Finland’s Nordic neighbour Sweden, on the brink of joining NATO, signed a similar deal last week.

NATO’s newest member, Finland, has announced it will sign a bilateral defence cooperation agreement next week with the United States.

The deal will allow Washington to station troops and store weapons inside the Nordic country, which shares a sprawling border with Russia.

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told a news conference in Helsinki on Thursday that Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen will sign the so-called Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) on Monday.

  • wizzorEnglish
    35·
    11 months ago

    Technically yes, but in practice the goal is to make the practical arrangements implementing of Article 5 security quarantees possible. There is not much use of NATO support, if alliance forces can’t operate in Finland in a practical way.

    I am sure there are new operational agreements of similar nature will be made between Finland and Sweden as well as Finland and Estonia. That said, there is already a significant degree of defence cooperation between Finland and Sweden.

    Finland is also already part of the british led JEF, and I would be surprised if the Nato framework would not change the nature of that cooperation.