Why Finland Joining NATO Checkmates Russia

of all the countries on Russia's borders Ukraine is the one that keeps military planners in the Kremlin up at night the most but Finland is almost right behind it and it's pretty easy to understand the basics of why Finland shares the second longest border with Russia and Europe it extends for 800 miles through thick forests and snow across essentially in no man's land where hardly anybody at all actually lives these 800 miles are therefore extremely difficult to patrol and monitor and even worse or extremely difficult to guard and defend and still worst of all finland's border has for centuries now been uncomfortably close to Russia's second largest and greatest City Saint Petersburg today St Petersburg is home to more than 5 million Russians it contributes nearly five percent of the entire Russian economy it is Vladimir Putin's Hometown and it is less than 150 kilometers away from The Finnish border this all means that Finland has always possessed the geographic ability to seriously threaten the Russians if it ever became hostile but Finland has never been able to do it alone because the Finns them elves have always been small in number there's only five and a half million people who live in Finland a day which is about the same population as just St Petersburg alone in Russia while the Russians overall have 27 times more people throughout the country Finland has never possessed the manpower to capitalize on their unique Geographic advantages over Russia which is precisely why the Russians have always been fearful of Finland gaining that Manpower by allying with powerful enemies abroad and letting their armies enter the country and for those basic reasons it has always been within the interests of Moscow to either dominate Finland outright or at least keep them in a state of political neutrality because if Finland ever did come under the sway of a hostile foreign power they could become the ones to capitalize on finland's geography to threaten the survival of Russia and so for more than 200 years now since the days of Napoleon the Russian strategy of pacifying Finland and preventing them from joining hostile military alliances more or less worked out but in a matter of months all of these centuries of careful Russian foreign policy and diplomacy in regards to Finland will come crashing down into ruins because Finland has finally decided to end its neutrality for Good by joining the NATO alliance alongside the United States it will cost the Russians dearly for generations to come by checkmating their Ambitions in the north and it is one of the most catastrophic foreign policy disasters for the Kremlin to have come from Putin's invasion of Ukraine Russia's strategy of dominating Finland began more than 200 years ago back in 1808 at the time the Russian Empire had recently Allied itself to Napoleonic France and the biggest enemy they faced were the British and the Royal Navy Sweden who at the time controlled Finland Allied themselves to the British and remember Finland is uniquely posed to directly threatening St Petersburg when they acquire Manpower from abroad and back then this was even more important because Saint Petersburg was the capital of the Russian Empire over Moscow fearful of the Royal Navy's ability to utilize Swedish and Finnish ports in the Baltic to threaten Saint Petersburg the Russians demanded that the swedes shut down all of their ports to the British and close the Baltic Sea to them which they refused to do and in response the Russians invaded Finland in 1808 to take over the ports themselves in less than a year the Russians had completely overrun the entirety of Finland and decisively defeated the swedes forcing a piece that ceded Finland in its entirety over to the Russian Empire in doing so Russia had ensured the security of Saint Petersburg by pushing Their Own Line Of Control hundreds of kilometers away from it and dominating the Gulf of Finland on all of its sides in the process making any hostile attack on the Russian Capital almost Unthinkable and better yet Sweden was so decisively defeated during this war that they have never fought another one ever since in fact Sweden was so crushed by this Russian invasion that they would continue keeping their security policy officially neutral for the next 213 years until the 16th of May 2022 when in response to another Russian invasion they would finally announce their intent to join NATO alongside Finland and and as for Finland this Russian invasion in Conquest back in 1808 would prove to be equally as fateful because they would remain a forced part of the Russian Empire for the next 108 years until the Russian Revolution and the collapse of the Empire during World War One in 1917 but even after finland's Independence the Russians were far from done with them in the chaos of the Russian Revolution many states of the former Empire emerged as independent besides Finland but as the Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War and began reassembling the pieces of the former Empire Finland entered right into the crosshairs of the Soviets by 1939 the geopolitical environment in Europe between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany was tense the two European superpowers signed the molotov ribbon Trot pact dividing Eastern Europe between them into spheres of influence with Finland being assigned to the Soviets as the Nazis and Soviets jointly invaded and conquered Poland the Soviets demanded fealty from the Baltic states in the form of them granting Soviet military bases on their territories which they reluctantly agreed to the Soviet gays next turn to Finland at the time Finland controlled more territory than they do today especially across the corellian Isthmus here meaning that