Between Kant and Hobbes:

Finnish security policy after European

Integration – seeking security in the

modern and post-modern world

Toby Michael Archer

Manchester Metropolitan University.

PhD

April 2010

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Between Kant and Hobbes:Finnish security policy after European Integration – seeking security in the

modern and post-modern world

Toby Michael Archer

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the ManchesterMetropolitan University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Politics and Philosophythe Manchester Metropolitan University

April 2010

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Acknowledgements:

To my parents, Peter and Hilary. For their support; always loving, too often financial.

Now I am also a parent, you are for me the model of what parents should be.

To Prof. Clive Archer, my supervisor, for his support, wisdom and, perhaps most

importantly, patience. Truly, a scholar and a gent.

To all my friends and colleagues over the years at UPI; I learnt far more from you lot

than from any book. In particular Hanna, Hiski, Henrikki, Tapani, Henri, Arkady,

Vadim, Charly, Katri and Sinikukka have helped me hugely in understanding

Finland’s place in the world and to refine my ideas over the years. In more recent

years Mari, Pia, Tuulia, Kukka, Johanna, Kaisa, Anna, Alex, Aaretti, Timo and

Tuomas have all kept me rethinking my positions and simply made work hugely more

fun than it would necessarily have been. UPI would never work without the wonderful

support staff; in particular Jouko, Erja, Eeva, Matti and Pernilla not only helped me

constantly down the years, but were the perfect friends and colleagues as well. Thank

you all.

To Mats and Heikki; who knew going to the pub could be so educational?

To Elina, who brought me here in the first place; with love. And to my pikku

suomipojat Olli and Thomas, for making Finland’s future matter to me so much.

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1. Finnish Security Policy and Change............................................................ 8

1.1 Why study Finnish Security? ................................................................................91.2 Other accounts of Finnish security policy ...........................................................101.3 Theory after the Constructivist Turn ...................................................................131.4 Putting theory into practice: the three hypotheses under consideration................171.4.1 Hypothesis I: understanding security policy change requires a historically andsociologically aware account....................................................................................181.4.2 Hypothesis II: The artificial “Great Divide” between internal and external ......251.4.3 Hypothesis III: Different normative positions, different worldviews, differentsecurity policies .......................................................................................................281.5 Concluding summary .........................................................................................35

2. Definitions and Method.............................................................................. 38

2.1 Definitions .........................................................................................................382.1.1 Describing Finland ..........................................................................................382.1.2 What is European Integration?.........................................................................462.2 Method...............................................................................................................512.2.1 Information and data collection: method, difficulties, advantages ....................552.2.2 Language and Living.......................................................................................592.3 Justification of period .........................................................................................622.4 “The NATO debate” – Finland’s central and ongoing security dilemma .............67

3. The historical context to current Finnish security policy ............................ 68

3.1 Finland before 1808 and inclusion in the Russian Empire...................................683.2 Finland as part of the Russian Empire.................................................................693.3 Independent Finland ...........................................................................................723.3.1 The Civil War..................................................................................................723.3.2 The Interwar Period.........................................................................................743.3.3 The Second World War ...................................................................................763.4 The Cold War.....................................................................................................793.4.1 From the end of the Second World War to Kekkonen’s first presidency...........813.4.2 Kekkonen as President.....................................................................................833.5 From Kekkonen’s fall to the fall of the Berlin Wall ............................................883.6 A brief post-war economic history......................................................................893.8 Geopolitics .........................................................................................................933.8.1 The end of the FCMA treaty............................................................................933.8.3 The end of the Soviet Union ............................................................................973.8.4 Instability: extending the concept of security ...................................................99

4. Finland and the Ottawa Convention ........................................................ 105

4.1 The Treaty........................................................................................................106

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4.2 The Finnish debate before the “Axworthy Challenge” ......................................1074.3 Debate on the military utility of APLs ..............................................................1114.4 Accounting for the strength of the Finnish Defence Forces position..................1124.5 External Pressures ............................................................................................1184.6 The value of international law and precedent ....................................................1224.7 The debate post-Ottawa....................................................................................1244.8 Conclusion .......................................................................................................126

5. Conscription: creating and maintaining emancipatory nationalism.......... 130

5.1 Introduction......................................................................................................1305.2 A history of Finnish conscription......................................................................1335.2.1 Refusing military service ...............................................................................1395.3 Conscription in other countries .........................................................................1425.3.1 Alternative military models ...........................................................................1435.3.2 The Nordic ‘brothers-in-arms’? .....................................................................1485.4 Understanding Finnish conscription..................................................................1535.4.1 Identity/history ..............................................................................................1555.4.2 The internationalisation of security tasks .......................................................1595.5 Conclusion: globalization versus emancipatory nationalism .............................163

6. Finnish security and the European Security Strategy: changed policies butconstant threat perceptions ......................................................................... 170

