Last year, the Kremlin's all-out invasion of Ukraine upended Europe's security landscape and prompted Finland -- and its neighbour Sweden -- to drop decades of non-alignment.
Awkward allies Turkey and Hungary, for different reasons of their own, delayed Finland's bid to come under the NATO umbrella -- and Stockholm's progress remains blocked.
But last week, the Turkish parliament voted to clear Finland's last hurdle.
Completing the ratification in well under a year still makes this the fastest membership process in the alliance's recent history.
All that remained were Tuesday's highly choreographed formalities at NATO headquarters.
Finland's foreign minister will hand over the formal accession papers to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the keeper of NATO's founding treaty.
Then the country's blue-and-white flag will be raised next to those of its new allies, between those of Estonia and France, in front of the gleaming headquarters in Brussels.
"This is really an historic day. It's a great day for the alliance," NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said.
Joining NATO places Finland under the alliance's Article Five, the collective defence pledge that an attack on one member "shall be considered an attack against them all".
This was the guarantee Finnish leaders decided they needed as they watched Russian President Vladimir Putin's devastating assault lay waste to swathes of Ukraine.
- Putin gets more NATO -
"President Putin went to war against Ukraine with a clear aim to get less NATO," Stoltenberg said. "He's getting the exact opposite."
Invaded by its giant neighbour the Soviet Union in 1939, Finland -- which has a 1,300-kilometre (800 mile) border with Russia -- stayed out of NATO throughout the Cold War.
Now its membership brings a potent military into the alliance with a wartime strength of 280,000 and one of Europe's largest artillery arsenals.
And its strategic location bolsters NATO's defences on a border running from the vulnerable Baltic states to the increasingly competitive Arctic.
NATO was created as a counterweight to the Soviet Union at the onset of the Cold War era that began immediately after the Allies defeated Nazi Germany.
The bloc has gone through waves of expansion that brought it ever closer to Russia's borders.
NATO's reach into eastern and southern European countries that were once under Moscow's effective control infuriated the Kremlin and strained its relations with Washington.
Putin cited the threat of NATO expanding into Ukraine as one of his main reasons for launching the war 13 months ago.
At first, the Kremlin appeared to play down the significance of the alliance's border advancing to touch a new stretch of Russia's northwestern frontier.
But it has pledged to bolster its forces and stepped up diplomatic rhetoric in recent weeks, describing Finland and Sweden as a "legitimate target" if they join NATO.
Putin has also announced plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Russia's neighbour Belarus.
- Sweden soon? -
Finland's arrival nevertheless remains a bittersweet moment for the alliance as the hope had been for Sweden to come on board at the same time.
Budapest and Ankara remain the holdouts after belatedly agreeing to wave through Helsinki's bid.
Sweden has upset Hungary's leader Viktor Orban -- one of Putin's closest allies in Europe -- by expressing alarm over the rule of law in Hungary.
It has also angered Turkey by refusing to extradite dozens of suspects that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan links to a failed 2016 coup attempt and a decades-long Kurdish independence struggle.
NATO diplomats hope Erdogan will become more amenable if he weathers elections in May and that Sweden will join before a NATO summit in Vilnius this July.
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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