Despite the fact that the Soviet Union never fully embraced the Finnish policy of neutrality, present-day Russia has never questioned Finland’s integration into Western structures. In general, Russia, like the USSR, remains sceptical vis-à-vis all grey zone arrangements including neutrality, non-alignment and so forth, particularly towards closer cooperation with NATO, which Russia today regards as its adversary. Any enlargement of NATO would be a political defeat for Moscow as it notes in the latest update of its National Security Strategy from December 2015. It states that further enlargement of NATO and the moving of its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders constitute a threat to Russian national security. In the event of Finnish membership, the long common border would only underscore the geopolitical change.
Continued cooperation with NATO, enhanced partnership and the right and possibility to apply for membership, as well as a deepening of military integration with Sweden plus intensive political and military-technical cooperation with the United States are all developments eyed closely by Moscow, but usually commented on below the government level. But a possible Finnish (and/or Swedish) membership of NATO would trigger a Russian response. The geopolitical change would be too major for Moscow to ignore. Fenno-Russian relations would take a beating and the political reaction would be harsh and probably also “personal”, as in the case of the downing of a Russian fighter plane by the Turkish Air Force during the Syrian conflict. The unexpected and unprovoked breach of the border regime in Northern Finland in late 2015 is an example of Russia’s propensity to create a problem, then leverage it and offer to manage it without necessarily solving it. Russian reactions could also include increased pressure on the borders with the Baltic States. An attempt to politically activate the ethnic Russians living in Finland may also be considered. During the accession process, the atmosphere would be poisoned and trade could be badly hit, along lines currently experienced in the Turkish-Russian dispute. As a backdrop to the domestic enlargement debate, the traditional Finnish bilateral agenda would be in a shambles, even if Norway’s ability as a NATO member to sustain a similar “Russian agenda” points to the reversibility of such a state of affairs.
More often than not, the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s track record towards successive NATO enlargements has followed a repetitive sequence: first, opposition, indeed sometimes strident opposition backed by political and economic pressure, then tacit acquiescence and eventually a return to
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