6.1. Introduction.....................................................................................................1706.2. The ambiguity of threats..................................................................................1726.3. The history of the European Security Strategy and Finland’s position on it......1736.3.1 How the ESS originated.................................................................................1736.3.2 Finland and arrival of the ESS .......................................................................1756.4. The “EU-ification” of Finnish defence policy ..................................................1766.4.1 The EU Battlegroups and the ESS – parallel discourses .................................1766.4.2 How EU security cooperation is constructed domestically .............................1786.5. The Finnish white papers and the ESS .............................................................1806.5.1 The 2001 white paper ....................................................................................1816.5.2 The 2004 white paper ....................................................................................1816.5.3 Comparing the ESS to the Finnish white papers.............................................1826.5.4 Terrorism as the first “key threat” of the ESS ................................................1836.5.5 Envisioning Russia – a central difference ......................................................1856.6. Criticism of the Finnish white papers reflecting different threat perceptions to theESS........................................................................................................................1876.6.1 New comprehensive security policy making ..................................................1896.6.2 A ‘new’ middle ground of security threats .....................................................1916.6.3 The limited de-militarization of security policy making .................................1926.6.4 What the white paper criticism say about Finnish security policy...................1946.7. Conclusion – “Russia, Russia and Russia”.......................................................194

7. Conclusions............................................................................................. 197

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7.1 New socio-political bargain between state and society......................................1987.2 Through the “Great Divide”: the transformation of the state, not its retreat .......2027.3 Security on the border of two worlds ................................................................2057.5 Emancipatory nationalism and the limits of normative commitment .................2127.6 In conclusion....................................................................................................213

Appendix 1: interviewees, bibliography and other sources.......................... 215

Interviews: .............................................................................................................215Bibliography: .........................................................................................................218Non-by-lined news stories:.....................................................................................252

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1. Finnish Security Policy and Change

This thesis is a study of security policy change in Finland in the post-Cold War world.

It will investigate what policies have changed in Finland and will explain why they

have changed by looking at the politics of security from both within the country and

from without. It relies on some of more recent theoretical approaches in the

disciplines of Security Studies and International Relations (IR) and uses Finland as a

case study to test that theorising. The chosen theoretical approaches come within the

Constructivist tradition, and attempt to explain why and how states and their security

policies change by looking at the international environment, the domestic political

situation, and the actors involved and importantly how they are all mutually

constitutive. In doing so, this approach aims firstly to provide a more sociologically

and historically attuned account of the state and society in the international

environment than given by the more positivist schools of International Relations that

dominated western academia through the Cold War. The chosen approach attempts to

illuminate the political processes, including both negotiation and conflict, that

produces security policy. Secondly the chosen approach plays down the centrality of

the divide between internal and external, or domestic and international, in its account

of states. As Erikson and Rhinard note (2009) it is becoming increasingly common

over the last decade for studies of security to come “to grips with a particularly new,

and challenging, aspect of security: the problematic divide between ‘the internal’ and

‘the external’”(ibid:24). The chosen approach for this thesis could be said to be more

one of ‘world politics’ than of ‘international relations’ in its attempt to go beyond that

divide. Thirdly this approach tests how different normative assumptions amongst

different security actors produce conflicting worldviews – that loosely can be seen as

Hobbesian perspectives of international competition and conflict against Kantian

views of transnational cooperation and peace. It considers how a country’s security

policy results from the various actors attempting to balance such conflicting views,

how this balance reflects their political power – and how this negotiation can create

aspects of security policies that are contradictory or paradoxical.

This chapter will first, ask the fundamental questions of ‘why should we study Finnish

security policy?’, noting the seeming paradox of modern, globally integrated, export-

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led EU member-state but a state where its security policy seems to have changed little

since the Cold War. Next it considers existing literature that attempts to study and

explain Finnish security policy, in particular noting the prevalence of geopolitics in

these explanations but noting the obvious weaknesses in this popular approach.

Thirdly, the chapter considers alternative International Relations theory approaches,

rejecting the rationalist accounts of realism and arguing for an approach to this study

more in the tradition of constructivism. Fourthly, and following on from the overall

theory discussion, this chapter introduces the three hypotheses that form the central

questions of this thesis.

1.1 Why study Finnish Security?

Finland is small, stable and wealthy European democracy. It is heavily dependent on

the international economy, relying to a great extent on exports to create to that wealth.

In the last 20 years it has been high technology that has made up a large proportion of

those exports – the ‘Nokia phenomenon’. It has become active member and supporter

of the European Union. In all these ways it is possible to see how Finland has

experienced globalization, as an economic, cultural and political phenomenon.

Nevertheless Finnish security policy has changed little in this same period. The Soviet

Union and the Warsaw pact have long since disappeared, but Finland’s security policy

has remained almost unchanged, being based on the three principles of military non-

alliance, territorial defence and general conscription.

