Assume Putin, for whatever reason, decided to invade Finland.
Finland is not a part of NATO. They are also a developed nation with no history of being part of the USSR.
How would the world respond? Would western europe declare war on Russia? Would it ignite WWIII? Or would it be like Syria, a lot of nations getting involved in providing training, air support, weapons, etc. but not actually getting into a full on war with each other (Finland would be a proxy war)?
How far would western nations go to defend Finland? Would Russia have any allies?
What support would western nations provide and where would they draw the line?
It isn’t really a hypothetical because Russia has tried it several times already in the past and it always worked out really badly for them. Finland is really good at defending their home territory even against overwhelming odds. They are are good example of what determined semi-organized militia groups can do to a much larger invader on their home turf.
One of the most badass snipers of all time was Finnish (Simo Häyhä aka “The White Death”). He hunted Russians by day and then just usually went back home at night. He is credited with killing over 500 over them including entire counter-sniper teams that were sent just to take him out. One eventually managed to shoot him in the face but even that didn’t kill him or slow him down much.
“The White Death” is gone now (died 2002) but his descendants and those just like them are still out there. I don’t think Russia or anyone else is eager to mess with them. It is surprisingly hard for even a very large military power to take over an area with a rebellious population with military training and lots of inhospitable terrain. Russia could certainly level it if they wanted to and I doubt any other country would be willing to fight directly because Putin is insane but there isn’t any reason for the Russians to do that. They already have way more than enough land right now and much better targets full of people that are much more culturally aligned with them.
Yeah but, that was with Stalin at the helm and Russia just starting to industrialize with 1930s technology.
Russia of the modern era should have a much more advanced military (regarding training, equipment and technology), and they have not purged their officer class like they did under Stalin.
Finland may not have been part of the USSR (which doesn’t exist anymore so that’s a moot point) but it was part of the Russian Empire from 1809 to 1917.
The bottom line is that neither the U.S. or NATO are going to war with Russia under any reasonable scenario. We already had 40 years of the Cold War and some people claim we are close to a hot war now because Putin is crazy and loves to provoke the U.S. by doing things like close-flys to U.S. warships and his decisions in Syria.
It is all for show unless Russia is literally suicidal. The U.S. nor anyone else including NATO can’t get into an actual war with Russia because, even though current day Russia is not as powerful as the former USSR, its military is still very formidable in global terms. The scary thing is that the game hasn’t changed since the 1950’s. We can’t get into a ground war and the only reasonable response to an offensive strike by the Russians is WWIII. The U.S. still has personnel in nuclear bunkers and submarines all around the world just waiting for the launch orders to destroy every major city in Russia and they have the same. Even one launch from either side at any time will start the barrage that ends most of Western Civilization.
What would be the fallout if Russia invades Finland?
My first thought was “lots of dead Russians”.
In all seriousness though, I don’t think NATO would do anything overt to defend Finland. There’s doubt in some quarters about whether they’d defend actual-NATO-member Baltic states.
I’m not sure what Shagnasty means by “The U.S. nor anyone else including NATO can’t get into an actual war with Russia because, even though current day Russia is not as powerful as the former USSR, its military is still very formidable in global terms” and “We can’t get into a ground war”. We certainly COULD get into a war with Russia, but it’d be foolish to do so. In a conventional war, NATO would WRECK Russia. I’d even give good odds that just the non-USA NATO countries could wreck Russian conventional forces.
I agree that in a full nuclear exchange, there are no real winners (maybe the termites?).
He’s not on Santa’s good list, and he has a poor understanding of non-zero sum economics, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone more sane than Putin.
You answered your own question about what Shagnasty means:
Absolutely nobody would take a chance on nuclear war just to defend Finland and its reindeer.
The only question in the OP’s imaginary scenario is WHY Russia would be invading Finland, and whether Russia intended to stop there.
If the rest of the world feels safe, then they would just let Finland be conquered.
If the rest of the world feels threatened–then they would shoot back.
But it would take an unrealistically huge threat from Russia.
What he does is logical by his lights and in the Russian political context. It isn’t a matter of lunatic whim. But he could miscalculate.
He’d have no reason to invade Finland. From his p.o.v, it’s a matter of (re-)establishing Russia’s status as a major player in world affairs, resisting what he sees as western attempts to undermine it (by likewise trying to undermine the EU and the US), and reminding near neighbours that he’s more important to them than the west, rather than simply acquiring territory per se (Ukraine and the Crimea are a rather different case from the Baltics and Finland, even if Russia’s behaviour has been inexcusable).
He isn’t insane, he isn’t Stalin and still less is he Hitler. But he might well miscalculate, especially if the Russian economy’s dependence on commodities stops producing the goods for the mass of the population. In which case, he might turn out to be another Kaiser Bill.
That’s a weird fact to throw in, since the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. Finland does have more than a century of history of being part of the Russian empire.
Yeah. But the Finns are still Finns. Drunken, salmiakki-imbued murder machines of death and depression fueled by dark coffee and darker ideations.
And that’s just on Saturday mornings.
One scenario I’ve heard is the Putin does what Putin wants, if anybody stands up to him, he offers to nuke a city. Live with those terms or go full on MAD, your choice.
I actually think we might be able to have a fairly significant conventional conflict with Russia, perhaps somewhere like Syria, without either side resorting to nuking cities. By that I mean, I think it’s possible, but there’d always be a chance, perhaps a very significant chance, that one side pulls out the canned sunshine. That risk is why we try really hard to avoid shooting at Russians and the Russians have, I think, generally tried pretty hard to avoid shooting at us.
Even broader, Finland has been a NATO partner under the Partnership for Peace Program since 1994. They’ve been active in security cooperation under the arrangement, including participation in NATO missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. There’s no Article 5 mandate since they aren’t members.
The level of integration and cooperation across two decades makes me agree , they would not be alone.
He does what he thinks will keep his position secure. It may well not be if it looks like something will seriously upset the money men: the deal was that they’d be allowed to get on with making money if they stayed out of politics and left him to get on with it. If his politics starts to damage their financial prospects and wealth - as they would if he got into a real military showdown with the West, in Finland or anywhere else - things may well turn nasty for him internally (though not necessarily any better for anyone else either).
Most of what he’s doing is relative pin-pricks to taunt the West and test the limits of Western resolve: I think that keeps the Baltics and Finland off the agenda and shifts the focus to relatively more complicated issues like Syria, that offer several opportunities to cause dissension between the Western allies, in a way that interfering in the Baltics and Finland wouldn’t.
It never ceases to amaze me that people use The Winter War to show how bad-ass and unbeatable the Finns are. Finland lost the war. Let me repeat that again to let it sink in: Finland lost the war. They ceded 11% of their territory containing 30% of their economy to the USSR and 422,000 Finns, 12% of their population were made refugees. How many Russians they killed losing the war doesn’t do anything to change the fact that they lost the war and a large chunk of their country to the USSR.
I think it’s more the extremely lopsided casualty ratio (300k+ Soviet casualties vs. 70,000 total Finnish casualties) combined with the fact that they did manage to prevent the Soviets from conquering the entire country, which is theorized to have been the Soviet plan from the beginning.
The Soviet war goal was to annex Finland. The Finnish goal was to retain their independence. One of these goal was met. The other failed spectacularly.
In addition, one of the two sides conducted an extremely successful war, inflicting massive lopsided casualties and gaining a reputation as a bad nation to invade. The other made such a poor showing that it emboldened an European power to invade them, inflicting massive damage and nearly killing the nation.