Abstract
Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has caused a shift in the traditional nonalignment stance of Finland and Sweden, leading them to seek membership in the nuclear alliance. This change in security approach has implications for the global nuclear order, particularly in terms of nuclear disarmament and deployment. Despite the presence of public support for NATO membership in both countries, Finland and Sweden encountered challenges in their accession process. These challenges included Hungary’s delay in ratifying their applications and Türkiye’s conditional support to the accession of the two Nordic countries.
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Notes
- 1.
Following the 1961 Berlin Crisis, Richard Lowenthal coined the pejorative term “Finlandization” to describe Russia’s political influence over Finland in the Cold War (Laqueur, 1977).
- 2.
- 3.
The concept of hegemonic nuclear order is a frequently employed descriptor for our current state of nuclear affairs, i.e., “a limited few countries are allowed to possess nuclear weapons, and the longterm promises of these nations to disarm their nuclear arsenals have not yet been fulfilled” (Jonter & Rosengren, 2022). Although this specific phrasing is relatively new, criticisms of the hegemonic nuclear order are not (ibid.). Indeed, histories of the hegemonic nuclear order, even those produced prior to the opening for signature of the NPT, “have often departed from or even challenged the narratives of those select few states who benefit from it” (ibid.). While Ritchie, (2019) describes the TPNW as a counter-hegemonic challenge to the present nuclear order, he supports Considine’s (2019) argument that it does not challenge the hegemonic structure as such.
- 4.
Nuclear anarchy is a theory that refers to a state of international relations in which there is no central authority or mechanism for controlling the spread and use of nuclear weapons. On the concept of nuclear anarchy, see Robert Jervis (1989).
- 5.
Nuclear stability is a concept in international relations theory that refers to the idea that the possession of nuclear weapons by multiple states creates a stable balance of power and deters conflict. On the concept of nuclear stability theory, please see the seminal work of Thomas Schelling (1966) and Waltz (1981).
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Vicente, A., Alkış, M.A., Maksymenko, I. (2023). The Impact of Russia’s War against Ukraine on Finland and Sweden’s Decision to Join NATO: Effects on the Global Nuclear Order. In: Vicente, A., Sinovets, P., Theron, J. (eds) Russia’s War on Ukraine. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32221-1_16
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