20-05-22 02:47:00,
On Wednesday in Brussels, the governments of Sweden and Finland submitted their applications to become members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.
In a statement released on May 16, the Swedish government said: “The government’s assessment is that NATO membership is the best way to protect Sweden’s security in light of the fundamentally changed security environment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
As of now, it is widely expected that the two countries will become the 31st and 32nd members of the military alliance. Yet a number of think tank scholars and former US officials have expressed skepticism as to whether the decision on the part of the two Nordic countries was either necessary or, given Russia’s actions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine over the past 12 weeks, wise.
Christopher Preble, co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told me this week that in his view “the addition of new members does not necessarily improve the alliance’s effectiveness. If even a single country disagrees, about, for example, the nature of a particular threat, or the best means for addressing that threat, then that could impede or delay a timely response. This is true for the addition of any member to NATO – or any other club or group, for that matter.”
Preble’s skepticism was seconded by the Center for the National Interest’s National Security Fellow Sumatra Maitra, who forcefully pushed back on the idea that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes it imperative that Sweden and Finland join the alliance.