Finland is, therefore, a worthy case to study due to both being similar to many other

developed countries – its participation in globalization and the deep penetration of

those globalizing forces – but, importantly, also different from many other European

states: its relatively static security thinking. Of course there have been many changes

in Finnish foreign and defence policy since the end of the Cold War, and these are

considered below, but the level of continuity in the basic premises of Finnish security

thinking is remarkable in the light of the changes in the international environment

around Finland and the impact of globalization on Finland. The country’s security

position has over many decades been described by almost all practitioners, and a

significant majority of analysts, in terms of geopolitics – a realist description focusing

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on relative state power. The predictive power of such realist and neo-realist

perspectives was already brought into question by the end of the Cold War (Brown

1997:210-215); and likewise such explanations do not seem to account well for

explaining either what has and has not changed in Finnish security policy since the

end of the Cold War. How then should we try to understand what has and what has

not changed in Finnish security policy?

1.2 Other accounts of Finnish security policy

Writing in 1990, Erkki Berndtson noted that very little has been written for non-

Finnish speakers about Finnish politics and government “apart from some general

notions on foreign policy. This state of affairs has not been improved much by the

Finns themselves who have been quite reluctant to write books on the subject in any

other language than their own.” (Berndtson 1990:296). One exception to Berndtson’s

historical analysis was Apunen and Rytövuori’s 1982 attempt at a systemic

theorisation of Finnish foreign policy but thirty years later that article remains notable

for its ambition. Outside of what is written in Finnish (this thesis relies mainly on

English language sources – see discussion in Chapter 2), there have been few attempts

to produce definitive accounts of either the Finnish political system generally, or the

country’s foreign and security policy in particular. One important exception to this is

Chris Browning’s recent work (Browning 2008), discussed below as it takes a

particular theoretical approach; otherwise Finland’s political system and foreign

relations have been described in some depth in a comparative setting with the other

Scandinavian countries by David Arter (1999), and a second, updated and revised

edition of this book, Scandinavian Politics Today, was published in 2008. For the

historical background to modern Finnish politics, the English language literature is

stronger with Jussila, Hentilä and Nevakivi’s (1999) From Grand Duchy to a Modern

State and David Kirby’s (2006) A Concise History of Finland being two important

modern sources.

Despite the lack of attempts to write definitive accounts in English of Finnish foreign

and security policy, much has been written, including in English, since the end of the

Cold War and particularly in response to Finland’s membership of the EU. This

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diverse literature is spread across numerous articles, pamphlets, book chapters, reports

and the like. Many of these diverse works are referred to in this thesis, but

monographs remain rare. Of those that do exist it is notable that geopolitical and

power-politics approaches remain so dominant, even when not explicitly described as

such. Max Jakobson has written numerous books that mix history, diplomatic memoir

and analysis from someone who viewed Finnish diplomacy for numerous decades

from the very top. Finland in the New Europe (Jakobson 1998) maintains the

descriptive history of his earlier books, but the final chapters focus on what Finland’s

then still new EU membership means. As a journalist and a diplomat, Jakobson does

not write in terms of theory, but his analysis is predominantly geo-political, although

having been ambassador to the UN, he is very cognisant of the importance of

international law to Finland.

On security policy, a number of books describe Finland’s strategic position from

within a realist framework. Penttilä (1991) covers Finland’s defence policy through

the Cold War; Dörfer (1997), looks at all the Nordic states and notably describes

himself overtly as a realist, seeing states acting in ways to maximize power (ibid:10).

Dörfer unsurprisingly focuses mainly on strategic issues, discussing the importance of

NATO to the Nordic States with little mention of the EU. Tomas Ries’s study of

Finland relations with NATO is not dissimilar, although he does pay some attention to

issues of identity but without unpacking these idea to any extent (Ries 1999). Pekka

Visuri has written much on Finnish security policy mainly, but not solely, in Finnish.

Visuri uses predominantly a geopolitics/realist prism influenced by Clausewitz (for

example see Visuri 1999: 45-7). One edited volume (Huldt et al 2001) compares

Finnish and Swedish security policies, in particular looking at the relationships

between the two countries and Russia, NATO and the EU. The contributions are

diverse but nevertheless the editors still conclude that geopolitics is central to

understanding the differences between the two countries’ security policies (ibid:282).

Diplomat and scholar Kari Möttölä has written a number of studies that have looked

at Finnish foreign and security policy in more overtly theoretically informed way. For

example in a 2001 chapter, he considers the impact of identity on policy and notes

that identity changes due to both “domestic political changes and engagement in

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integration as well as by broader international normative developments” (Möttölä

2001:114), although his conclusion is perhaps arguably more in the liberal

institutionalist tradition emphasizing Finnish security policy through cooperation and

mutual security (ibid: 141-2). Möttölä’s insights on identity are shared by this thesis

although it will attempt to trace the links more directly between international and

domestic influences.

Christopher Browning’s 2008 work Constructivism, Narrative and Foreign Policy

Analysis: A Case Study of Finland is an important contribution to the English

language literature. Building on earlier work (Browning 1999, 2001), he uses a

constructivist approach to attempt to explain Finnish foreign policy. This is in direct

opposition to the more common realist descriptions that Browning calls “rationalist

materialist” (Browning 2008:18). This work agrees with Browning’s central argument

that traditional approaches “entail a hollow conception of subjectivity and of identity.

