NATO

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen supports French President Emmanuel Macrons remarks on NATO deploying troops in Ukraine, stating that NATO should not rule out the possibility. Nows not the time to send boots on the ground and we are not even willing to discuss it at this stage, she said.

NATO plans to train NATOs new 300,000-troop Allied Response Force this summer. But to keep pace with Russia's buildup of people, the alliance is going to need reserves-a lot of them. Falling unemployment rates in the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean have made hitting recruiting numbers more difficult.

In March 2023, commanders of the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish air forces signed a declaration that envisioned the creation of a joint Nordic air force to protect their shared airspaces. The proposal of a combined polar air force structure has earned the title mini-NATO - a notion some officials seem fond of. All the Nordic countries are expected to share management responsibilities for the combined military force.

To mark the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization this week, a statue of former President Harry Truman is being installed at the U.S. ambassador to NATOs residence in Brussels. Truman was commander in chief when NATO became a founding member, and the transatlantic alliance shares many of the traits that defined him, including a resolute, responsible commitment to collective defense. The support from successive presidents, one a Democrat and the other Republican, had endured on a bipartisan basis through subsequent generations.

Switzerland has been legally neutral since 1815. A recent poll showed that 53% of the Swiss were in favor of joining NATO, an unexpected number in a country where neutrality is included in the Constitution and strong state sovereignty is embedded in its national culture.

Steadfast Defender 2024 is NATO's largest military exercise since the Cold War. It is clear that the alliance remains ill-prepared against Russias military capabilities in the Arctic. No NATO member state has ice-strengthened ships with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capabilities.