quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
Instead of NATO, Eastern European countries would be better off joining & expanding The Visegrad Group. While the original four members have common cultural ties, they'd could with the right leadership expand to include a few other countries to include Ukraine, Finland & Baltics, where the common tie amongst all of them, is a threat from Russia.

Finland is already aligned with the other Nordic countries in a defensive sub-group within NATO - NORDEFCO. They're currently working on implementing joint standardization of stuff like fighter aircraft, training, uniforms, small arms, naval operations, etc.

So Finland is very unlikely to jump ship to join a totally different subgroup like Visegrad.

And the Baltic countries are culturally and economically closer to the Nordic countries than to the Central European countries that make up the Visegrad Group. They already cooperate with the Nordic countries as part of the Nordic-Baltic Eight group.