Finland’s NATO Win Irks Moscow

Welcome to World Brief, FP’s revamped flagship daily newsletter. Today, we’re looking at Finland’s NATO accession, the United States and Philippines’ largest military exercise, and U.S. venture capital investments in China.

It’s a historic day for the world’s largest military alliance. Finland became the 31st member of NATO on Tuesday after almost a year of negotiations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

By adding Finland, the trans-Atlantic bloc doubles its border with Russia, expands the alliance’s F-35 stealth fighter program, and becomes home to one of the world’s three major 5G infrastructure providers. (The other two are in Sweden and China.) Finland also has the largest artillery force in Western Europe, with more firepower than the militaries of Poland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden combined, according to a November 2022 report by the Wilson Center.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the country’s accession cements the dramatic strategic shift that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine triggered in Europe and signifies a major setback for Moscow’s long-standing efforts to weaken the Western security alliance.

“When Putin launched his brutal war of aggression against the people of Ukraine, he thought he could divide Europe and NATO,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement on Tuesday welcoming Finland to the bloc. “He was wrong. Today, we are more united than ever.”

But Russia is already striking back. Just hours after Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto formally handed over the country’s accession documents, making its membership official, the Kremlin warned of potential “retaliatory measures,” including increasing its forces along its 832-mile border with the Nordic nation.

However, such threats may not feel as potent today as they once did. “I don’t really think that Russia has any capability to threaten Finland these days given the poor performance of Russian forces in Ukraine,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general. Moscow’s winter offensive over the last few months has produced poor results as Ukraine has fiercely defended key cities like Bakhmut while preparing for a spring counteroffensive.

In the meantime, Finns and Western allies alike are celebrating adding Helsinki to the group. How much of the negotiations were done under the Finnish art of sauna diplomacy is unclear. But as Robbie Gramer reported for FP Insider, fresh after an evening with the Finnish Diplomatic Sauna Society, NATO headquarters just installed its own steamy room.

• Get Out of Russia by Natalia Antonova

• Biden’s State Department Needs a Reset by Stephen M. Walt

• Why Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland Deal Will Fail by Abi McGowan

Indo-Pacific war games. On Tuesday, the United States and the Philippines announced they will participate in their 38th Balikatan, an annual bilateral military exercise, starting April 11. The training is the largest in the two allies’ history. More than 17,600 U.S. and Philippine service members will participate, compared to last year’s 9,000 troops.

U.S.-Philippine military relations have grown in the last few months. On Feb. 2, the two nations announced a deal increasing Washington’s access to military bases on the island from five to nine locations, an expansion of the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. On Monday, the location of those new bases was identified. Three of them are on Luzon island near Taiwan, and the fourth is on Balabac Island in the South China Sea. Defense officials from both countries have acknowledged the strategic locations of the four bases—each a clear sign of U.S. and Philippine efforts to counter growing Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific.

But some human rights activists worry Washington’s expanded support for the Philippines’ armed forces could endanger government dissidents, journalist Nick Aspinwall explained in Foreign Policy. “The U.S. is practically supporting a human rights violator,” one jailed activist told Aspinwall.

The Trump show. Former U.S. President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty in a New York court on Tuesday to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to three individuals—including adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal—before the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Although Trump is the first U.S. president to face criminal charges, he is far from the only democratically elected world leader to do so. In the last 15 years alone, two French presidents, two South Korean presidents, and one Italian prime minister were found guilty of corruption. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro currently faces five Supreme Court investigations, including one for allegedly inciting Brasília’s Jan. 8 attempted coup. And current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under indictment since 2019 on corruption charges. That’s not even including indicted current and former leaders from Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, and Taiwan.

Abuses in Africa’s youngest nation. A new report by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan has accused multiple senior government and military officials of human rights abuses, including large-scale killings, rape, and sexual slavery. Unity State Gov. Joseph Monytuil is among the top leaders said to be responsible for state-sanctioned killings in August 2022. Other chief officials listed in the U.N. report include Lt. Gen. Thoi Chany Reat for extrajudicial killings and Koch County Commissioner Gordon Koang for his part in attacks on civilians in early 2022.

South Sudan gained independence in 2011 but faced civil war just two years later. A peace deal was signed in 2018 after nearly 400,000 people died. But violence continues to decimate South Sudan’s streets, and millions of people face acute food insecurity and lack humanitarian aid.

Venture capital firms might be one step ahead of the Biden administration. According to FP’s Rishi Iyengar, Silicon Valley has been turning away from Beijing for years—far before Biden signed an executive order in September 2022 that placed more guardrails on Chinese tech investment in the United States. As of last year, 95 percent of investments in Chinese tech came from Asia; only 4 percent were from North America.

NASA announced which lucky astronauts would embark on its next mission to the moon on Monday—the first such mission in more than 50 years. And for the first time, a non-American is joining the A-team: Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Only 24 people in history have seen the full circle of the Earth, and all of them were Americans, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Now, America’s northern neighbor is getting a front-row seat.