March 3, 2024 (EIRNS)—Sanity and receptivity seems to be an increasingly rare commodity in the West today, where there is instead a dangerous growth in discussion of nuclear weapons. New Finnish President Alexander Stubb clearly admitted he wants Finland inside NATO’s nuclear umbrella during his first news conference as President on March 1. When asked about his views on nuclear weapons, Stubb said ultimately it would be for the Finnish government and parliament to decide if Finland wants to alter its current legislation which prohibits nuclear weapons on Finnish soil, but then went on to elaborate his outlook that: “I would start from the premise that we in Finland must have a real nuclear deterrent, and that’s what we have, because NATO practically gives us three deterrences through our membership,” Stubb said, reported Reuters. “The first is military, i.e. soldiers, the second is missiles, i.e. ammunition, and the third is a nuclear deterrent, which comes from the United States.”
Meanwhile, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski argued that countries without nuclear weapons may soon begin scrambling to acquire them if the West fails to send Ukraine the weapons it needs to defeat Russia. “If America cannot come together with Europe and enable Ukraine to drive Putin back, I fear that our family of democratic nations will start to break up. Allies will look for other ways to guarantee their safety,” he said in a Feb. 26 “conversation” at the Atlantic Council think tank. “Some of them will aim for the ultimate weapon, starting off a new nuclear race. I’m thinking of the Far East,” he continued, later referring to Japan and South Korea, in particular.
Writing on Feb. 29 for the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert blog, Peter Dickinson, a “Ukraine expert” at the Atlantic Council, warned that autocratic powers could take note of how Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to force the West to back down: “[F]ellow autocrats around the world will take note of Putin’s success in Ukraine and draw the logical conclusions for their own expansionist agendas. If nuclear intimidation works for Moscow, why not for Beijing or Pyongyang?
