Geopolitics and Markets Review 29/6/2022:

Major NATO meeting in Madrid this week has a lot of news coming out of it. Sweden and Finland have been approved to join NATO after Turkey finally agreed. Hence all current NATO members approve of the additions. Turkey was opposed to allowing the nations to join due to attitudes toward the Kurdish Workers’ Party, which Turkey said Sweden has supported. Finland and Sweden want to join NATO after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An attack on one NATO country is treated as an attack against all NATO countries. This gives countries that are normally small and would normally be overrun in an invasion an advantage as their defence is ensured by this NATO agreement.

The US is the world’s most powerful military, and its navy is bigger than the next thirteen navies combined. Many of these next thirteen are US allies, including Japan and The UK who are second and third. Therefore NATO rushing to the defence of the Baltics or Scandinavian states in the event of an attack would have massive implications worldwide as it would essentially drag the US into a military war.