On NATO Expansion, Overrule Turkey

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C) and Sweden's Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson take part in a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid, on June 28, 2022. Erdogan has refused to greenlight the applications from Sweden and Finland despite calls from his NATO allies to clear the path for them to enter. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

Turkey is being difficult. At a time of war, and when Sweden and Finland have finally agreed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Ankara is using thin excuse after thin excuse to bar the aspirations of these two strategically-located Scandinavian democracies.

The NATO Treaty currently requires unanimous approval of new members, and Turkey is threatening to veto it.

NATO is the world’s most powerful alliance system, founded in 1949 to defend a free Europe against Soviet aggression. It is led by the United States and has worked wonders, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

With an increasingly belligerent and nuclear-armed Moscow, the Russian dictatorship is again rearing its awful head.

To defend itself, NATO is closing ranks. Any country left out, as indicated by Ukraine, faces an increased and existential risk.

Therefore, the time for expanding to Sweden and Finland is exceedingly right. Europe is unstable and needs a tighter and larger alliance of democracies that can move military resources where most needed.

This week, the United States, Britain, and Germany greenlit their main battle tanks for delivery to Ukraine. The tanks will be donated, including Leopard 2 tanks by Germany and Poland, 31 M1 Abrams tanks by the United States, and 14 Challenger 2 tanks by Britain. France is also considering sending up to about 14 Leclerc main battle tanks. These are in addition to hundreds of other less capable fighting vehicles donated or planned for Ukraine.

The main battle tanks will help reverse recent Russian gains and counterbalance Moscow’s planned 1.5 million-man army, including conscripts and criminals, that President Vladimir Putin and his state-sponsored Wagner Group are calling up. Less than half of Russia’s planned army would be professional, contracted soldiers.

All of them, arguably, are terrorists, given their membership in an army that purposefully targets civilian infrastructure and apartment buildings in Ukraine.

In November, the European Parliament designated Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.

Deputy Chairman of Russia's Security Council Dmitry Medvedev attends a military parade on Victory Day, which marks the 77th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Red Square in central Moscow, on May 9, 2022. (Sputnik/Ekaterina Shtukina/Pool via Reuters)

Last week, a series of Russian leaders, most prominently Dmitry Medvedev, threatened not only Ukraine, but all of NATO with nuclear war if Russia were to lose the war.

Against a terror of this magnitude, there is no time to lose. Putin could make a desperate move to capture territory in Finland, making its accession to NATO more difficult.

Sweden’s governing coalition, which includes a traditionally anti-NATO political party, could change its mind and withdraw its stated intent to join.

The window of opportunity for NATO expansion in Scandinavia is not only historical, therefore, but could be closed at any time. Failing could have long-lasting consequences for democracy itself.

NATO expansion could also turn a faltering Ukrainian counteroffensive into a Russian rout. Once Finland joins, its long border with Russia will be safer. Finland might then spare some of its 200 Leopard 2 tanks for the Ukrainian effort.

Turkey’s resistance to the joint NATO bid of Finland and Sweden makes its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the odd man out.

He fails to see the long game, or is working against his own alliance system and national interests. Turkey’s sticking points, including political asylum seekers and protesters in Sweden, are minor relative to the urgent need to expand. They could also be excuses to achieve aims more worthy of Putin than of Turkey.

It isn’t the first problem that Erdogan caused his country and the West. Not only has Turkey become more authoritarian under Erdogan and purchased Russian weapon systems against objections from the United States, but it has cleaved closer to Putin and followed his lead to weaponize refugees against Europe.

Given all of the above, NATO should be tempted to expel Turkey rather than let it veto the accession of Sweden and Finland. In hindsight, the European Union was clearly correct in slow-rolling the country’s application for admission into the European Union.

But if expulsion from NATO would be imprudent at this juncture, neither do we need to let Turkey hamstring the world’s premier alliance of democracies by creating obstructionist mountains out of mole hills in a time of war.

NATO can revise its treaty to overrule Turkey, for example, by allowing democracies to join by a two-thirds vote of members, both by the number of countries and by the number of countries weighted by population.

A two-thirds vote would be more conservative than the simple majority required to add a new state to the United States. Over its history, 37 new states have been added to the original 13, with the first being Vermont in 1791, and the most recent being Hawaii in 1959.

The United States would be a much smaller and less consequential nation today if we allowed any state to veto expansion.

Turkey can be dealt with in the same way. It must understand in no uncertain terms that NATO will never let a strongman, whether a Putin or an Erdogan, stand in the way of democracy’s expansion and defense.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.