YESTERDAY Finland formally joined NATO, becoming the 31st member of the US-led imperialist military bloc in what NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, described as ‘The fastest ratification process in NATO’s modern history’.
The process would have been even faster but for one NATO member, Turkey, initially refusing to ratify Finland’s membership.
Once Turkey fell into line last week, the process proceded at breakneck speed.
The drive to bring both Finland and Sweden into the imperialist military alliance has been accelerating since Russia’s military operation in the Ukraine started in February 2022.
The process began in May 2022 when the then UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, acting as the frontman for the US government, visited both Sweden and Finland to urge both nations to join NATO and expand the war against Russia in the Ukraine.
The Swedish application has been delayed so far by the continuing refusal of Turkey and fellow NATO member Hungry to give their assent.
But the big prize for the imperialist powers was to get Finland on board to massively boost its military encirclement of Russia.
Finland has the largest land borders with Russia of any other European state, 830 miles, with the Finnish border within 100 miles of the major Russian city St Petersburg.
According to Finland’s foreign minister Pekka Haavisto in joining NATO, Finland will ‘seek to promote stability and security throughout the Euro-Atlantic region.’
Just what stability and security means for the NATO powers can be seen by the fact that NATO has now stationed 40,000 troops in eastern Europe in member countries such as Lithuania and Poland.
They also have another 300,000 troops on high alert in Europe.
Along with flooding Europe right up to the border with Russia with all these troops, the US has supplied 44.3 billion euros for military support to Ukraine along with thousands of missiles and artillery.
The UK is the second biggest donor to the fascist-supported Ukrainian regime – £2.3 billion in 2022, with a pledge by the Tories, a pledge enthusiastically endorsed by the Labour Party, to match that amount at least in 2023.
Spending billions on the war to weaken Russia to the extent that the imperialist nations can re-order the world and exert their domination on the vast lands of Russia has led to a massive explosion in the cost-of-living for the working class.
Oil, gas and food prices have been driven through the roof in the UK and Europe with the ruling class insisting that workers be grateful for accepting poverty as the price worth paying to rescue a world capitalist system from its economic collapse by returning the entire planet to the domination of the bosses and bankers.
The expansion of the NATO war machine with Finland’s membership signals that imperialism is prepared to wage an offensive war against Russia, risking a nuclear confrontation.
Responding to Finland’s accession, Russian foreign minister Alexander Grushenko said: ‘If the forces and resources of other NATO members are deployed in Finland, we will take additional steps to reliably ensure Russia’s military security by strengthening our military potential in the west and in the northwest.’
The enemy of the working class of the world is not Russia but the ruling class at home.
In Britain, the enemy of workers and young people is a Tory government prepared to spend billions on a war with Russia, even at the risk of creating a nuclear Armageddon, while simultaneously waging a war on the working class and its trade unions at home.
The only way to defeat this war on two fronts is for the working class to demand that the trade unions force an emergency Congress of the TUC to immediately organise a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
This will win the support of workers throughout Europe and the US who will join in to bring down their own governments and go forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution.
