A warning from a Finn on Vladimir Putin --- The Finnish border with Russia runs over 800 miles; the Finns have skin in this game.

In April 2023, Finland became the 31st member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aligning itself with the United States, ending generations of Finnish military neutrality between the West and Russia.

The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provoked the move. The Finnish capital of Helsinki is just 200 miles from St. Petersburg. With under six million people, Finland would have little chance of stopping Russian aggression alone.

The threat isn’t idle. Russia has invaded Finland before, in November 1939. That attack can’t be excused as part of Russia’s defense against Nazi Germany. At the time, the Nazis and Stalin were allies dividing Eastern Europe.

The Finns know the Russians. And whatever you think about Ukraine’s corruption and oligarchs, Finland is a modern, free democracy. It hopes to stay that way.

So when this email about Donald Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin arrived unsolicited from a Finnish reader1, I thought it was worth sharing, in full and unedited. A lot of good people are very worried. ............................................

Domestically, President Trump may be doing exactly what he was voted to accomplish. I have no take on it, naturally, not being an American. But internationally, is he singlehandedly rewriting the US foreign policy?

I used to consider the US our (and Europe's, and NATO’s and Canada's) friend, and Russia our common foe. Now it seems both are our foes. The narrative seems to tell that Trump and Putin have already divided the world into spheres of interest, and well, Eastern if not all of Europe is soon under another Warsaw Pact...

Having enjoyed your writing and political backdrop views over many years, both inside book covers and in other media, what is your take on all this? And do you and the American people believe Russia is as of this month no longer your enemy?

Has Trump simply decided Putin will offer him a better deal than Ukraine and to hell with the rest? Or is he simply being deceived? Does he buy Putin's lines (read: lies) because he admires the man so much? Or does Putin have Trump so deeply in his pocket that he does whatever he is told to do?

Or is it the exact opposite, and Trump is double- and triple-crossing Putin to ultimately push the Russians to step over a line and then be put firmly back in their place? Or have the two simply come to align on an anti-China stand, for Trump to have an ace up his sleeve against Xi and Putin trying to crawl out from underling position vs Xi?

I am not trying to offend any fans of Trump's politics, I am simply trying to make sense of the tectonic shift in who is an ally to whom and who considers whom a threat?

How Finland “Fell in Love” with NATO. Helsinki Sold Its Independence for Money

Mauno Saari (MS): The decision to sign that agreement was made when the Parliament was on vacation. The agreement was not presented to the parliament and has many strange features. In my opinion, membership in NATO was the long-term goal and dream of President Niiniste. He will go down in history for implementing it. In other words, he will go down in history as the president who ended the nearly 80-year peaceful and even friendly era between Finland and the Soviet Union/Russia. At the same time, Niiniste destroyed the work of two previous presidents, Juho Kusti Pasikivi and Urho Kekonen, and their life’s work, the doctrine of how a small country can live in peace and prosperity as a neighbor of a great power. It was a very successful “policy of active neutrality”.

MS: Nordic militarism is America’s dream. The creation of this type of militarism was also influenced by the USA through its many years of activity. Sweden has long been a “little America”, with very close relations with the US, also in the field of espionage. Finnish politicians and ordinary people have a completely wrong picture of the United States. We admire America, we don’t want to know that it is a monster that has 750 military bases around the world and lives by devouring the countries it goes to “help”. We don’t want to see the results when the USA “helped” Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Libya and many other places. We lie to ourselves that the USA will rush to help us if Russia threatens us. America is in no hurry! She’s not even walking. Its way of waging wars is to use the armies and territories of other countries. If there is ever a conflict between NATO/USA and Russia, Finland will be destroyed. In that case, we are a scorched battlefield.

Saari started his career as a reporter at Helsingin Sanomat and then continued his ten-year career in journalism as the editor-in-chief of the magazines Iltaset, Suomen Kuvalehti, Iltalehti and Uude Finland, literally in the most respected daily newspapers and weeklies published in Helsinki. In recent years, he has been writing TV scripts and film templates. He returned to journalism recently and for a reason.

NATO has been worthless from the day it was organized. So much U.S. tax dollar money propping up a group of loser European countries who have leeched off this country for decades. I don’t give a crap about Russia, Ukraine, or the rest of Europe. The U.S. went above and beyond to protect the Euroweenies. Not one more taxpayer dollar to protect these a-holes whose asses we saved twice, but who never bothered to learn the lessons from two World Wars. Third time is not a charm when it comes to saving the globohomos of Europe. They can save themselves from now on.

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