NATO’s northward expansion is nothing to celebrate.
‘There is a before and after 24 February.’ So said Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson when she announced Sweden’s intention to apply for NATO membership last week. Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin voiced a similar sentiment when she announced her country’s NATO application. ‘Our security environment has fundamentally changed’, she told parliament.
All this is true. The Kremlin’s decision on 24 February to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine has proven a singularly transformative event. In a very real sense, there is a before and an after Putin’s act of aggression.
