Why the Left Is Accepting Finnish NATO Membership

“With that said, however, as a country with a 70-year commitment to welfarism, it would not be desirable to substitute this for Russia’s brand of plutocratic capitalism.”

As a formal Finnish application to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) appears imminent, I often find myself in the position—as a British-born permanent resident of Finland—of refraining from joining in online debates about NATO expansionism and the Ukraine conflict in general. The gulf between those on the online (and activist) left in the United Kingdom, United States, and Italy and the majority of my left-of-center friends in Finland (and in other Nordic and Eastern-European countries) is too great to bridge in a simple comment thread. It is simply not worth the frustration, as many Western leftists dismiss me as a NATO shill or as being jaundiced, given Finland’s 830 mile-long border with Russia.

This assumption of bias, while perhaps unfair, does point to a crucial factor underlying differences between Nordic and Eastern European leftists and Western ones: geography, and the impact it has on forming political opinions. This, in turn, leads to another point, one that is uncomfortable for the hard left, particularly in the social media age where unambiguous statements are favored: Pragmatism is real and a present factor in policy making, and it it as necessary for the survival and progression of leftist values as consistent adherence to socialist principles.

I do not wish to get into the particulars of the war in Ukraine itself in this piece. It is clear that the online left is divided between those who see the war as arising primarily from aggressive NATO expansionism and those who believe it stems from naked Russian warmongering. I will only state that both views are—to some degree—true. Given this, we need to consider the realities of responding to this situation in light of the strong interest that each country has in avoiding the spread of conflict.