Eve, here. A new sign of Putin (now Russia) Derangement Syndrome is that small countries with virtually no industrial base believe they can work together and effectively counter Russia, which they believe is a super-predator.
A Japanese colleague said of the merger, “If you marry two sick dogs, you won’t get a healthy cat.” But such a plan is at work here.
That being said, the combined efforts of smaller states on Russia’s borders to harass the giant could serve as a Lilliputian strategy that sufficiently weakens Russia’s attention and resources to blunt its power.
The idea of Scandinavian countries and their neighbors becoming hotspots may seem foreign. But in Duran’s new corner, Armando Mema, an Italian diplomat based in Helsinki, describes a series of drone attacks on Helsinki. The most recent damage, on May 15th, was so large that the public was told to evacuate. Although the drone was made in Ukraine, the Finnish government maintains that Russia somehow controlled the drone and flew it to Finland.
Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the new Cold War. He holds a doctorate from MGIMO, which is affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
It could also threaten Russia along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts.
Russia’s ambassador to Norway, Nikolai Kortunov, gave a short interview to TASS regarding bilateral relations. He warned that Norway was trying to incorporate new NATO members Sweden and Finland into NATO’s regional plans. More US military bases and NATO facilities are also being opened there. To make matters worse, 32,500 troops from 14 NATO countries participated in “Cold War Ready” military exercises last March in the northern regions of Norway and Finland, increasing NATO’s threat to Russia from this direction.
NATO’s militarization of the Arctic is proceeding in parallel with the militarization of the Baltic Sea, including artificially created tensions over the demilitarized Svalbard archipelago. Kortunov believes this increases the risk that the bloc will one day try to blockade Russia. But he reassured his countrymen that authorities would protect their interests, including by military-technical means, hinting at new protection for some merchant vessels.
In relation to the blockade scenario, Kortunov was asked about the TASS news agency’s report from early April on “how Ukraine is preparing a terrorist attack on Russian ships off the coast of Norway,” which he said had caused a considerable uproar in his home country. Although he did not elaborate on exactly how Russia intends to deter or defend against a possible Ukrainian drone attack from Norway, he ominously warned that if the threat to Russia from Norway increases, “inevitably the risk to Norway itself will increase proportionately.”
Mr. Kortunov was not asked about it in the interview, but a week before his release Britain announced that he would lead a new multilateral naval initiative against Russia with eight countries, including Norway. This signals Norway’s increasing role in threatening Russia through blockade scenarios, whether in the neighboring Arctic region or the nearby Baltic Sea region. As a founding member of NATO, Norway appears to believe that this obligates it to take the lead in containing Russia in Northern Europe.
To this end, Russia actively cooperates with Britain, one of its historic enemies, and functions as the “big brother” of Sweden and Finland in NATO. This would allow Norway to simultaneously advance containment of Russia along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts. Given its rich oil resources, Norway may also provide military loans to its “younger brothers” to accelerate military buildup and subsequent creation of a Northern Regional Force against Russia as part of the U.S.’s “NATO 3.0” plan.
The aforementioned insights have come into focus through one of the ways in which multipolarity is reshaping Europe, namely through the trend towards regional military integration, whether it is Norway wanting to lead the nascent “Viking Bloc” or Poland seeking to regain its lost great power status in Central and Eastern Europe. The Anglo-American Axis powers manage this division of military strategic work, with the United States as senior partner and Britain as junior partner, and plan to replicate this model elsewhere in Eurasia.
Apart from the regional military blocs of Norway and Poland, Romania provides the duopoly with influence in Moldova and the Black Sea, while Turkiye is expanding its influence not only in the Black Sea but also in the South Caucasus, Caspian Sea and Central Asia through the “trump route of international peace and prosperity”. There’s also AUKUS+, which could include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Indonesia in the future. What has emerged as a result is the “globalization of NATO,” which is characterized by multipolarization.
