too lenient on the PKK and wants them to sort of be tougher on them. But to be clear, this is Erdogan trying to appeal to his domestic political base.
--:-- Jen Kirby: There isn't a lot of there there. This is Erdogan grandstanding trying to gain political points at home. Some other NATO drama way back when, you might remember, when Turkey bought some Russian military equipment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Turkish President Recep Erdogan defied the U.S. and fellow NATO allies by purchasing a new missile system from Russia.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And so they took Turkey out of this F-35 program for our fancy planes. But it also has old planes, F-16s, that need to be refurbished or need to be replaced.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so there's a lot of speculation because there's been negotiations going on about that. The Turkey's trying to win some concessions from Washington on that and doing it by holding up this NATO process.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And it also has nothing to do with Russia. He's not trying to, like, curry favor with Putin?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: No. And there was some kind of question if, you know, Turkey, which has had at one point been trying to help broker negotiations in Ukraine, and even Hungary, which is a NATO member and has been kind of close to Putin, might try to hold up the process for those reasons.
--:-- Jen Kirby: But that actually does not seem to be the case, at least at present. We don't know what's going to happen down the line. But for now, Turkey is the main outlier and the issues that they're raising are more for his own political benefit than anything else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So assuming like Erdogan gets over it at some point, how long might it take for Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO?
--:-- Jen Kirby: In the past, for example, I think Montenegro, it took like 18 months. You know, NATO has kind of played down Turkey's objections. Everyone kind of has been saying, yeah, we are working with Turkey. We've registered their displeasure and don't think this is going to be detrimental to the NATO process.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And many folks that I've talked to seem to agree as well. But crazier things have happened in the world.
--:-- Jen Kirby: How does Putin feel about all of this? Putin. Oh, Putin. He's kind of distracted, I think, a little bit for this mess that he created in Ukraine, which is an understatement, of course.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Putin had been signaling for a while as there were indications that Finland and Sweden might move toward NATO membership, that it would kind of constitute as a threat.
--:-- Jen Kirby: You know, they warned that there might be consequences. And Putin cares a little bit more, I think, about Finland, again, being on its border.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But ostensibly, one of the reasons why he launched this war against Ukraine was to stop the expansion of NATO.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And one of the results of his war in Ukraine will be the actual literal expansion of NATO. So in many ways, it is a defeat for Putin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And what does it mean for NATO? It is a huge symbolic and political win for NATO.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Before the war in Ukraine, NATO was a little bit adrift, you know, particularly after the Afghanistan withdrawal, which NATO had been really committed to and like the United States had to reckon with 20 years of of its involvement there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the war in Ukraine a little bit helped clarify NATO's purpose and created this renewed unity and vigor in the alliance.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And this is going to add to that in a big way. And then there's military and strategic benefits, which is, you know, there was a big chunk on the European map that had been unaccounted for.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now when NATO does its military planning, they can think a different way about Northern Europe and the Nordic region, but most importantly, the Arctic.
--:-- Jen Kirby: When we're back, we're going to talk about how this shifts the power balance in the Arctic and why the Arctic is increasingly important to all the powers involved.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was Jen Kirby from Vox. This is Today Explained, also from Vox. Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Jen Kirby: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies. They say it's extremely powerful, adapts to your unique data structures and scales with any business model.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: According to Adio, Adio takes less than a minute to set up. And within seconds, you will have your email and calendars synced. You'll see all your relationships in a fully fledged platform, they say, all enriched with that actionable data.
--:-- Jen Kirby: And they say you can build AI powered automations and use its research agent to tackle some of your most complex processes to seize so that you can focus on what matters building your company
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can join industry leaders such as Flatfile Replicate Modal and so much more You can go to attio slash todayexplained to get 15 off your first year That's attio.com slash todayexplained.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall, and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real, layering is even more fun. That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you.
