Finland, Sweden and NATO

Should Finland and Sweden join NATO?
Yes.
Followed by explanation:

Claim: no one will attack our country (Finland/Sweden)
Answer: I suppose you didn't bully anyone in school? That doesn't mean that you never saw anyone being bullied, or if you claim that then either you were blind or your memory is very shaky one. Sweden, Finland and Norway are maybe three of the nicest countries in the world. But only Sweden and Finland are competing on being most naive counting in the world; Norway joined NATO after Germany conquered in second world war. They learned the hard way that someone can find a reason to conquer them even when there isn't any clear sensible reason for it.
Sweden and Finland are counting on Russia to be nice even when its general says that Finland belongs to their control area and they fly test flights on both countries. Recent development in Ukraine should prove even to dumbest that this is not so: Russia was the best friend of Ukraine just one month before they invaded Krime from them and with demands for more.
I spoke with one Russian about it. First he was defending Russias right to conquer their neighbors. After that failed, he put the blame on Putin. On second world war happened the same: Soviet Union shot with cannons their own village and blamed it on Finland and started their attack on that pretence. Even today their school history books don't admit that they attacked Finland without any cause for it. And same is true today: Russian law allows the country to attack any other country "to protect their citizens". And if you follow Russian newspapers, then Finnish government takes Russian children from their parents in thousands. :-) This should be clear propaganda to anyone with any brains, but either some Russian mothers don't have such organs or they are paid for believing in whatever as this seems to be believed by reputable organizations and supported by people in demonstrations. At least the organization is corrupt: Russian mothers are lead by a certain

Claim: Russia is too weak
There was a time when this statement had plenty of truth in it. But by the time general public was starting to learn it, situation had changed. The real question is how long Finland and Sweden can withstand Russian forces without outsider, very substantial, help. So in other word, they are better off than Ukraine but not enough to make a difference on outcome.
There has been some arguments that Sweden is even weaker than Finland (thanks to being further from Russia). I haven't studied this and I don't want to give opinion on it. In any case the only thing that matters is that they are both too weak.

Claim: Finland and Sweden should ally closer.
Yes, this makes sense and something is happening. But in the end this would make decent effect only if you joined their militaries totally. And that won't happen. So basically you want to grow straws so that you can hang on them if you go over the edge. And the only sensible answer is to build a fence strong enough that you will never fall over it.

Claim: NATO won't help us any more than they will help Ukraine.
Lot of people seem to think that Ukraine is a NATO country. Well, they are not. And that is why NATO won't help them. At least not enough to matter with the outcome.

Claim: We don't need to belong to NATO. Either EU or NATO will help anyway.
So NATO won't help Ukraine, but they will help Finland or Sweden? Let's hope that either of them will, but if any help comes it will be much, much slower and weaker. And Finland used a lot of their bargaining chips when joining EU to remove military assistance on fellow EU countries when they joined it. Great, I think we have earned the title of most naive country in the world.

Claim: NATO would not help us anyway
No country has ever dared to attack on a NATO country, so it is hard to prove this false. But basically this is just an attempt to make reality to follow your ideas of it instead of trying to understand the reality. For example US , UK and Germany would all intervene on an attack to a NATO country. And Estonia would let their airports to be used for NATO support.

Claim: Al Qaida has attacked NATO
True. We all can evaluate which one is bigger threat to us, Russia or Al Qaida? Half of the Russian generals that mention Finland publicly make some kind of threats. AFAIK Al Qaida has never mentioned Finland. Finland has had two wars against Russia / Soviet Union during the last 100 years. Muslims have not made any terrorist attack in Finland ever. So if you choose any neutral argumentation, the answer is clear: Russia is greater threat than Muslim terrorism to Finland.

Claim: NATO would loose the war
As history should teach to you, on long term war, the more efficient economy will win. Even when Nato countries would use only a small percentage of their reserves to war, they would win easily (assuming that nuclear weapons are not used). So Finland or Sweden needs to succeed on defense only a short time until NATO will win the war in the air.

Claim: We can't trust the defense of our country to other countries.
At least in Finland, the answer is obvious: how does this prevent us from joining NATO? It doesn't! They will be happy if we don't rely on them too much.

Claim: NATO is too expensive.
Compared to what? Yes, if the alternative is that you don't want to defend your country. But if you think sensibly, it is cheaper to have sufficient defend forces when you can trust other countries to help you and when you can make joint purchases with other countries.

Claim: We have to join NATO operations like Afghanistan and Iraq.
1) Finland and Sweden are in Afghanistan already without being a full NATO member, so no changes in there. In places like Iraq we make our own decision if we will join it or not.

Claim: President Niinistö thinks that Finland should not join NATO
Yes, (at least) three groups have been against joining NATO in Finland: Finnish politicians, Helsinki Times (Helsingin Sanomat) and Aleksanteri Institute of Helsinki University. And all of them have more-or-less been proved wrong in it.

Let's start from Finnish politicians and to keep the story short let's focus on presidents only. Since Kekkonen, only Kekkonen and Ahtisaari have had their own standing in terms of Russia / Soviet Union. Perhaps not incidentally, these two are also the only world class politicians. Kekkonen was the only politician who could play on equal level with foreign top politicians. Since him, there has not been any other. Ahtisaari comes as second as he is equal to at least African heads of states. Whereas Koivisto, Halonen and now Niinistö have been bowing deep and hard to East. I had expected that Niinistö would not have fallen to that category, but his weakness was his ego: During Ukraine crisis Putin has been calling to Niinistö and as a master politician he has succeeded to make Niinistö to believe that he listens to what Niinistö says and thinks. So Putin is using Niinistö as one of his many pawns on the chess board, while Niinistö thinks that they are almost on equal levels. A bit similar happened to Halonen with Silvio Berlusconi: Finland was supposed to get their first EU office. Instead thanks to Berlusconi it went to Italy as their third and Finland got a lot smaller office as compensation.

Then let's go to Helsinki Times. Helsinki Times has been supporting Finland consensus policy: Russia is our biggest trade partner and we are close enough to be almost friends. Even after Russia took a piece of land from their other friend, Ukraine, what did they do: Sofi Oksanen wrote critique on Russia, but it was published only on their culture section (as she is also a writer). Foreign section news were the last one to find out what kind of "friend" Finland has. Or have they found it out yet? There is only one high quality politics paper in Finland and that is Uusi Suomi with their printed copy. Their web publication is similar rubbish to usual tabloid papers, but despite of that their printed copy is of high quality. I don't know if their journalists are equally bad as on other papers and their have a good filter before anything gets printed, or if they are acting as a tabloid on web on purpose.

And as third and least is Aleksanteri Institute. They represent the Russian knowledge in Finland, and I don't know if their director gets better salary from Russia than from the university or why, but he was also the last one to understand what was going on in Ukraine. When no one else believed in what Putin said, he was still repeating it like a well breed-ed parrot.

Claim: Finn are so tough soldiers that they will manage against Russia, even today as they did during second world war.
People who believe on that missed another lesson from second world war: there was at least one battle where Polish military showed their bravery. Polish cavalry rode to face German tank unit. Well, that battle ended up very quickly and today most people only remember how Hitler and Stalin made a pact on how they would divide Poland and Poland has nothing to say on that issue.