As a retired admiral and former supreme allied commander of the NATO, I was thrilled when Sweden and Finland joined the alliance. My first thought was about the vast coastline the two Nordic states provided, essentially turning the Baltic Sea has into a "NATO lake.”
Russia has a sliver of land on the eastern corner of the sea where St. Petersburg sits, and another slice with its Kaliningrad territory, located between Lithuania and Poland. But nearly all the Baltic coast is firmly in the hands of the alliance.
This is significant for several reasons. First it is the only interior sea fully within NATO territory: All the other maritime venues for allied forces — the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans — are borderlands. Control of the Baltic gives NATO the ability to bottle up the Russian Baltic fleet; vital sea and communications lanes between seven key northern allies; and lots of maritime infrastructure, from huge liquefied natural gas terminals and offshore oil and gas facilities, to fiber optic cables on the sea floor.
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