the Finnish border back then was only 32 kilometers away from the Soviet Union's second largest city Leningrad modern day Saint Petersburg once again ever fearful of Finland entering into a military alliance with a hostile foreign power and gaining the manpower to threaten Russia in this case an alliance with Nazi Germany the Soviets presented the Finns with an ultimatum they wanted Finland to see territory in the corellian Isthmus up to here so as to push the Border further away from Leningrad in addition if Finland seating all their islands in the Gulf of Finland and allowing a Soviet military base to be built near the capital Helsinki in exchange the Soviets would give Finland these territories further to the Northeast to compensate them but Finland refused and countered with an offer to seat a much smaller amount of territory down here in the South the Soviets refused encountered again with a slightly less extreme demand for territory which the Finns again refused in encountered with a slightly more generous offer of territory and at that Stalin rejected diplomacy and ordered an all-out invasion of the country with half a million soldiers from the Red Army that Invasion turned into a quagmire for the Soviets as the Finns transformed their entire country towards fighting them off the Soviets took more than four times as many casualties as the Finns during The Invasion with at least 320 000 killed and wounded compared to just seventy thousand for the Finns regardless the Soviets managed to eke out a pyrrhic victory and forced Finland into signing the Moscow peace treaty a few months after the invasion in which Finland was pressed into seating over nine percent of their pre-war territory over to Russia including the valuable city of vyborg which at the time was the second largest city in Finland and which nearly a century later would become the starting point of Russia's Nordstrom pipeline to Germany but Finland retained their overall Independence Russia's strategic depth around Leningrad was increased but 15 months later Nazi Germany launched their invasion of the Soviet Union and Finland sees the opportunity to Ally themselves to the Germans and go to war with the Soviets again in order to reclaim their lost territories they didn't really have much else of a choice though the Soviets were their primary enemy who had just attacked them and taken over some of their land Sweden was neutral and the Western allies were Allied to the Soviets thus at the time Nazi Germany was the only great power able and willing to support the Finns against the Russians German troops were allowed to enter Finland and the Finns assisted the Germans in the siege of Leningrad and the greater invasion of the country Finland and the Soviets would go on a fight for another three years until September of 1944 when they signed another peace treaty that essentially confirmed the status quo of the older peace treaty only this time Finland was also forced into expelling all foreign militaries from their borders following the end of the war in the defeat of Germany Finland realized that its geopolitical status as a small capitalist country directly next door to an expansionist communist superpower who now dominant donated Eastern Europe and the entire Southern shore of the Baltic was incredibly precarious and so in order to maintain their independence and sovereignty they were left with little other choice but to essentially carry on throughout the Cold War as a neutral State Finland never took part in the Marshall Plan and never received financial aid from the United States so as not to anger the Soviets Finland agreed that it would resist attacks against the Soviet Union through their territory and would call on the Soviet Army to defend them were such an attack ever to take place and it never joined either NATO or the Warsaw Pact and yet at the same time the Finns organized their entire military and much of their society towards a singular purpose deterring the Russians from ever attacking their country again through a fanatical policy of Total Defense mandatory military conscription for all men in the country remained in force throughout the Cold War and finished military spending remained high for a country of their size after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the land borders between Finland and Russia remained unchanged the only difference was that instead of the Soviet Union next door the country was now called the Russian Federation Finland proceeded into the post-cold war world cautiously they technically abandoned their stance of total neutrality alongside Sweden by joining the European Union in 1995 but they each maintained their military neutrality by avoiding membership in NATO even as NATO expanded eastwards to cover many of the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet republics who were understandably fearful of a resurgent Russia in the future who might want to take them back over again Sweden temporarily abandoned their military conscription in 2010 and began transitioning towards a smaller all-volunteer professional Army but Finland with 800 miles of border with Russia and recent memories of the past never changed course on their policy of Total Defense and mandatory conscription for men even today three-fourths of all men in Finland continue to complete their mandatory military service and join the reserves in the event of a war with Russia Finland can rapidly mobilize around 280 000 men today to join the ranks of the army and they have around a million men in total in the reserves that it can call upon if needed representing more reserves than Germany France and Italy all combined and representing nearly a fifth of the entire Finnish population and unlike the Russians they will be well armed