Those are good points to that I hadn't considered. As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO? Surely many Finnish politicians past and present will have fought hard for that to remain the case and this will be breaking that precedent.
I'm Finnish, neutrality part is true for Swedish people but not for Finns. In Finland politicians have kept saying we are aligned towards EU. Practically none has said we are neutral. Secondly politicians have for decades used wording "NATO-option" (even if NATO support was negligible before the war), that it's an option we can take if we want. It's even listed in government's program.
Sweden has history of neutrality and partly it's in their identity. That is why NATO membership is significantly more difficult for Swedish. It's evident in their media, and leading Social Democratic party is somewhat split there.
It might be that Sweden sends the NATO application without vote in the parliament with just vote in defense committee. Which means that Sweden might end up sending application earlier since in Finland the process must go through parliament.
A major driving force for us is the desire to not to become Russians, which is indoctrinated into us from birth.
The "neutrality" was originally forced on us at the end of WW2. Maintaining it worked ok for co-existing peacefully with our eastern neighbor. In reality it ended in 1995 when we joined the EU. Back then there was talk that the EU is going to have some sort of co-operative defense, but that hasn't materialized into anything concrete, because NATO is in reality already providing that function in Europe for most of current EU members.
I suppose the main argument against us joining NATO is the perceived risk of getting pulled into some local conflict of dubious nature far away from us.
Edit: Personally I would prefer an European defensive alliance without US involvement, but such an option is not available at short notice, so I'm willing to accept NATO for the time being.
Edit2: I should point out, that me, and IMHO the current generation of Finns in general, don't have anything in particular against the Russians, as long as they manage to keep their tanks and missiles within their own internationally acknowledged borders. We just don't want to become them.
>As a Finn (?), what are your feelings with regards to your historical neutrality being broken by joining NATO?
At least for a younger generation, that isn't a big deal at all. Finnish neutrality was realpolitik after WW2 and pretty much everyone understands that Russia/Soviet Union is/was our only realistic enemy in case of war. Neutrality is bigger thing in Sweden as they managed to skip both WWs.
In reality Finland has been neutral for only very short periods of time. Basically only after we got our independence and WW2 and the small amount of time between Finno-Soviet treaty of 1948 ending with the fall of soviet union and us joining EU.
If you ask Putin being part of EU is very much not being neutral no matter what Finland says and under the Finno-Soviet treaty we were quite clearly under Soviet influence and neutral only in some legal fiction.
