Sweden, Finland, and the Meaning of Alliance Membership

Submission Statement

Regardless of one’s position on Sweden and Finland’s decision to join NATO, the military value of doing so has been so broadly accepted that it nearly goes without saying. This article pushes back against that assumption, claiming that, given the preexisting connections between Sweden, Finland, and NATO, accession is actually more of a choice of identity and culture than defensive bolstering. From this perspective, the debate about the move’s impact on collective defense is missing the forest for the trees. The choice to give up their nonaligned policies and incorporate NATO membership into their identities as states will likely be the deepest and most durable impact of accession.

Katherine Elgin, Ph.D. is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where she focuses on great power relations, U.S. and allied defense strategy, and grand strategy.

Alexander Lanoszka is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Waterloo. He studies alliance politics, theories of war, and European security.

Rationalist understandings of military alliances argue that a formal treaty underpinning the security relationship is crucial for deepening and rendering more efficient defense cooperation between countries. However, Sweden’s and Finland’s cooperation with NATO prior to 2022, when the two countries announced their intentions to formally join the alliance, was far more substantial than what rationalist explanations would expect. Traditional approaches to military alliances overlook the importance of ontological, or identity-based, considerations that come with being a formal member of an alliance. Accordingly, not only is signing a treaty functionally important, it is also significant in terms of what it implies for national identity in terms of security policy. For Sweden and Finland, this suggests that the greatest change with NATO membership will be with regard to identity and strategic culture.