with the latest weaponry and Firepower while they didn't directly join NATO the Finns cooperated with the alliance extensively in military exercises and purchasing of NATO Weaponry The Finnish Army possesses around 1500 artillery and Rocket systems which is one of the largest artillery arsenals in modern Europe and greater than the United Kingdom they have more main battle tanks than Germany a country of more than 83 million people and their Air Force wields a fleet of 64 American-made F-18 fighter jets which will very shortly be fully replaced with 64 modern American-made F-35 fighter jets which will cost them 10 billion dollars to acquire fire and on top of their plentiful Advanced Equipment the fins themselves are highly motivated to defend their country a poll conducted back in 2016 showed that Finns possessed the highest willingness to defend their country anywhere in Europe with a whopping 74 of the population saying that they would and support for conscription in the country has never gone away with a poll in 2021 showing 73 approval among Finns for maintaining mandatory conscription for men as I said before finland's military and Society has been designed over the decades in a way to deter another Russian invasion as much as physically possible and even after the collapse of the Soviet Union they have never gotten too comfortable with their neighbor but finland's foreign policy continued to avoid joining NATO outright so as not to provoke Moscow too unnecessarily even after the Russians invaded Ukraine for the first time back in 2014 and seized control over the Crimean Peninsula a poll showed that only 22 percent of Finns supported joining the NATO alliance that attack was just too small to send fears through Helsinki but everything would change after February 2022 when the Russians massively escalated the geopolitical tensions in Europe by using 200 000 soldiers to launch an all-out invasion of Ukraine and in doing so showed their willingness to utilize Warfare and invasion in Europe as tools in the 21st century just like they did in the 20th the calculus of risk for Finland a country who much like Ukraine has been invaded by Russia in the past and was not a member of NATO and not under direct NATO protection was changed irreparably if Russia was willing to risk everything by invading Ukraine they were unpredictable and potentially even irrational and might be willing to invade Finland again even if it seemingly made little sense to do so and so the Finns finally decided to do something that they had avoided doing for decades if not centuries they applied to formally join between a western military Alliance alongside Sweden NATO and now Russia has found itself in a catastrophic situation that it has largely managed to avoid ever since the Napoleonic era in addition to finland's formidable military strengths on land and air and centuries-long experience dealing directly with the Russians Sweden brings a lot to the table as well the Swedish Navy is 500 years old and a first-rate force in modern Europe that has remained relatively dormant for centuries they wield some of the world's most advanced submarines in the Baltic and their company Saab produces some of the world's most advanced and capable fighter jets and radar systems they also produce the enlaw anti-tank missile which is currently second place only to the American-made javelin in destroying Russian tanks in Ukraine combined with the f-18s and f-35s in The Finnish Air Force the swedes can directly rival the Russian Air Force's Assets in northern Europe without even factoring in additional assets from the United States but it isn't just their own military prowess that concerns Russia if they join NATO as it has for centuries it is also their unique Geographic ability to directly threaten core russian territories and interests and their ability to utilize the Manpower of other states in the NATO alliance to better capitalize on those advantages first and foremost are the naval considerations within the Baltic Sea Finland and Sweden entering NATO will immediately transform the Baltic into a nato-dominated lake with the only Russian points of control left immediately around Saint Petersburg in the Gulf of Finland and their exclave around kaliningrad with the Northern and Southern Shores of the Gulf of Finland fully beneath the NATO umbrella and the entire perimeter of the Danish Straits added with the entrance of Sweden and considering that the Baltic itself is quite shallow with an average depth of only 54 meters shared military intelligence and sonar will permanently prevent the Russian Baltic Fleet and its submarines from ever maintaining the element of surprise within the Baltic and all of their movements will be able to be accurately tracked additionally Sweden's control over the island of gotland in the center of the Baltic will serve to Grant NATO forces access to an Unsinkable aircraft carrier that can be used to dominate The Sea by air perhaps most importantly these facts will mean that the security of the three Baltic states will be improved dramatically before the entrance of Sweden and Finland into the alliance the Baltic states were widely regarded as the least defensible territory within NATO the only way to reinforce them by land is through the narrow suvulke gap between Russia's highly militarized exclave in Europe kaliningrad and Russian Allied Belarus a gap that is less than 70 kilometers wide across largely flat and difficult to defend terrain that the Russians would be theoretically capable of rapidly blocking in the event of a war which would isolate the baltics from the rest of NATO a study made by the Rand Corporation back in 2016 suggested that in the event of a Russian NATO conflict Russian forces would be able to quickly close