NATO could be enlarging. What does that mean for Russia?

By Kathryn Fink

Published April 29, 2022 at 1:26 PM EDT

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attends a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting session with Finland and Sweden in Riga, Latvia.

Finland and Sweden are strongly considering submitting bids to join NATO as early as mid-May.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to deploy nuclear weapons in a European enclave if the military alliance expands.

So what could happen? And why is NATO support waning amongst Republicans?

Former President Bill Clinton writes in The Atlantic:

When I first became president, I said that I would support Russian President Boris Yeltsin in his efforts to build a good economy and a functioning democracy after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—but I would also support an expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states. My policy was to work for the best while preparing for the worst. I was worried not about a Russian return to communism, but about a return to ultranationalism, replacing democracy and cooperation with aspirations to empire, like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. I didn’t believe Yeltsin would do that, but who knew what would come after him?

We talk with NATO experts and diplomats about the road ahead.