This is because agents and their preferences are taken as given prior to social

interaction, which means that questions of how particular subjectivities (nations,

states, individuals) and identities are constituted is excluded from analysis” (ibid).

This thesis seeks in particular to look at how politics crosses national boundaries to

constitute those identities and, hence, preferences.

A number of other recent studies in Finnish are of note because they consider similar

areas to the case studies in this thesis. Firstly, the PhD thesis of Jarno Limnell (2009)

considers the threat images that inform Finnish security policy. This work does not

refer to the Limnell’s Finnish language work, but Limnell was amongst my

interviewees and his ideas on the construction of threat images has informed what

follows. Secondly, Tommi Koivula has studied the debate over landmines and the

Ottawa convention banning them, the subject of the second case study of this work.

Koivula’s thesis though is interested in a different issue; using Finland and Norway as

cases, he seeks to understand “the relationship between governmental foreign policy

and international publicity made possible by modern communication technology”

(Koivula 2004:255).

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As this brief literature review suggests, particularly when trying to explain Finnish

security policy to outsiders, geopolitics are normally invoked and a rather simple

realist analysis is given. Yet as the interviews for thesis demonstrate, Finnish policy

makers and analysts once asked, give much more complex and nuanced accounts of

why security policy is as it is, often invoking domestic political differences, the

impact of identity on policy choices, and how international politics impinge on those

domestic discussions. Therefore a theoretical approach is needed that includes both

historical and sociological analysis and accounts for the international and domestic

levels and the relationship between the two. Such an approach will not be able to take

as given concepts such as ‘national interest’ or ‘national identity’ but rather

understand what they mean and how they are produced.

1.3 Theory after the Constructivist Turn

Chris Brown argues that Realism and Liberal Institutionalism represent something of

an 80 year diversion from International Political Theory into what has become known

as International Relations (Brown 2002:74). He does not question the honourable

intentions of those who, in effect, founded IR as a discipline in response to the horror

of the Great War but wonders whether it actually took too much attention away from

issues that are now more commonly seen as being just an interest of Political Theory

(i.e. domestic politics and normative theory), but that had been central for the great

Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment-era writers (Hobbes, Kant and Hegel amongst

others), who were considering both ‘international’ and ‘domestic’ political issues.

Primarily with IR, the focus was on the state and often this was at the cost of the

linkage between the individual, society and the state. It also led to a tendency to focus

on ‘positive’ theory (that explains certain “regular patterns that are perceived to exist

in international relations” and use them to predict) and ignore ‘normative’ theory (that

asks where these patterns come from, and whether they could be changed for the

better). Brown argues that the positive and normative explanations cannot be divorced

from each other (ibid:3,11-13). Ultimately this argument is: “a commitment to the

idea that ‘international relations’ is not sui generis, an activity that is so different from

other areas of social life that it requires the development of patterns of thought

specific to its peculiar circumstances.” (ibid:14)

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This is central to what Checkel (1998) called the “Constructivist turn” in IR theory;

whereby “exploring issues of identity and interest bracketed by neoliberalism and

neorealism, constructivists have demonstrated that their sociological approach leads to

new and meaningful interpretations of international politics” (ibid:325). What exactly

constitutes constructivist theory is not universally agreed upon: “there are many

constructivists, and thus perhaps many constructivisms” (Price and Reus-Smit

1998:288). Indeed Checkel himself argues that until it provides hypotheses to be

tested, constructivism is an approach – a useful one that asks questions that rationalist

theories do not – but not a theory (ibid:342-343). Other writers would contest this

(Adler 1997:320), arguing its empirical application demonstrates its theoretical utility.

Different writers also take different positions on how to relate constructivism to the

IR theory that has gone before; in particular how it relates to the two sides of the

‘Third Debate’ between the rationalist theories (realism, neo-realism and liberal

institutionalism) and on the other side, the post-structuralist accounts of international

relations (mainly the Critical Theory, influenced by the post-Marxist Frankfurt School

and Postmodernism influenced by the “anti-humanist writings of Nietzsche and

Heidegger”[Brown 1997:58-59]). Adler (1997) argues that constructivism is the

middle ground between the interpretivist approaches of Post Modernism and Critical

Theory, where only ideas matter, and the materialism of the rationalist theories, that

mainly see international politics as a force acting on states (ibid:321-2). Other writers

such as Price and Reus-Smit (1998) argue that constructivism is situated within the

critical theory tradition:

Though less pre-occupied with metatheoretical issues and disciplinary critique

as the core content of their scholarship than Third Debate theorists,

constructivists work with ontological assumptions, conceptual frameworks and

methodological approaches that originate in critical social theory. (ibid:260)

Price and Reus-Smit hold that the Critical Theory of the Third Debate was vital in

destabilising the hegemony of rationalist IR theory, and in particular Neorealism. But

its value was in its “critique of prevailing assumptions about legitimate knowledge,

the nature of the social world and the purpose of theory, not in the substantive

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analysis of international relations” (ibid:263). They argue that constructivism is the

movement on from the metatheoretical criticism of early Critical Theory and

Postmodernist approaches, to begin analysis of the world ‘out there’ where we now

see that agents and structures within the international environment are mutually

constituted.

