Here are the key facts:
- Russia 'more vulnerable' -
Finland broke with decades of non-alignment to ask to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after Russia invaded its pro-Western neighbour Ukraine in February last year.
For Moscow, which has repeatedly warned NATO against expanding, Finland's accession extends the bloc's presence right on its western doorstep.
Russia -- which shares a 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border with Finland -- said on Monday it would boost its military presence in its west and northwest in response.
With Finland joining NATO, "Russia's northwestern flank becomes more vulnerable", security experts Nicholas Lokker and Heli Hautala wrote on Friday on defence-focused website War on the Rocks.
"Its border with the alliance will then extend from the Arctic Ocean to the Baltic Sea."
- More NATO border to defend -
As a NATO member, Finland is bound by the alliance's mutual defence clause, Article 5.
It will benefit not only from its allies' conventional military assistance but also from its nuclear deterrence.
In return, the Nordic nation, which intends to boost its defence budget by 40 percent by 2026, could contribute some of its military resources to defend the alliance.
The country of 5.5 million people counts just 12,000 professional soldiers.
But it trains more that 20,000 each year through its conscription service programme, giving the army a pool of 900,000 Finns as potential reserves.
This means that in case of war, the army can deploy 280,000 Finnish citizens at any one time.
It has a fleet of 55 F-18 US combat aircraft, which it plans to replace with more advanced F-35s from 2025 onwards, as well as 200 tanks and more than 700 artillery guns.
But the country joining NATO also means hundreds of extra kilometres of border to defend for the alliance.
- Allied forces -
The only military equipment that NATO actually owns are a fleet of Airborne Warning and Control System planes (AWACS) -- which can stay in the air for eight and a half hours without refuelling and monitor an area almost as big as Poland -- and five Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance drones.
For all other military gear, each NATO member chooses what to contribute, though all have promised to reinforce the alliance's eastern flank.
For example, France dispatched 500 troops to join US soldiers in Romania last year right after Russia invaded Ukraine. Dutch and Belgian soldiers soon joined them.
As of December, some 5,000 foreign troops were stationed in Romania -- the largest contingent of allied forces on the bloc's southeastern flank.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), NATO conducted nine joint exercises last year, from the eastern Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.
- The troops -
According to the Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe (SHAPE), NATO can count on up to 3.5 million soldiers and personnel.
The three nations providing most military staff are the United States with 1.47 million active troops plus 800,000 reservists, Turkey with 425,000 soldiers and 200,000 reservists, and France with 210,000 troops and 40,000 reservists.
NATO has since 2004 had a multinational response force of some 40,000 soldiers on top of the 100,000 US troops already on European soil. It says it hopes to increase this to 300,000 soldiers.
It has also set up a "spearhead force" within it, dubbed the "Very High Readiness Joint Task Force" or VJTF, able to deploy 5,000 personnel in two to three days.
- 'Renewed unity' -
NATO had in recent years faced an existential crisis.
French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 famously said that NATO was experiencing "brain death" after it failed to respond to Turkey's unilateral invasion of northeast Syria.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin's "re-invasion of Ukraine has provided the fuel for the alliance's renewed unity and recommitment to cooperative security, crisis management, and collective defence," retired general Philip M. Breedlove, who used to head US European Command, wrote in February.
According to IISS, the alliance has since doubled its deployment from four battlegroups -- in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland -- to eight, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
But "it is likely that most of the high-readiness forces will need to be European", it said in an annual assessment for 2023.
From the Cold War to the Ukraine war: NATO in brief
Paris (AFP) April 4, 2023 -
NATO is the world's biggest military alliance, bringing together 30 European and North American countries who commit to defend each other in the event of attack. After Finland joins on Tuesday, it will have 31 members.
The alliance was formed at the start of the Cold War to protect Western Europe against the threat of Soviet aggression but its remit and reach have expanded over time.
Here is a brief history of the organisation:
- Containing Soviet threat -
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is founded on April 4, 1949, by 12 countries alarmed by the Soviet Union's drive to install communist regimes across Eastern Europe.
The original signatories of the founding Washington Treaty are Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United States.
The treaty's key Article 5 states that "an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all" and requires a reaction, "including the use of armed force".
Moscow's response is to set up a rival club of 12 communist countries called the Warsaw Pact.
- Balkan wars -
After the Soviet Union falls apart in 1991, NATO gets drawn into the Balkan wars.
In 1994, the alliance conducts its first combat operation, sending fighter jets to Bosnia-Herzegovina to enforce a no-fly zone.
