Nato’s Nordic Expansion, A Decision at Stake. Consequences Upon the European Security Landscape

The international security environment, particularly the European one, is at a significant turning point, leading to substantial, long-term structural changes. From this point of view, the perspective of Finland and Sweden joining NATO under unfavorable European security conditions has a critical impact on the strategic environment. Without any certainty at the time of writing this research, the analyzed extension is approached as a possibility with a high degree of fulfillment, given the approving elements displayed a month before the NATO Summit in Madrid, June 28-30, when a new strategic concept will be launched. The accession of the two Nordic states represents, from an unquestionable standpoint, a return to the specifics of the Cold War period, characterized by ideological and political clashes between the West and the East, between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. More specifically, we are witnessing a maneuver to contain Russia, with the Baltic Sea becoming a NATO Sea and looking at the launch of a new deterrence policy by expanding the European security zone under the power of collective defense. Although, de facto, Finland and Sweden could be assimilated into the circle of the allied states, given the military cooperation between them and the Alliance that has been going on for almost three decades, de jure membership gives weight to the adherence process, including by the political symbolism of Article 5.