OREANDA-NEWS  The National Coalition Party (NCP), currently polling as Finland's largest and tipped to win the upcoming election, has advocated a permanent presence of NATO troops in the Nordic country.According to Mykk?nen, the Nordic country could, for instance, establish a NATO command center or an Arctic center of excellence. According to him, the issue of establishing a NATO base in Finland has not been discussed actively enough, and the government and opposition parties need to redeem themselves as soon as possible.NCP leader Petteri Orpo also agreed that a NATO command center in Finland would be “worth pursuing”.NATO troops have held frequent drills in Finland even before the country submitted its membership application in May. Most recently the USS Kearsarge conducting exercises with Finnish forces in the Baltic Sea.As part of its military policy, the NCP supported raising defense expenditure above 2 percent of GDP, which is the current NATO target level for member states.Lastly, Kai Mykk?nen also suggested that debate about only men joining the military had run its course and supported female conscription.In doing so, Finland would join the ranks of Norway, which in 2015 became the first European nation to introduce conscription. Other countries with the same approach include Israel, North Korea, and Malaysia.Last year, a cross-party parliamentary committee proposed extending military call-ups to women, but not conscription, which is only mandatory for Finnish males. The liberal-conservative National Coalition Party is part of the “Big three” that has dominated Finnish national politics for decades, alongside the ruling Social Democrats and the Centre Party. It is currently polling as a forerunner ahead of the general election to be held in April 2023.Helsinki formally completed NATO accession talks last month, when alliance leaders agreed to invite the Nordic nation together with its neighbor Sweden into the bloc. Currently the matter is now up for ratification by allied nations’ parliaments. Turkey threatened to postpone ratifying both Finland's and Sweden’s bids in case Helsinki and Stockholm fails to sever cooperation with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and other organizations Ankara deems “terrorist”.Earlier this summer, President Putin warned that if NATO infrastructure were deployed in the Nordic nations, Russia will respond in kind “and create the same threats in the territories from which they threaten us”.