Will Russia’s Military Build-Up Along The Finnish Border Likely Be The New Normal?

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

This is a predictable response to Finland’s unnecessary and highly provocative decision to join NATO…

The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article about how “Russia Beefs Up Bases Near Finland’s Border”, which relied on satellite imagery to reach that conclusion. Russia’s northern military build-up is portrayed as ominous in their piece, with speculation abounding about its post-Ukraine plans among those who they interviewed. To their credit, the NYT’s authors did reference Russia’s perceptions about NATO expansion, but they didn’t take them to their logical conclusion with regard to Finland.

No mention is made about how unnecessary its decision to join NATO was. Prior to that, Finland was already a so-called “shadow member” of NATO in the sense of having closely integrated with the bloc and practically obtained interoperability with its forces after years of joint training. Nevertheless, it didn’t have Article 5 mutual defense guarantees, but they objectively weren’t needed since there was never any credible scenario where Russia would launch an unprovoked attack or all-out invasion of Finland.

Shortly after the special operation began over three years ago, Finland’s liberal-globalist elite fearmongered that their country might be next after Ukraine, which was the false pretext upon which they reversed their decades-long stance towards formal NATO membership. Far from joining out of sincere concerns for their security, they did so solely to expand NATO’s border with Russia, which could then be presented as a symbolic Western victory no matter the outcome of this ongoing proxy war.

Here are three background briefings about this to bring unaware readers up to speed:

* 8 February 2024: “Finland Is Opening Up NATO’s Arctic Containment Front Against Russia”

* 25 May 2024: “A New Iron Curtain Is Being Built From The Arctic To Central Europe”

* 1 October 2024: “Don’t Forget About How NATO’s Northeastern Flank Can Stir Up A Lot Of Trouble For Russia”

They’ll now be summarized and placed in the larger geostrategic context of the New Cold War.

In short, Finland’s NATO membership enables the bloc to divert a portion of Russia’s forces from other fronts like the Ukrainian one while also expanding the West’s capabilities to project force into Russia, thus making it a highly strategic but also extremely dangerous move. The new Iron Curtain that’s descending upon the region upon linking together Finland’s newly strengthened border defenses, the “Baltic Defence Line”, and Poland’s “East Shield” will guarantee that post-Ukrainian tensions persist.

Even in the scenario of the nascent Russian-US “New Détente” evolving into a full-fledged strategic partnership built upon resource cooperation like joint Arctic projects of the sort that Moscow has proposed, NATO’s European members could still unilaterally threaten Russia via these means. In other words, the same strategy that the prior US administration sought to employ against Russia could be used by its nominal allies to provoke a crisis for complicating the new one’s ties with Russia, which is ironic.

That said, the likelihood of this being attempted – let alone succeeding – would be greatly reduced if the aforesaid “New Détente” enters into force since the US might simply refuse to extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to any of its “rogue allies” that stir up trouble along this front, thus deterring them. That said, the possibility always remains that a future US administration isn’t so friendly towards Russia or “decouples” from it on whatever pretext, so Russia can’t ever let its guard down from here on out.