Some writers such as Clark argue that Constructivism can be seen as “politically

uninteresting”, in that the myriad of mutually constitutive relationships suggests a

harmonious, almost organic, evolution of political relationships (Clark 1999:30).

Clark is not alone in making this charge, Price and Reus Smit (1998:268) suggest that

in particularly the work of Alexander Wendt can stand accused of this, in that Wendt

puts too much emphasis on state identity formation as a result of interaction in the

international system. As Wendt argues, the system is only anarchical because the

actors, the states, choose to make it that way (Wendt 1992:395); “identities are

inherently relational” he argues (ibid.) but Price and Reus Smit (1998:268) contend

that his vision of identity is far too limited:

Without introducing non-systemic sources of state identity – such as domestic

political culture – at some point in the structuration process, systemic

constructivism [their term for Wendt’s approach] offers an overly static

conception of the state and the international system, providing no clue as to

how agents and structures change. (ibid.)

Price and Reus Smit therefore believe that when done as they see correctly, contrary

to Adler’s ‘middle ground position, that Constructivism remains firmly within the

Critical Theory tradition. In the same sense, Clark argues that although we should use

the Constructivist method to break down what he calls the false “Great Divide”

(1999:14) between international and domestic politics, the adaptation between

different identities often involves “human sacrifice, hardship and suffering” (op.

cit.:30). He notes that we must see that there can be friction and the suffering because

the adaptation process is “asymmetric”: sometimes external pressures on the state

dominate, forcing states and societies to adopt certain orders domestically, and at

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other times the domestic actors may gain the power to change the international order

in some way (ibid:30-31).

Some, like the American realist John Mearsheimer (1995:91-92), argue that a

constructivist approach is so flexible in its application that its usefulness is limited,

particularly in terms of its ability to make predictions. Yet the failure to predict has

been one of the major criticisms aimed at positivist theories of IR so this is perhaps an

unfair charge. As noted in the literature review above, most attempts at explaining

Finnish security policy rely on a realist argument of Finland’s position in the

international system – as a ‘small state’ with a powerful neighbour. This has some

logical appeal to it taken in isolation – Finland will maintain a commitment to a

strong military defence whilst it has a powerful neighbour. But even in comparison to

its neighbours it begins to break down. If military defence is so important, why not

join NATO as its Baltic neighbours to the south did? Why has Sweden totally

dismantled it conscription system and moved to small professional military for

international deployments whilst the Finnish defence forces remain based on massive

reserves and very few professionals? Has being a member of the European Union not

affected Finnish security thinking at all? After globalisation, immigration, European

integration, and the impact of modern communication technologies – can Finnish

national identity be the same as it was in, for example, the early 1970s?

A constructivist framework, allows us to consider the myriad of conflicting interests

and influences, both internal and external to the state being studied, and how all these

interact to a lesser or greater extent – all affecting and changing each. If positivist

theories, notably neo-realism, have on many occasions failed to predict accurately

(the downfall of the Soviet Union and the failure of Europe to collapse into a

multipolar system of balancing states – to name just the most obvious), then this is

symptomatic of their failure to address this complexity. Constructivism is a theory

and method that is comfortable with change as being a normal feature of international

life, but not just change within the state, or within the system, but it helps to

illuminate how transformation in one leads to transformation in the other. It brings

“state and system into a relationship of mutual adjustment” (Clark 1999:173).

Nevertheless, in adopting this theoretical approach, Price and Reus Smit’s (1998)

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position of keeping Constructivism within Critical Theory’s normative tradition will

be maintained – and therefore this work attempts not to reify Finland as state, a

criticism that some still aim at constructivist approaches to security studies (see for

example Smith 2005:38-40). Indeed, within the logic of this chosen approach, what

has become a separate school of security analysis; Critical Security Studies (see

Krause and Williams 1997; Smith 2005:40-46), is what Price and Reus Smit’s article

argues that constructivism can be. Ultimately, labels matter less than the underlying

assumptions outlined above.

As considering the extent of security policy change is central to this thesis,

constructivism is a suitable theoretical approach. Firstly, we are concerned with

change, and, as noted above, a constructivist approach readily accepts this. Secondly,

the production of policy is a predominantly domestic process – the government forms

policy after consultation and confrontation with interests groups such as opposition

parties and non-governmental groups that lobby to gain influence – but particularly in

the case of security policy, it is aimed primarily at dealing with non-domestic forces

and is influenced heavily by circumstances that can be classed as international.

