Congratulations, Finland!

It’s official: Finland becomes Nato’s thirty-first member today. Sweden is to follow soon, although I dismiss as fanciful any suggestion that China too is contemplating a similar move.

This brings into focus yet again the nature of fascist (or Nazi) regimes I discussed the other day. One distinguishing feature of such regimes is that they pounce on other countries. They sometimes come up with reasons for their aggressiveness, sometimes with mere pretexts, but these are all superfluous one way or the other.

Fascist regimes are aggressive because that’s what they congenitally are. They pounce on others because of their own inner imperative, not because of any external threat or any other rational consideration. They attack other countries for the same reason dogs attack cats: that’s how their DNA is encoded.

Conversely, if a regime doesn’t do that, it’s not fascist. It may be authoritarian, like, say, Franco’s Spain, but it’s not fascist. You’ll notice that Franco never attacked anybody after the Civil War. Moreover, he steadfastly resisted Hitler’s entreaties to enter the Second World War.

Now we are on a determinist trip, here’s another observation. Fascist regimes may win some interim victories, but they always lose in the end. Whatever their pretext for aggression, they invariably get the opposite of what they claim they want.

The reason is simple: other countries gang up on them. A decent country can afford losing a war to another decent country, but not to a fascist one. Fascist values and practices are so abhorrent to civilised people that they’d rather die than accept defeat.

When attacked by an evil power, people see the war not as a mere military conflict but as an existential struggle for survival. To use an ancient example, Hannibal was beaten by Rome not because he was less of a military leader (he wasn’t) or because Carthage was inherently weaker (it wasn’t, not at the time), but because Carthaginians practised human sacrifice. That galvanised Roman resistance so much that the great general never stood a chance.

Finland illustrates these points perfectly.

Putin pounced on the Ukraine because, supposedly, he couldn’t accept Nato’s eastward expansion. The more repulsive of his acolytes, such as a certain Mail columnist who’ll go nameless (okay, Hitchens, if you insist) are still repeating that lie every chance they get.

See above for the real reason behind Russia’s aggression. But if we accept the claimed pretext on face value, what did Putin get? Another 800 miles of border with Nato. And facing a bloc that has become so much stronger by adding another nation with many historical grievances against Russia.

You’ll remember that a civil war between the Reds and the Whites broke out in Finland at the same time as in Russia, which is no wonder considering that Finland was part of the Russian Empire at the time. But the outcome of its civil strife was different there: the Whites won.

That converted the Russians’ usual disdain for smaller nations into visceral hatred. It was seething and building up until Stalin’s red fascist regime pounced on Finland in the winter of 1939. Unlike the Ukraine today, that small country stood alone against the fascist juggernaut – and she still managed to beat it to a standstill. Finland ceded some territory, but she kept her sovereignty.

(As an aside, she later entered the Second World War on Germany’s side, and it was Finnish troops that sealed Leningrad from the north during the infamous siege. But for Stalin’s little foray in 1939, Finland would have remained neutral and Leningrad wouldn’t have lost almost half of its population.)

Since then the Damocles sword of Russia has always hung over Finland’s head. Hoping not to whet fascist appetites, she has tried to steer a neutral course and not upset the Russians too much (hence the term ‘finlandisation’). But when Putin’s fascism acted according to its genetic makeup, neutrality was no longer an option.

This time around the Finns have no intention of standing alone in the face of a fascist monster. Nor are they prepared to wait and see which target Putin will choose next. Fearing it may be Finland, they’ve rushed under the umbrella provided by Article 5 of the Nato Charter.

The Russians responded with their usual threats of nuclear annihilation, supposedly likely in any case and inevitable should Nato deploy any forces in Finland. But the point is, it already has. Finland’s small but well-trained and well-equipped army has today become part of the Nato force.

Hitler claimed that Western powers, especially the dastardly Anglo-Saxons, were out to dismember Germany even more than she had already been dismembered at Versailles. His only solution was to attack the whole world, which predictably had a unifying effect on that rather large entity.

What happened? As a result, Germany was split in half and remained split for the next 46 years. Two generations.

It takes a blind man, or else a Putin poodle like…– well, no names this time – not to detect a parallel. A feral attempt to destroy the sovereignty of another nation has united the civilised world against Russia.

Rather than extinguishing another country’s sovereignty, she is now likely to lose her own, if she hasn’t already. China’s shadow is looming large not only over Taiwan but also over Russia. The two countries claim to be partners, but they both know Russia is the junior one, en route to becoming China’s protectorate, if not an out-and-out colony.

Sarcastic congratulations to Russia – and heartfelt ones both to Finland and the rest of the civilised world.

We’ve become stronger, a development directly attributable to the aforementioned law: whatever the pretext claimed by fascist regimes for their aggression, they end up getting its exact opposite.