the suvulke gap and occupy the Estonian and Latvian capitals within 60 hours of the War beginning leaving nato in a difficult position to retaliate or liberate them but that calculus is completely changed with Finland and Sweden and NATO any chance of Russian naval or Air Supremacy over the Baltic is essentially impossible leaving NATO with the almost guaranteed ability to reinforce the Baltic states by sea and air rather than by piling troops through the 70 kilometer wide suvulke gap on land gotland will be especially valuable towards this objective granny NATO warplanes and ships a forward operating base to conduct Supply runs and attacks on Russian Targets in the Baltic States from but then there's also finland's 800 mile long border with Russia itself with the ability to mobilize and deploy forces faster on this front than the Americans or Western Europeans Finnish and Swedish forces could directly threaten Russia's second largest city that lies almost immediately across this border St Petersburg but that's hardly what's the most concerning thing to Russia here far more alarming to Moscow as their enormous concentration of military hardware and Assets in the very far north of the cola Peninsula just to the east of finland's Northeastern border the cola Peninsula is one of the most heavily militarized locations on the planet with a heavy concentration of Russia's nuclear weapons Arsenal there are multiple nuclear ICBM launch facilities dotted around here that have the range to strike anywhere in Europe or North America by flying over the Arctic Circle there are also multiple bases here that are home to many of Russia's strategic bomber forces including the tu-160 the fastest operating bomber in the world that can travel twice the speed of sound and is capable of carrying nuclear bombs to most of Europe and North America by again flying over the Arctic Circle and it is also crucially home to mermaids the largest city anywhere within the Arctic Circle and one of Russia's most significant ports because of the fact that it is Russia's only Port facility on the Arctic Ocean that doesn't freeze over during the winter because of the Polar jet stream because of this fact the Russian Northern Fleet is headquartered nearby in severe morsk with several other operating bases nearby and it is the Crown Jewel of the Russian Navy and Russia's nuclear deterrence with Kremlin long being aware of how precarious their position is within the shallow and enclosed Baltic Sea the Russian Baltic Fleet there only has a single submarine currently garrisoned with it and it doesn't even have the ability to fire nukes Russia has instead focused the majority of their nuclear deterrence against the West up here around mermaids the northern Fleet controls the Lion's Share of Russia's Advanced nuclear submarines including the modern boray class Subs capable of carrying 16 ballistic missiles on board and up to 96 nuclear warheads there are also the conventional yawson-class nuclear submarines that carry conventional cruise missiles that can be used to hit offshore oil and gas infrastructure and Coastal targets and unlike within the constrained and shallow Baltic these submarines can operate across the Arctic ocean under the ice largely with impunity and can even pass through the wider giuk gap between Greenland Iceland and the UK in order to operate in the northern Atlantic but finland's entry into NATO massively complicates Russia's military plan and deterrence up here most important to consider is that all of Russia's icbm's strategic bombers and the northern Fleet itself in the cola Peninsula are almost supplied entirely from the rest of the country by just a single Twin Highway and rail Corridor called the r-21 extending up north from Beyond Saint Petersburg and Moscow this highway and Railway extends for hundreds of kilometers and Crosses through some of the most sparsely populated and empty forests anywhere in the world and it all runs almost immediately parallel to the Finnish border with less than 100 kilometers between them at the narrowest points this means that in the event of a greater Russia NATO conflict rapidly mobilized Finnish Special Forces or even forwardly deployed American Special Forces could theoretically Advance at any point along this long and hard to patrol area and occupy or destroy any section of the r-21 highway and block off the majority of Russia's nuclear and submarine deterrent from receiving resupplies from the rest of Russia by land that that would be a disaster for Russia and push them into a situation where they would have to either use their nuclear weapons on the peninsula or probably lose them but the other problem is that with Finland and Sweden and NATO NATO's Geographic presence within the Arctic Circle would be greatly extended granting the entire Alliance better early warning missile detection from any icbms or bombers taking off from anywhere in the nearby Cola Peninsula headed towards Europe with America and Europe's Advanced missile defense systems and disadvantage and early warning it's uncertain exactly how many Russian missiles would end up striking their targets before retaliatory NATO missiles would strike theirs and that's why almost as a last resort to their increasingly terrible ability to actually deter the West the Russians have recently been developing their ultimate doomsday weapon the Poseidon torpedo this is essentially a drone that takes the shape of a torpedo that possesses up to a 100 Megaton nuclear payload which is huge it can be loaded up onto a new class of Russian nuclear submarine the first of which is is called the Belgard that was just recently delivered to the northern Fleet in July of 2022 just after the invasion of Ukraine and the Finnish and Swedish announcements to