[hef19898]

Iceland as a nation has less residents the mid-sized German town I live in, guess what my home doesn't have a military of its own neither. What Iceland has is strategic importance, just google SOSUS.

Agree on the bases thing, some of the CIAs kidnapping flights went through Rammstein in Germany and nobody did anything.

Not much I can say about Finlands NATO memebership, I am actually neutral on that. Or rather fall into the group of people that see NATO expansion to former Warsaw pact countries as something Russia could be less than thrilled about. That being said, only the future will tell if NATO membership is agood thing for Sweden, Finland and co.

Being a NATO member defenitely doesn't make a nation a US vasal, se way EU membership doesn't make a nation a vasal of Brussels. And yes, I know opinions differ on that one as well.

[jampekka]

Of course what is meant by being a vassal is up to definition and degree. But a foreign standing army probably is somewhere on that spectrum.

Brussels at least has the pretence of the member citizens having (some) democratic control, although I find EU so antidemocratic by design that this is indeed mostly a pretence. And EU e.g. sets quite tight limits of how the member countries can structure their economies.