Nevertheless the aim of security policy (at least throughout the modern era) has been

to secure something (the “referent object” – see below) that is quintessentially

domestic – that which divides us from them – be that sovereignty, the national

interest, national identity or whatever. Therefore security policy sits on the cusp of the

international and domestic; it shows that the “great divide” hampers attempts to

explain and study security, as security policy is neither internal nor external to the

state. Rather, it demonstrates that the state is constructed by both internal and external

forces that are mutually constituted.

1.4 Putting theory into practice: the three hypotheses under consideration

The constructivist approach argued for above gives useful tools for studying security

policy as a phenomenon that is simultaneously international and domestic, and that

reflects the different amounts of power held by various actors who take part in the

formulation of the policy. Nevertheless, it does not define what questions are to be

asked, only how they are to be asked; therefore below are explanations of the three

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hypotheses on Finnish security policy that are tested in this study. The rest of this

chapter considers and explicates in some detail the assumptions contained within the

hypotheses, whilst arguing what we can expect to learn about Finnish security policy

in particular, and in security policy more generally, in testing them.

The three hypotheses are: 1) That security policy is not just the result of international

relations and the international environment, but the products of how the international

environment is understood through historical experience and power relations within

societies/states.

2) That the concept of ‘the internal’ and ‘the external’ resulting from state borders is

an artificial divide and security policy cannot be understood without questioning this

divide. 3) That different actors in making security policy may hold different

normative assumptions about how the world works (and should work) and these

create different worldviews. Security policy is a result of a compromise between these

views reflecting the relative power of the actors.

1.4.1 Hypothesis I: understanding security policy change requires a historically andsociologically aware account

World politics in the post-Cold War era have changed Finland; but in the

constructivist tradition outlined above, this thesis will examine not just the

international pressures acting upon the country, but also how those pressures were

seen, understood and acted upon by the full range of actors within Finland. The

actions and policy choices that Finland has chosen since the end of the Cold War are

only one set amongst an infinite number of possibilities, and whilst they may have

been predictable they were by no means pre-ordained. To understand how those

choices were made, this thesis argues that looking at how the state, Finland, interacts

with the international environment is not enough to explain these decisions; we must

look at how politics outside of the country’s borders interact with the politics inside.

To truly understand change in security policy (and, hence, how the state works) we

cannot accept what Ian Clark (1999) calls “The Great Divide”, a false separation of

internal/external or domestic/international. “The Great Divide” has torn apart both

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empirical and normative examinations of social life; splitting the study of

International Relations from Politics, Security Studies from Social Policy.

The mention of social policy is at odds with rationalist approaches to understanding

security policy. Security is often seen as encompassing most aspects of a state’s

foreign and defence policy, so the actors are most likely to be presidents, prime

ministers, ministers of foreign affairs or defence, and their officials in their respective

offices and ministries. These are the actors that rationalists approaches, both realist

and liberal have traditionally focused on. Social policy is the realm of departments of

social services or ministries of interior and seems to have little relevance. But a more

sociologically and historically informed account of security policy change must study

the relationship between a state – in this case Finland, both its government and state

institutions – and the society that lives within it, the Finnish people. The state is

reliant on society to help create security – this could be through taxation or

conscription – whilst at the same time being the central provider of security for its

society. This security is both in the form of military or “national security” and social

security against poverty and ill health or against the criminal use of force by other

members of the society. The political relationship between the different groups and

actors, ultimately produces security policy and changes in that policy.

State and society

In Wæver et al (1993:25), a group of scholars who subsequently were to become

known as the Copenhagen School, for analytical reasons divide the state from society

when studying security. The separation comes from different “referent objects” of

security (Buzan et al 1998:4). The referent object is the entity that is to be secured.

They argue that the state’s referent object is sovereignty – the right to act

independently of other states. This is how the realist and neorealist schools of IR have

generally understood security, but the Copenhagen School also identify “societal

security”, observing that the social groups within a state, that they call “society”, has

another referent object. With societal security, the referent object is identity. The state

and society’s interests may coincide to a great degree, as is the norm in stable

democratic countries, and it will be argued below that the close confluence of societal

20

and state security interests is particularly the case with Finland. But at times, state and

societal security differ; usually where a non-democratic regime oppresses part or all

of the population (for example Burma or Zimbabwe) but there can be a difference in

democratic or semi-democratic states as well: for example the Kurds in Turkey or

Republican Catholics in Northern Ireland.

This division is not uncontroversial; McSweeny (1999:71) asks who speaks for

society? How can we know what society’s security interests are? This echoes the

older agent-structure debate in IR theory (Wendt 1987: 335-7), that asked how do

people – the actors in the international systems – relate to that system itself. Wendt’s

target is neorealism which he argues takes the state as a given social fact and hence

the theory cannot explain how the state became as it is and how it relates to the actors

that constitute it. Wendt argued that this was an ontological problem that required a

sociological approach to resolve it – or as it would become known, constructivism.