join NATO the Belgrade will be headquartered in the port of severod Vince on the White Sea much further away from The Finnish border and the rest of the northern Fleet facilities within the cola Peninsula this means that in the event of a war with NATO the belgarad and future nuclear submarines just like it armed with a Poseidon Torpedoes should be capable of discreetly leaving Port through the White Sea in the Arctic Ocean and towards either the GI UK Gap in the west or the Bering Strait in the East once there the belgarad could fire the Poseidon which can allegedly travel for up to ten thousand kilometers underwater before detonating its enormous nuclear payload immediately offshore of coastal targets like New York or Los Angeles generating an incoming mega tsunami that would be impossible to stop or defend against once it happens once Finland enters NATO and if they end up allowing American troops and bases to be set up there Russia's ability to threaten the West with nuclear missiles and bombers through the air will be challenged and their Reliance instead on threatening nuclear deterrence with these kinds of underwater doomsday Torpedoes will likely only increase but it's unclear if Finland would actually allow American forces there in the first place Finland still doesn't want to unnecessarily provoke the Russians after all and they are explicitly joining NATO for the purposes of deterrence and protecting their own country from an invasion not for launching an attack into Russia The Finnish military is considered more than capable of Defending itself and as such there's been a lot of talk of Finland following the so-called Norway model once it officially joins even though Norway was an original founding member of NATO and has been a part of the alliance for decades its close shared border with Russia's valuable Cola Peninsula up in the far north meant that the Norwegians also made sure to never unnecessarily anger the Russians by allowing American and NATO military bases or nuclear weapons to be placed on their territory and this has remained the case through to the present should Finland join the alliance they will likely end up following a similar path and deny any other members of The Alliance to station troops or nuclear weapons within their country so as to continue not unnecessarily provoking the Russians and at the same time Finland and Sweden's entrance into NATO must be approved by all 30 other members of The Alliance and as of the production of this video two have continued to remain as holdouts Hungary and turkey Finland and Sweden expect that they'll both approve by the end of the year and both should become full members of The Alliance by April of 2023 and when they do centuries of History will suddenly be upended and Russia will face its most vulnerable position in the north it has ever faced since at least the 18th century now security issues don't just affect countries on a macro level they also affect individuals like you and me regardless of how well prepared we are and they can sometimes result in catastrophic consequences one of my friends on nebula has a channel here on YouTube Alex's corner and they recently got their Channel stolen and transformed overnight into a repository for cryptocurrency scam videos and live streams this same thing has happened to literally thousands of YouTubers on this platform both large and small over just the past couple of years who have all lost their accounts to crypto scammers nearly including myself this keeps on happening because every Creator here on YouTube and elsewhere gets constantly bombarded by emails that appear to be from places like YouTube our bank our social media accounts or companies who want to sponsor us but are actually just an elaborate and discreet attempt at stealing passwords in order to gain account access it's a scheme known as fishing and they can affect anyone three years ago I nearly fell victim to one myself when I received an email that appeared to be from YouTube informing me I received a copyright strike which I opened and clicked on to review it took me to a website that looked just like YouTube where I logged in with my account credentials and password and that was all it took the phishing attempt stole my password and the person who sent it briefly gained access to my YouTube channel where they diverted the account to where all of my AdSense payments were going to and these schemes are getting better disguised every single day so it's not crazy to think that one or two might eventually sneak in and convince even the most seasoned of Internet veterans and that's why in order to protect myself I use today's sponsor nordvpn and their threat Protection Service which includes a specific feature to warn you about phishing links as well as features like a blocker for malicious ads and dark web monitoring to alert you if any of your passwords have been leaked anywhere online and all of these features come with a robust VPN as well so you can protect your data and unblock all that content on Netflix and other streaming sites as well best of all you can try out nordvpn by following the link down in the description below or by clicking the button that's here on screen right now and you can try it out with absolutely zero risk Nord has a 30-day money-back guarantee so you get to try it out for yourself and decide if it's worth it without any commitment so go to nordvpn.com real life lore to get the two-year plan and four additional months for free tax dawn it's a great way to help support real life lore at the same time and as always thanks for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 17,028,588

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: si9Phc9ArpU

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022