The North American Treaty Organization (NATO) was established during the depths of the Cold War to contain Soviet advances and protect Europe from Moscow. For years NATO’s effectiveness depended almost exclusively on the Pentagon’s muscle. France’s President Emmanuel Macron derided it as “brain dead” after Trump turned Washington’s back on Europe and NATO. But now, thanks almost entirely to Putin’s vain aggression in Ukraine, NATO is strong, purposeful, and more ready than ever to defend Europe against Russia.
Finland is about to join the alliance now that Turkey and Hungary seemed poised to allow that Nordic country to enter NATO’s ranks. Although Finland is a country of only 6 million people, its eastern border abuts Russia’s for a full 832 miles. Finland has long experience with the Soviets and Russians and fought a tough little winter war against the Soviet Union in 1939-1940. Somewhat because of Finland’s experience with Russia, it brings to NATO more trained soldiers than might have been expected; fully 61,000 Finns are in uniform, and another 176,000 territorial militiapersons with fighting experience can be mustered in time of need.
Sweden, somewhat larger at 10 million people, should be joining NATO along with Finland. But Turkey is refusing for now to let Sweden become part of NATO because the Swedes have long been open to Kurdish refugees from Turkey, and readily give asylum to Kurdish opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly tyrannical rule in Ankara. (About 18 percent of Turks are Kurds, heavily discriminated against under Erdogan.)
The center-right Moderate Party-led coalition that now governs Sweden will not trade Kurds for NATO membership, as Erdogan prefers. That deprives NATO of Sweden’s 50,000 person strong army and, especially, its Russian-aware air force of 1,200 combat-ready planes. (Yesterday Sweden sent ten Leopard tanks to Ukraine.)
Turkey, which has the largest army within NATO after the United States at 425,000 troops, should constitute a forceful bulwark against Putin’s pretensions, especially in Ukraine. But, as demonstrated by Erdogan’s refusal to admit Sweden into NATO and completely to help Ukraine’s war effort as opposed to Putin’s, Erdogan is thinking only about his own, not Turkey’s interest. He is up for re-election as president on May 14. That means that he is using antagonism toward, and prejudice against, Kurds to strengthen his appeal to Turkish voters.
As an autocrat craving a greater rule in the world’s limelight, Erdogan is also trying to play both sides in the war on the northern shores of the Black Sea. He has supplied drones to Ukraine and supported Ukraine’s defense against Russia verbally, but he is also helping Putin in significant material ways. Turkey buys Russian petroleum and natural gas despite sanctions; permits scheduled Russian aircraft to fly daily to Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir; welcomes Russians to his cities; and allows critical war equipment and significant spare parts to transit Turkey en route to Moscow via Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Erdogan also talks regularly to Putin, despite being such a large component within NATO.
Erdogan’s accommodation of Putin belies Putin’s off-claimed propaganda that tries to attribute his vain invasion of Ukraine to NATO’s provocative creeping closer to the borders of Russia. Putin propagated such opportunistic excuses even before he occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014 and he and his supporters continue to declare that NATO is the aggressor, not Russia.
These self-serving arguments are attempts to obscure how blatant Putin’s imperialistic aims have been and are. Yet they have been taken up by a few academic apologists, even in the United States. The reality, however, is that NATO, finally threatened by Trump’s attempted emasculation, was of little threat to Russian security in all of the post-Soviet years. Only when Putin showed his determination to invade Ukraine, first in 2014 and then in 2022, did NATO slowly regain purpose and energy.
Putin’s attempt to reconfigure the map of Europe, to overturn Ukraine’s sovereignty, and to threaten the freedom in the world has led to the re-energization of NATO and the unification of Europe (minus Hungary). With Finland, and someday Sweden, becoming a part of NATO, the Baltic states (led by Estonia) becoming implacably anti-Russian despite their sizable Russian-speaking minorities, and even the Balkan nations of Bulgaria and Romania adhering strongly to the NATO effort, Putin’s folly is complete. He has aroused and resuscitated the sleepy NATO that he avers falsely had been threatening his and Russia’s security.
Just conceivably, Turkey could also turn against Russia after the election in May. Opposing Erdogan at the head of a recently forged political coalition is the Republican People’s Party’s Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a less-than-charismatic campaigner who nevertheless is leading Erdogan in recent polls. What Kilicdaroglu has in his favor is the anger at Erdogan among a large segment of Turkey’s middle class. Inflation under Erdogan is running at 55 percent per year. There are consistent shortages of staples. Erdogan is widely accused, too, of personally micromanaging the nation’s central bank badly, and thereby worsening the country’s economic prospects. Under his watch, too, Turkish officials mismanaged the aftermath of the three earthquakes that killed 52,000 Turks and Kurds and left several million homeless and hungry.
If May’s election avoids being rigged, and relieves Turkey of Erdogan’s domination, NATO will become stronger and Putin’s position more precarious. Only then should Putin truly feel encircled. Winning the war against Russia thus depends to a considerable extent on how Turkish voters perform in May.
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