Interestingly, and in contrast to Price and Reus-Smit’s description of where Wendt’s

form of systemic constructivism would logically lead him (Price and Reus-Smit

1998:268), Wendt writes that this will be a critical approach “since it requires a

critique and penetration of observable forms underlying social structures which

generate them” (ibid:367). McSweeny (1996:83) criticises the Copenhagen School in

a similar way, arguing that whilst they see security in constructivist terms, they see

society in the Durkheimian-objectivist sense: a given social fact, an entity not a

process. In this sense he accuses them of reifying society. By reification the

Copenhagen School avoid looking at what is traditionally called domestic politics;

power struggles below the level of the state (or indeed, society) – whether they are on

class, ethnic, regional, economic or other grounds. McSweeny argues that identity for

a society is socially constructed and therefore liable to be a construct directed by those

with the most power within it (ibid:90). So in the same way as is discussed in the

theory section above, McSweeny argues that whilst the Copenhagen School’s

constructivism is a useful tool, questions of power should not be divorced from

questions security. Constructivism needs to maintain Critical Theory’s questioning of

power relations to say politically interesting things.

21

This debate suggests for this thesis that security interests are a product of complex

political negotiation and competition, both between the state and the society, within

the state institutions and within society itself. Secondly, this complex process will be

both affected by international events and will have an impact on such events. This

understanding is at the basis of the first hypothesis to be tested – the need for a more

historically and sociologically attuned explanation of security policy change. Chapter

4, the first case study, considers an example of this, the debate over the banning of

landmines: how different groups within both the state and society, with different

linkages to international actors, took contrary positions on whether Finland should

join the international ban or not. One clear divide shown within Finnish society by

opinion polling was between women, who on average favoured the ban, and men who

opposed it. This can be accounted for in part by the link that is formed by military

conscription and reserve service between men in Finnish society and the structures of

the state. The position of international actors such as humanitarian organisation and

foreign governments supportive of the ban impinged on this debate, although to

different extents on various parts of both the state and society. The Finnish internal

debate also, in turn, had international effects – for example prominent actors in the

United States quoting the Finnish reticence to join the ban as support for their similar

position. Hence these two-way, multi-layered political processes can be seen at work.

The central questions of how and why Finnish security policy has changed can only

be answered by going beyond the idea of separate, simple classifications of domestic

and international. It also means explaining the politics of security policy decision

making within Finland, and how the different actors and interests groups that take part

in this process are shaped by and are shaping politics beyond the boundaries of the

country.

Accounting for change in security policy

Any theoretical approach to studying Finnish security policy will have to deal with

change, not just in policy, but in the nature of the state itself. Positivist theories of IR

and Security Studies propose that security policies will change in a response to the

international environment whilst presuming a stable normative stance, the ‘national

22

interest’, that the policy changes are designed to protect. But this presumption ignores

the politics within the country in question, producing only a partial, and therefore

inaccurate, picture. As was argued above, even with the simple distinction of state and

society, there are clearly different actors with different interests, as well as differing

amounts of power and influence, who contribute to the production of security policy.

An account of how Finnish security policy has changed must look at both sides of the

same coin; the internal politics and the external international environment and how

they interact.

Bryan Mabee argues that Security Studies has shown ‘a complacency towards history’

(Mabee 2003:146). “Post-Westphalian”1 has become a popular term in recent

International Relations (IR) and Security Studies work for describing contemporary

states. However it also suggests that the “Westphalian” state of the modern era was

essentially the same entity throughout its life from 1648, when the Peace of

Westphalia brought about the end of the Thirty Year War and began the era of

sovereign states, to the rise of the post-modern state at some undetermined date in the

late 20th century. Mabee writes that ‘this tendency both overestimates the coherence

and capacity of early European states as well as ignoring the tendency for the state to

evolve’ (ibid:137-138). He follows the neo-Weberian school of Historical Sociology

and analyses the move away from ‘despotic power’ of early states to ‘infrastructural

power’ of contemporary states;2 this move is connected to the development of the idea

of citizenship and its balancing of rights and duties of the individuals who live within

the territory of the state, the state’s society. Mabee’s historically informed explanation

clarifies some of the difficulties outlined above with the Copenhagen School’s view

of state and societal security. Infrastructural power allows the state to ‘infiltrate’

society, not to seize power from it, but rather to receive power from it. State and

society can be seen as different but they are in a constitutive relationship and

citizenship is the ‘compact’ that binds them together (ibid:139). Despotic power

allowed state elites to act without regard to society, most notably in making war with 1 Post-Westphalian has approximately the same meaning as post-modern as used in this thesis. Seebelow.2 Mabee focuses on Western Europe as state formation began as a European phenomenon despite itsseeming near global success as an idea. Despite interesting specific local situations, most notably itsdevelopment within the Russian Empire, Finnish history supports the thesis (see chapter 3). For a morein-depth consideration of the origins of the Westphalian system, including an alternative starting dateof 1555 with the Peace of Augsburg, see Brown 2002:chp.2)