--:-- Jen Kirby: It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts. Add a statement shoe to your collection, like the calf-hair loafers from Steve Madden.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or tap into your romantic side with flowy dresses from CC and sheer pieces from INC. You can even throw in some textural layers for contrast, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Whether your old favorite sweater or coat is on its last threads, or you're just craving a new vibe to switch things up, Macy's has got you covered this season.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's Fall Fashion Style Guide. Shop in-store or online at Macy's.com.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Today Explained, Ramos from earlier in the show, I rattled off all the NATO member nations, and I've got one more list for you now. All the countries whose territory makes up the Arctic. You've got Canada, obviously, Denmark via Greenland.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Did you know that Greenland belongs to Denmark? Fun fact.
--:-- Jen Kirby: Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the United States via Alaska, and Russia. Now, if Finland and Sweden join NATO, Russia will be the only Arctic country that isn't with NATO.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that presents its own set of geopolitical tensions because the Arctic ice is melting and militaries are moving in.
--:-- Jen Kirby: To find out more, we called up Helsinki, Finland. Charlie Salonius Pasternak. I'm a leading researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: We asked Charlie what it would mean for the Arctic if Finland and Sweden joined NATO. I think it's going to fundamentally allow the U.S., Europe, NATO to reconceptualize all of defense and security in northern Europe, including the European portion of the Arctic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it turns out, apart from NATO, the Arctic's got its own club to foster cooperation. It's the Arctic Council. It was formed with the idea that this is genuinely going to be a place where you talk about climate, environment, indigenous populations, things like that, as well as practical security, search and rescue, stuff like that.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: That's been the one place where their thinking has been is let's discuss broad, impactful issues here. You don't hear a lot about Arctic politics. Is that because they're thus far, you know, they've been relatively functional?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, during the Cold War, it was, of course, one of the most militarized areas in the world because of U.S.-Soviet nuclear activities.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Then there was the idea that there are a lot of national resources and some sort of an Arctic exception was discussed. There could be wars and conflicts elsewhere, but in the Arctic, there would be peace, in fact, and everyone should benefit from the economics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this idea flourished, I think, until probably 2014 and Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea when the war originally started in Ukraine, when cooperation was dialed down there across some of these different fora.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: So you could say that it kind of it's so far away in some ways from the central places of conflict in global politics that it just usually doesn't rate a mention of the news.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the other hand, you could say for some decades, it was definitely one of the places where you could get countries that view the world and how the world should operate quite differently, get them to actually cooperate.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: So probably a mixture of it is a little remote. And for a moment, at least, there was a lot of potential for cooperation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And how might the potential for cooperation change if two Arctic nations, Finland and Sweden, become members of NATO?
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: One of the things that Russia has liked is that Finland and Sweden were not NATO members. But because of this limitation in the Arctic Council, security issues weren't to be discussed there, even if those were precisely the ones that might have been good to discuss.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So how will it change? I think fundamentally depends much more on what will be Russia's desire to have a relationship and what kind of a relationship with the rest of the Arctic countries, the rest of the West.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: And that will flow into the Arctic. So there are a lot of issues that need to be discussed, including cooperation in, again, climate change, search and rescue, stuff like that, which really needs to get done just regionally.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it is a little bit held hostage by the broader tensions.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: When Finland and Sweden join NATO, there might actually be an odd silver lining here. Oh, which is the U.S. had some time ago suggested that the security issues, which weren't to be discussed in the Arctic Council, they could be discussed in the NATO Russia Council.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But of course, that would have left Finland and Sweden out nonstarter. But now if Finland and Sweden are becoming members in NATO, there's a chance that you actually discuss security policy defense in an established form, the NATO-Russia Council.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Which is one of the side reasons probably why that council hasn't been completely tossed off a cliff after this expansion of the war.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I guess that's maybe the silver lining. In the future, there could be a place where all of the Arctic countries meet to discuss the hard security stuff as opposed to the broader environment, climate, indigenous people issues.