For Finland, the neutrality was always a pragmatic choice, especially during the Cold War.

Still, Russia is a big neighbor and it's a very unpredictable neighbor.

And I think what happened with the invasion of Ukraine has

shown that that kind of unpredictability is really, really difficult to live with as Russia's

neighbor. Hey, welcome back to the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Amble, editorial director at

MWI, and this episode features a conversation about a subject very much in the news right now,

the decisions by the governments of Sweden and Finland to apply to join NATO.

For both countries, this step marks a major departure from longstanding policies of non-alignment.

But what will it actually mean for these countries' defense capabilities and for NATO?

What about interoperability?

What does it look like from a nuclear deterrence perspective and from the standpoint of conventional forces?

And while Russia's invasion of Ukraine obviously triggered these decisions, why now?

There are a ton of interesting and really important questions

to unpack, and to do so, I'm joined on this episode by Rasmus Hindran. He is the head of

international relations at the European Center of Excellence for Countering hybrid threats

and a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. He also has some really relevant

experience working on defense policy in his

home country of Finland. It is a great opportunity to hear a perspective from one of the two

likely future NATO members. Before we get to it, though, just a couple quick notes. First,

if you aren't following MWI and social media, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

And second, as always, what you hear in this episode

are the views of the participants and don't represent those of West Point, the Army, or any other

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