Josh Hawley's Finland/Sweden NATO membership argument has nothing to do with defence

Finland, alongside Sweden, continues to strive for NATO membership. The US Senate has just voted to confirm Finland and Sweden as NATO members. The vote was a bit of a formality with a largely predestined result, with Josh Hawley the only senator opposing. This hasn’t exactly made him Mr. Popular in Finland.

Hawley is, of course, entitled to his opinion, and it’s hard for Finns to dictate that Americans have some sort of a duty to be allied to Finland if they don't wish so (apparently, considering the rest of the Congress and their votes, they do, though). NATO membership might currently be popular in Finland, but it’s not without its issues, as I’ve recounted here. Considering the issues I originally raised in the article, Turkey has certainly proved that it won’t make things easy for Finland or Sweden.

Indeed, I've seen some pro-NATO voices say that they are less positive on the organization than before Erdogan started issuing his demands. Some even claim that they don't consider the organization worth it if it means having to junk longstanding human rights policies, like extraditing people without due process simply because another country demands it.

However, I don’t intend to go through all arguments for or against Finland’s NATO membership here, but simply concentrate on Hawley’s reasoning for his vote. Hawley’s stance is by no means an isolationist one, let alone pacifist. Rather, the argument is that the European countries are not pulling their weight on defence and that US should pivot to the Pacific and confront China.

It’s not news that many in the US want to focus American attention away from Europe. Certainly there are undoubtedly many figures in Europe thinking hard about how this would affect European security. However, at this point, it’s hard to see a common European defense structure being constructed outside of the NATO framework without vast political upheavals, especially with the possibility that more non-NATO countries would follow Finland and Sweden to the alliance.

Thus far, one reason for European dependence on America has been the relative defense weakness of many European countries. As Hawley himself noted, though, Finland has just recently increased this budget considerably to match the supposed 2% spending goal. This was during the most left-wing and thus most anti-militarist government constellation that is currently realistically possible in Finland, and the more right-wing and conservative parties in the opposition would, if anything, support even larger military budgets.

There’s an issue in comparing the military budgets of different countries, as NATO counts several things in military budgets that Finland currently does not count, such as military pensions. In any case, military budgeting is not always a sufficient measure of military capability, which can often be quite situational.

Finland has certainly prepared for one particular situation, such as by fostering the strongest artillery in Western Europe. Indeed, the current phase of the war in Ukraine, by all accounts, demonstrates that in wars of traditional sort artillery continues to be the king, with Russians blasting away at Ukrainians and Ukraine seeking to even the score using HIMARS. This war is basically the one FDF has always trained for.

Of course, one might reasonably ask still whether FDF would still need copious naval and air support from other countries, chiefly the US. The Finnish Navy is… well, not really the mainstay of the Finnish defence, and the air force, even with the recently ordered F-35s, has generally not been expected to hold its own independently against Russia.

This, though, is considerably evened by the fact that the package deal also includes Sweden, a country with weak land forces but a stronger navy and particularly air force. The Finnish and Swedish armed forces just plain fit together quite well, which has been one of the reasons why one of the main alternatives conceived to NATO in Finnish debates has been a formal defence alliance with Sweden.

While a real case might be made for opposing the expansion of NATO on a variety of grounds, Hawleys’ arguments don’t really give an impression of a particularly consistent stance - mainly that there’s political credit to be had in portraying yourself as an anti-hawk on Russia in a situation where certain demands for politicians fitting that niche exists on the American Right.

And, of course, when it comes to Hawley’s actual point, the pivot to China hawkery, there are many in both major American parties who have been talking just about that for a long time. That, at least, is certainly something to take into account in all European security debates.