Commentary
Something happened that I thought I would never see in my lifetime. On July 5, Sweden and Finland signed accession protocols to begin the process of joining NATO. Full Swedish and Finnish membership in the Atlantic Alliance is likely before the end of the year.
This expansion of NATO is, to me, nothing short of epoch-making. Back in the 1980s, when I was just starting my career, I worked for the RAND Corporation. While there, I became, almost by default (no one else was interested), RAND’s resident Nordic security specialist.
I made my first trip to Sweden in 1986 and my first to Finland in 1987, during the bad old days of the Cold War. Even though both countries at the time faced a huge military threat from the Soviet Union (together with its Warsaw Pact allies), leaders in Stockholm and Helsinki stuck to their guns when it came to being fiercely neutral and nonaligned….