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: And is Russia going to be receptive to that? It seems like there a great desire to engage in serious cooperation. At the same time while they often make headlines there are always glimpses of these called confidence building measures, things that both sides do.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Tonight, U.S.-led NATO troops and Russian forces are ramping up intense war games in the region, signaling both sides are preparing for a possible conflict.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: If there's going to be a large weapons test or a military exercise, I'll say we, the West, NATO, tend to stick by them. Winter exercises like these are meant to counter Russia's home field advantage, waging war against an enemy that specializes in fighting in Arctic conditions.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And these may seem insignificant, but they're actually kind of important because there seems to be very little else.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: I mean, is there a chance here that you start to see military buildup in the Arctic the way you did back in the Cold War as a result of NATO expansion or the current conflict in Ukraine?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, you've actually seen it for a number of years already. It depends entirely on whose story you listen to.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: So I wouldn't pin the expanded war in Ukraine now or Finland and Sweden's membership in NATO into that. Russia has strengthened its Arctic military capabilities over a number of years by Finland's borders and has introduced weapon systems, hypersonic, quasi-ballistic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: As you say, they can travel at 20 times the speed of sound. They can be mounted on top of an ICBM and can carry nuclear weapons of up to two megatons.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Three, two, one, push! make sharp turns and take unpredictable courses on the way to its target, making it more difficult to intercept.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It made the northern fleet. So now we're talking about the kind of northwest of Russia, all Arctic, its own military district.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: It is such a critical part of Russia's nuclear second strike capability. Admiral James Fogel, the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe, is particularly concerned about this submarine, the Severodvinsk, nuclear-powered and armed with land-attack cruise missiles with a range greater than 1,000 miles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it is already militarized. But certainly, if you include the northernmost parts of Finland, Sweden, Norway, into the Arctic, we've seen very large NATO military exercises.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Most recently, about a month and a half ago, Cold Response 2022, which was one of the largest NATO exercises since the end of the Cold Wars.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So today we're doing mission-specific training in preparation for exercise Cold Response 22. And we're doing specifically on-off drills onto CH-53 super stallions.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: There's an increasing creeping militarization in the region. And who started depends on whose story you listen to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, we're in this strange situation where with one hand, the United States is funding a huge portion of Ukraine's war effort.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: And with the other, it's in, you know, negotiations with Russia to exchange nationals and, you know, involved in this sort of quasi harmonious situation in the Arctic.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is it possible to at the same time be in conflict with and in cooperation with a country like Russia or a country like the United States with these superpowers?
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Is that sustainable? I think it's almost a necessity because also I have to throw in China in here, which presents itself as a near Arctic country, a designation that the Arctic countries don't agree on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it gives some idea of China's interests, which are primarily probably economic in the region.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: But as we know, economics and military security stuff is increasingly intertwined.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Better to have China under the tent with all of us than not.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Norway, a much smaller country, Russia, of course, cooperate on search and rescue. And it's one of the issues discussed quite broadly in an Arctic context because everyone has an interest in this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's just being pragmatic, which from a Finnish perspective is how politics is done.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Finland's probably more interested in combating climate change than Russia is. But Finland realizes that if Finland is just yelling at Russia and not trying to coax Russia into cooperating in the Arctic on mitigating or preventing climate change, Finland's efforts won't be enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think this thinking is quite natural for most Finns. And I would suspect ultimately for a global power like the U.S., part of this may be actually relearning lessons from the Cold War.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Both about how you kind of interact in the Arctic, what you signal with different military exercises, how transparent you are, all of this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then part of it is what other lessons you can draw from the world in terms of when military, economics, politics, global challenges like climate change are all in the mix.
--:-- Charlie Salonius Pasternak: Charlie Salonius Pasternak is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki, Finland.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Victoria Chamberlain produced our show with help from Matthew Collette, Laura Bullard, and Paul Mounsey. Today Explained is on Twitter at today underscore explained. Vanilla Ice is at Vanilla Ice. Yes, baby.
