Page:The Effects of Finland's Possible NATO Membership - An Assessment.pdf/46

 foreseeable future be contained schematically in four scenarios (see section 2 above):
 * Both Finland and Sweden stay outside the Alliance
 * Finnish Alleingang: only Finland joins NATO
 * Swedish Alleingang: only Sweden joins NATO
 * Both countries join NATO

REGIONAL CONSEQUENCES. In the following, the three latter scenarios will be discussed assuming that neither the incumbent Finnish nor Swedish governments, barring some very dramatic occurrence in our neighbourhood, will act before the general elections in 2018 (Sweden) and 2019 (Finland) respectively.

Both countries have developed their relations with NATO in recent years. It is often argued that Finland and Sweden through membership of the Partnership for Peace Programme of 1994 and its Enhanced Opportunities Programme (EOP) follow-up of 2014 for all practical purposes are already members of the Alliance and seen as such by the outside world. The Host Nation Support agreement that both countries signed at the NATO Summit in Wales in 2014 is already in force in Finland and will go before the Swedish Riksdag this spring. It could reinforce the assumption that Finland, and Sweden, would in all likelihood be part of a military conflict in the common strategic area of the Baltic Sea region by virtue of EU and bilateral commitments, and Western solidarity more broadly.

Nevertheless, the political discussion that centres on the issue of application for NATO membership demonstrates that the application itself has highly symbolic content politically. There is, of course, a distinction between a close co-operative relationship with NATO, such as the ones Finland and Sweden enjoy, and actual membership, whereby one signs up for the Article 5 guarantees. A co-operative relationship, however close, does not in itself provide guarantees. Furthermore, membership, once in place, is more or less irreversible. No NATO country has ever seriously discussed leaving the Alliance. France left the organisation and the integrated command structure in 1966 but stayed in the Alliance and rejoined in 2009. A co-operative relationship could, in contrast, be terminated in parts or, which is unlikely, in its entirety or just lose its significance. 46