NATO’s newest member is finding out this fact.
Finland became NATO’s newest member today (4 April 2023), upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the United States at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. NATO Allies signed Finland’s Accession Protocol on 5 July 2022, after which all 30 national parliaments voted to ratify the country’s membership.
Finland is learning that it is expensive to belong to the alliance that offers protection under the US nuclear umbrella (what does that actually mean?).
Barely a year after Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland cast aside decades of non-alignment and self-reliance and joined the NATO alliance.That happened at break neck speed, as these matters go, but gaining membership may have been the easy part. Now comes the complicated process of integrating itself into the alliance and its requirement of collective defense — with all of its financial, legal and strategic hurdles.“Joining NATO is an expensive business, and supporting Ukraine is an expensive business, and there’s no end to that in sight,” said Janne Kuusela, director-general for defense policy at Finland’s Ministry of Defense.Membership in NATO has long been considered a cheap benefit, given the American nuclear umbrella and the principle of collective defense. But NATO also has extensive requirements of its members — not just spending goals for the military, but specific demands from each country for certain capabilities, armaments, troop strengths and infrastructure as defined by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.Achieving that will demand some difficult and costly decisions from the government and military officials as they learn to think strategically outside Finland’s borders and adapt its forces and their capabilities to the alliance’s needs.
The Pentagon has warned Congress that it’s running out of money to replace stockpiles of weapons that have been sent to Ukraine and has been forced to slow down the replenishment of the US military.
The warning comes after Congress passed a short-term funding bill to avert a government shutdown that did not include money to continue fueling the proxy war in Ukraine.
According to AP, Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord told House and Senate leaders that the US military has $1.6 billion left of the $25.9 billion Congress has authorized to replace weapons poured into Ukraine.
“We have already been forced to slow down the replenishment of our own forces to hedge against an uncertain funding future,” McCord said in a letter to congressional leaders. “Failure to replenish our military services on a timely basis could harm our military’s readiness.”
McCord said the Pentagon is completely out of funds for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the administration to purchase weapons for Ukraine and is meant as more long-term support. He said without new funding for the war soon, the Pentagon will be forced to restrict the types of arms being sent to Ukraine that are “critical and urgent now as Russia prepares to conduct a winter offensive.”
(antiwar.com)
A populist party in Slovakia that opposes providing military assistance to Ukraine has won the country’s elections, a vote that could significantly change the NATO member’s foreign policy and support for the proxy war.
Former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who leads the Slovak Social Democracy party, known as Smer-SD, campaigned on ending military aid to Ukraine. Fico doubled down on his position after winning the vote, saying, “people in Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine.”
Smer-SD won 29.9% of the vote and 42 seats out of the nation’s 150-seat parliament. Since the party did not win a majority of seats in parliament, it needs to form a coalition government. Fico said he was ready to form a government once given the mandate by the president.
Fico’s expected partners are the leftist Hlas party, which is a spin-off of Smer-SD and gained 14.7% of the vote, and the nationalist Slovak National Party, which received 5.6% of the vote. If the three parties join forces, they will have 79 seats in parliament.
(antiwar.com)