More than two-thirds of the members of the US Senate on Wednesday approved the admission of Finland and Sweden to NATO, the most significant expansion of the 30-member military alliance since the 1990s, a development that follows the historic decision by the governments of the two countries to leave their neutrality due to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The final result of the vote was 95 votes in favor to 1 against (Josh Hawley, Republican) and one “absent” (Rand Paul, Republican), in other words comfortably exceeding the two-thirds majority (67 votes) required to approve the protocols of admission of the two countries to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
“This historic vote sends an important message of America’s continued and bipartisan commitment to NATO, and the will to ensure that our Alliance is ready to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” US President Joe Biden said with satisfaction in the press release issued by his services.
His government desperately wanted that approval to demonstrate the unity of the military alliance in the face of what it said was Russian expansionism.
In the US, international agreements are ratified by the Senate.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin tried to use the war in Ukraine to divide the West. Instead, today’s vote shows that the Alliance is stronger than ever,” Democratic majority leader Rep. Chuck Schumer.
The admission protocols of the two Nordic states were approved the day before yesterday by the French National Assembly and by Italy yesterday. Including the US, it has been ratified by 23 NATO member states, according to its parliamentary assembly. The approval of all thirty member states is required for the two countries to join the alliance and Article 5 applies to them as well.
Article 5 of NATO’s founding convention, established in 1949 at the start of the Cold War, provides for a joint response in the event of an attack against any member state.
During the debate, senators rejected an amendment intended to preserve Congress’s prerogative to declare war if Article 5 is invoked.
The admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO is not yet a given, however, as Turkey has threatened to “freeze” the process, accusing Stockholm and Oslo of harboring members of the separatist armed Kurdish movement the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other organizations that characterizes terrorist.
Ankara, which has been blocking their entry since May, signed a memorandum of understanding with them in June that links the accession to the fight against Kurdish separatist organizations on their territory.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened again in late July to block the process, specifically accusing Sweden of not doing “its part” in the fight against “terrorism”.
The accession of the two states to NATO would drastically change the security architecture in Europe, against the background of the strengthening of the American military presence in the Old Continent after the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian territory.
SOURCE: APE-ME
Source: Capital
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