A year later, NATO puts boots on the ground for the first time when it deploys peacekeepers to Bosnia.
In 1999, it carries out a 78-day bombing campaign in Serbia over Belgrade's bloody crackdown on the breakaway province of Kosovo.
But the 1990s also bring outreach with Russia and its former allies.
In 1997, NATO signs a political "founding act" with Moscow, stressing that they "do not consider each other as adversaries" and two years later the first ex-communist countries join the club -- the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
- 'War on terror' -
NATO's "one for all and all for one" pledge is invoked for the first time after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, carried out by the Al-Qaeda terror network.
NATO joins the US-led "war on terror" in 2003, taking the lead of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) deployed to Afghanistan to root out Al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants.
NATO's combat mission in Afghanistan ends in 2014, but NATO allies only withdraw fully seven years later sparking a collapse of Western-trained Afghan forces and a takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Meanwhile, as the European Union expands, so does the alliance, with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joining in 2004.
The admission the same year of the three ex-Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania particularly annoys Russia.
- Libya intervention -
In 2011, the alliance is given a UN mandate to use "all necessary measures" to protect Libyan civilians from embattled dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
NATO's seven-month campaign of air strikes leads to Kadhafi's overthrow. Russia and China accuse NATO of using its mandate as a cover for regime change.
- Standoff over Ukraine -
In April 2014, NATO suspends all cooperation with Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
In 2016, NATO deploys four multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic states, marking the biggest reinforcement of NATO's collective defences since the Cold War.
On February 24, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine, a NATO partner country that has for years attempted to join the alliance.
NATO does not intervene directly, but its members send Kyiv billions of dollars in weapons and the alliance boosts its eastern flank with four new battlegroups -- in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary.
Fearing being future targets of Russian aggression, Finland and Sweden, which have been non-aligned for decades, apply for NATO membership.
On March 30, 2023, Turkey is the last NATO member to approve Finland's membership, clearing the way for it to become NATO's 31st member.
Five things to know about NATO
Brussels (AFP) April 4, 2023 -
NATO, the world's most powerful military alliance, is set to double its border with Russia, in the midst of the war in Ukraine, when Finland becomes its 31st member.
Here are five things to know about the US-led defence club, which was set up during the Cold War to protect western Europe against Soviet aggression.
- All for one -
The core of the NATO treaty is Article 5 which states that allies agree "that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all."
If one of the allies were to invoke the article, and the other allies are unanimous in agreeing that the member is indeed under attack, each will take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."
During the Cold War, this principle translated as an effective US security guarantee for smaller allies facing the implied threat of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in Europe.
But it has never been invoked for that purpose.
- One for all -
In fact, Article 5 has only been invoked once, to defend the United States.
In October 2001, just weeks after Al-Qaeda members hijacked four airliners and crashed them into targets in New York and Washington DC, the alliance rallied to America's aid.
While the US military response was dominated by its own troops under its own command, NATO AWACS reconnaissance planes were deployed to US skies and warships headed to the eastern Mediterranean.
- Growth spurt -
At its birth in 1949, NATO was an alliance of North American and western European democracies, facing their Communist foes across the Iron Curtain.
But after the Berlin Wall fell many former Moscow satellites came knocking on NATO's door, infuriating Russian President Vladimir Putin.
NATO's members already include Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which directly border Russia. Ukraine and Georgia are seeking to join too.
Sweden, which applied for membership at the same time as Finland, has jumped ahead of Ukraine in the queue, but its application has run into opposition from Turkey, which accuses Stockholm of sheltering suspected Kurdish militants it wants to prosecute.
- French leave -
France has had a complicated relationship with the alliance, despite being one of its founding members.
World War II hero president Charles de Gaulle was distrustful of NATO's US leadership and pulled France out of the alliance's military command structure in 1966.
It was 43 years before president Nicolas Sarkozy took France back to full membership, in return for the promise of prestigious commands for French officers.
But in 2019, France again struck a discordant note, with President Emmanuel Macron declaring the alliance to be in the throes of "brain death".
- Funding problems -
The alliance has been dominated by the United States from the outset, in part because the superpower's defence budget dwarfs that of all the other members combined.
In recent years Washington has accused its European allies of not pulling their weight -- former president Donald Trump was particularly critical -- and pressured them to increase their contributions.
In 2014, members agreed to aim to increase their individual defence budgets up to two percent of their national GDP within a decade.
Spending has increased, but in 2022 only seven members met the target, according to NATO: Britain, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the United States.
Germany last year announced plans to massively increase defence spending, but it only expects to meet the two-percent target in 2025.
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