Throughout the NATO membership application process, Finland has said that it needs Sweden to accompany it if it is to join NATO. After the shocking Quran burning ceremony in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, Finland declared that it might abandon Sweden and go it alone.(13)
This proposal was summarily rejected by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who declared that Sweden and Finland's applications for NATO membership would only be considered jointly by the Turkish government, adding that the issue was no longer moot and that talk of Sweden and Finland joining NATO today was “meaningless”.(17)
From Neutrality to NATO
Sweden and Finland were one country until 1809, when continental upheaval caused by a French artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte to destroy the 700-year-old union.
Finland became the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous region of the Russian Empire. This arrangement lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks carved out Finland as part of the territorial cessions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to make peace with Germany. After a brutal civil war fought between a coalition of conservative Swedish-speaking upper classes known as the “Whites” and the Finnish-speaking working class fighting as the “Reds”, Finland finally achieved its own status as a republic in 1919.
Finland enjoyed its newly gained independence in peace for just 20 years before Moscow began to regret liberating its western neighbor. This was the result of the failed Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, which was supposed to divide Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but in reality was merely a stepping stone for Berlin's march towards Moscow.
The war with Finland did not go well for Moscow. For every Finnish person killed, 12 Soviet soldiers were killed, and peace talks were soon started. Finland maintained its independence. The price paid at the end of WWII was to hand over some of the eastern provinces bordering the USSR to Moscow, but the Karelians took refuge in what was left of Finland.
Finland's Cold War Neutrality Ended in 1948 Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Agreement The treaty with Moscow granted Finland continued independence. In return, Helsinki promised that Western powers would never use Finland as a springboard for military attacks against the Soviet Union, a statecraft move known as Finlandization.(10)
If political stability, the absence of war and economic growth are any indicators, the treaty was a success: it kept tensions low in the Nordic region during the Cold War while at the same time making Finland one of the Soviet Union's main trading partners.
