Northern Exposure
Morning briefing: Finland, Ukraine, the Kesselschlacht, and more. On many fronts, in the US and Europe, the forcing is at hand.
Yesterday, the Finnish President Finnish President Sauli Niinistö flew to Washington for an emergency meeting with Joe Biden in the White House.
As Joshua Treviño recently noted in the magazine, Russia has threatened “military consequences” should Finland or Sweden join NATO. Finland recently began sending arms and ammunition to Ukraine. This, he wrote, was “uniquely portentous.”
It is one thing for a nation at some remove—the (non-EU) United Kingdom, for example—assisting in the battlefield killing of Russian soldiers. It is something else altogether for a former Russian client state, with a long Russian border, to do it.
Today he argues that the next flashpoint will probably be a Finnish (or Swedish) application to join NATO. “A démarche will be issued, the countries in question will refuse to comply, the alliance in question will refuse to comply, and the scenario will unfold.”
He wrote this while Niinistö was en route to Washington. This morning, Ilta-Sanomat (Finland’s biggest digital news outlet)1 reported that following his meeting with Biden, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö announced that Finland would intensify its security cooperation with the United States, though he didn’t specify what this would mean. Niinistö reported that he was “happy to state that NATO’s doors will remain open to Finland,” and the United States “attaches great importance to the Open Door policy.” He believed that if Finland were to apply for membership, the process would “progress rapidly.”
In the same newspaper, Finnish foreign policy experts concurred on this point: “The language has changed.” According to Pete Piirainen, a visiting senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute, “Instead of the option [to join NATO], the emphasis was on NATO’s open door, membership criteria, Finland’s membership, and Western unity.” Petteri Orpo, chairman of Finland’s Coalition Party, told Ilta-Sanamat, “Concrete steps are now being taken. … We are seeking the route to NATO membership together. Deliberately, but without delay.” Anu Vehviläinen, the centrist former Speaker of Parliament, said, “Finland is really a part of the West. The process of closer co-operation with the United States has been sealed. Finland and Sweden share a common path, and the door to NATO is open.”
Read more about what this might mean in the magazine.
He raises another important point:
Much has been made of the Russian failures to storm Kyiv and Kharkiv, and though there is no question that they intended to do both, it is not at all clear that they are still seriously trying. You can assess as you wish here: they are taking an operational pause to revise tactics and operations; they are fatally preoccupied with low morale and bad logistics; or they have changed their aim and now operate versus Kyiv and Kharkiv mostly to tie down Ukrainian forces there. Any one of these may be true, but the last is most concerning, because what it looks like—this is based on no especial insight beyond the ability to read a map—is that the tremendous Russian gains in the south will become the base for a drive north. The Russian concentration around Kyiv will likely swing west of the city, and head south to join the offensive out of Kherson. The Russian concentration at Kharkiv will attack relentlessly in the hopes that Ukrainian forces stay fixed, and there is no general movement to escape the pocket. You therefore must contemplate the prospect of a grand encirclement, what the Germans call a Kesselschlacht, trapping and destroying the bulk of the armed forces of Ukraine.
In this scenario, the political pressure in the West to resupply the pocket will become intense.
Read NORTHERN EXPOSURE at the Cosmopolitan Globalist.
From the Cosmopolitan Globalists
Yesterday, Vivek Kelkar spoke to Sundeep Waslekar, the president of the Strategic Foresight Group. The topics:
The genesis of the Russo-Ukraine crisis: immediate and historical context;
What could happen next;
The implications for the global order and the key economic consequences.
Watch the discussion:
From Caroline Smrstik
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called on ex-Chancellor (and party colleague) Gerhard Schröder to resign all his posts in Russian state companies. Speaking on a current affairs program on German television, Scholz said that the office of Chancellor carries certain responsibilities, even after one’s governing period is over—thus dismantling Schröder’s usual defense that what he does now with his time is his personal choice.
Scholz also said that the legislature would be looking into the public financing of an office and staff for ex-chancellors, a traditional perk. There’s no reason for Bundestag employees to be performing duties that arise from private business activity, Scholz said. (ach Gerhard, you can’t have it both ways.)
In 2021, staff salaries for Schröder’s office cost German taxpayers €407,000. That sum has already gone down in 2022, since four people quit Schröder’s staff in recent weeks because of his ties to Russian state companies (Gazprom, Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2, Rosneft).
Related: The SPD (Social Democrats), the party of Schröder and Scholz, has received a motion from its Heidelberg chapter to remove Schröder from the party. Political party membership is a lifetime commitment in Germany—kicking out the former boss is truly adding insult to injury. Rumor has it that the former chancellor is increasingly isolated among the “comrades.” Will other regional chapters follow Heidelberg’s lead?
—> am back in Mitteleuropa again, for a closer follow on the Germanic lands.
WWIII in a glance
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a temporary ceasefire in Mariupol and Volnovakha to allow civilians to leave. (If you watched what he did in Syria, you know the playbook: Putin will use this as an excuse to reduce these cities to rubble because “the civilians are gone.”—Claire.)
Update: On schedule.
Russia bombed Ukrainian cities and towns into rubble.
Speaking of Syria, unconfirmed but highly plausible:
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