Finland and NATO (1 - 2 min. read)

As a result of Putin and his cronies’ illegal invasion of Ukraine, Finland has applied to join NATO. 

There are hurdles to achieve before this application is accepted, and there will be consequences (notably, the placement of nuclear weapons into the Baltic) - all of which is well explained in the Caspian Report’s latest video.

One aspect of all this has caught my attention: out of some eight billion people - 8,000 million people - in the world, a nation of five and a half million people - and I live in a city of five million people (largest in my nation) - is in a position and has characteristics to be of such significance to the world's future.

I have considerable confidence in Finland’s capacity to hold such responsibility - I like the presence of so many  women in Finnish politics, I like what they’ve done about homelessness and that they’ve tried something close to UBI (although they haven’t  adopted it - the evidence gained, however, is of great importance in demonstrating the mental health benefits of UBI) and their governance and proactive localised self defence (see the linked video) generally. 

Finland is not perfect by any means - there are discrimination  issues  against  the  Sámi  people to resolve (and for that matter, Ukraine has transphobia, racism and even white supremacist issues to resolve), Finland’s initial involvement in World War (part) Two was in alliance  with nazi Germany (although the nazi’s were later  kicked out), and there are possibly other issues. 

However, I consider they are well suited to stand up against Russian aggression, just as Ukraine has. 

What is important is that NATO never uses Finland as a base to launch aggression against Russia. 

(And, as an infrastructure engineer, why Russia hasn’t adopted any of the many other infrastructure options available to avoid reliance on a long single road and rail link is mind boggling. That perhaps shows the dearth of human resources - especially thinking - when a nation is subjected to massive corruption and abuse as Russia has been subjected to by Putin.)