Northern Exposure: Will climate-warmer Finland prove to be the ‘perfect place’ for Russia to test NATO’s mettle?

Is President Putin looking to use the frigid northern climate to disrupt Europe? Some theories believe that after the clumsy warmongering in Ukraine, the Russian leader may try to arm one or more of the Baltic states. However, there are whispers that a future conflict is likely to start somewhere north of Finland Station.

Helsinki, I’m looking at you.

The speculation comes as several European defense ministers and British military commanders have warned of the risk of direct confrontation between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia in the coming years. As the newest member of the North Atlantic Treaty, Finland is in a unique position, not just geographically.

Finland, the easternmost of the Nordic countries, cannot avoid its proximity to Russia, and people on both sides of the border recognize this. While the West is generally more attuned to the Kremlin’s predatory behavior than at any time in recent memory, in Finland the antennas that have always been out are now reaching even higher.

That’s probably why the Finnish media was so quick to pick up on recent comments by Anders Pak Nielsen, a military analyst at the Royal Danish National Defense College.As first reported by a Finnish newspaper IltaletiNielsen believes that Finland could be a future target for Putin in part, if not in whole.

Nielsen is not alone in thinking that Russia’s grand plan is to dismantle NATO. But what’s new is that he sees such an endeavor as most likely to come to fruition. The most logical thing from Russia’s perspective would be to confront the alliance over Article 5, the right to collective self-defense.

Russia may someday try to carry out limited military operations that would trigger Article 5 against NATO members, but that would cause at least some NATO countries to back down from fear of broader war. It is also possible that they calculated that it would be within a certain range. .

According to this calculation, an attack on the Baltic states, or even Poland, would simply bring too many countries into the war for Russia to handle, so Mad Vlad would prefer an attack on northern Finland. A more viable option.

Nielsen estimates that the northern Lapland region of Finland is so remote that only two countries, Finland and Russia, would be involved in the initial conflict. Moreover, unlike the densely populated Baltic states, Lapland is largely unoccupied, meaning that the Russians can more easily orchestrate any escalation, at least on paper.

Putin said that if NATO’s major military powers failed to respond to attacks on smaller members like Finland, Russia would be given more freedom to seize additional territory, perhaps even more so than in theory. There is a possibility of placing a bet.

Also, Finland is a party to the North Atlantic Treaty, and then Sweden is also a party, so a certain element of deterrence is taking shape. Regular peeks into Russia’s domestic propaganda show that the Kremlin is slowly internalizing new geopolitical realities. But that will not be enough reason for Western military planners to rest on their laurels.

That’s because geological realities are also changing. Last month, in what some observers considered unusual, NATO named climate change as a security threat. Specifically, climate change has been called a “threat multiplier that impacts NATO’s security, operations, and mission in both the Euro-Atlantic region and the Alliance’s broader neighborhood.” It makes it difficult for the military to accomplish its mission. ”

It may be Balderdash, but welcome to Europe.

In addition to a front row seat to Finland, Russia has a continent-sized window into the Arctic, which is said to contain the world’s largest untapped fossil fuel reserves. NASA scientists say the Arctic ice sheet is retreating. It is incomprehensible to geophysicists that the less ice there is in the polar regions, the easier the exploration and eventual extraction of natural resources.

A significant portion of Russia’s oil and gas reserves are believed to be within the Arctic Circle, although some NATO member states have competing claims to some of these resources. In a sense, there is already a frozen conflict at the top of the world. Can you say it’s frozen forever?

Global warming or not, Russia is already expanding its network of military bases in the Arctic. One of them, Olenegorsk, is less than 320 miles by car across the tundra from the Finnish border.