23

other states. As states grew, bigger bureaucracies were needed to run them and the

bureaucracies increasingly became ‘the state’ (this was quite clearly the case in

Finland despite the situation that the Finnish state developed as a distinct part of the

Russian Empire – see chapter 3). States became increasingly involved in educating

their subjects to allow them to remain competitive as technology altered economies;

the military and law enforcement was professionalized – institutionalising the concept

of ‘civilian’ and ‘soldier’ and making armies more a tool of the abstract state than of

rulers directly. These processes were noticeable in the large increases in civilian

expenditure by the states through the 18th and 19th centuries. Societies became ‘caged’

within states, reliant both on the state for security, but also providing the state with

that power. This caging led to the increased politicisation in the 19th century as

societies started to demand more from ‘their’ states, and to the rise of nationalism

which further accelerated the process (ibid: 140-43). Overall, the period saw the

tightening of the compact of states and societies, as they became more dependent on

each other, although this was not (nor is it now) a conflict-free process: in a historical

process the actors might be mutually constitutive but they are still ‘asymmetric’

(Clark 1999:30), and state or society might dominate the other at certain points in

time. Changes to the state can be revolutionary as well as gradual or the wishes of

society might be suppressed by a state that is ignoring the compact of citizenship.

A modern military thinker; Lt. Col. Paul Yingling (2007), writing on the United

States’ failure in Iraq, notes: ‘Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not

a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves

entire nations.’ By ‘nation’, Yingling means within the terminology favoured by this

thesis ‘the nation-state’, the composite power of the both the state that organises the

military and the society that provides both the manpower and the resources through

taxation for the military. This is a clear example of the compact outlined above. The

20th century saw the rise of total wars that needed the full mobilisation of both the

state’s and society’s resources. Mabee notes that the First and Second World Wars led

to leaps forward in the states’ provision for society in response to the great sacrifices

and efforts made by the societies that allowed states to wage total war. The increase of

voting rights, most noticeably to women, was one of the major effects of the First

World War, as was the creation of welfare states post-World War II. Society expected

24

an increase in citizenship rights from the state to balance the obligations that had been

demanded from it in the form of the war effort (Mabee 2003:143-144). Mabee argues

that the Second World War also showed that it had become very difficult for a single

state to fight a total war efficiently alone, and the experience of the Allies

(particularly the joint British-US mobilisation) led to “the promotion of economic and

political internationalism and integration in the post-war period, often seen as the

beginnings of an intense period of globalization” (ibid:145). Therefore, states had also

to offer their citizens an increase in their rights in order to participate more intensely

in a new international and global environment; this was a “trade-off” of increased

security for citizens in the face of yet more instability from internationalisation (ibid.).

The state’s role became one of insuring against contingency, but not just the

contingency of external threats from other states and global economic trends, but also

threats internally to citizens’ socio-economic status. Hence national security and

social security are both centrally part of what the “security state” does (ibid:145). The

conclusion of this argument is that the internal/external divide on security provision is

historically contingent and both forms are centrally related to, and stem from, the

state-society relationship. Mabee notes that this realisation “helps connect security

more robustly with rights of people as citizens” and makes Security Studies better

able to “consider changes to both the security agenda of states and challenges to the

competence of the state itself as a security provider under conditions of globalization”

(ibid:147).

For the purposes of this thesis, viewing security as a balance of rights and

responsibilities between the state and society both domestically and internationally,

provides us with a tool for investigating particularly the first and third of the three

hypotheses this work considers. Trade-offs and balances in these rights and

responsibilities had to be made in Finland (between state and society) when changes

in the international situation meant a changing security situation at the end of the Cold

War. Showing these changes will demonstrate the first hypothesis – the international

is understood and reacted to according to local specificities, and the competition

between the possible reactions reflect the different normative assumption of actors –

as being valid. When the decision was made that Finland would join the EU, what

contingencies were being guarded against? Did threats to the society or the state of

25

Finland take pre-eminence? The contingencies that Finnish society wanted to ensure

against were dangers of economic, and hence social, instability. The contingencies

that the state wishes to ensure against were/are military or political threats to Finnish

sovereignty. Clark asserts that globalisation (for Finland most clearly experienced in

joining the EU – on the Europeanization as a form of Globalization see Burgess

2009:311) is a rebalancing of the compact between the claims that citizens have on

the state, and the obligations of citizens to it (Clark 1999:171). The rebalancing

should be visible in changes in security policy; for example, one case study will look

at changes in the Finnish conscription system, one of the most clear examples of

society providing the state with the ability to act and conduct its security policy.

1.4.2 Hypothesis II: The artificial “Great Divide” between internal and external

If the first theoretical proposition, as discussed above, to be tested by this thesis is the

suggestion that security policy can only be understood as the product of complex and

asymmetric political relationships within a country, the second is that a more accurate

explanation of security policy will be reached by moving away from a false divide

between internal and external in much of International Relations and Security Studies.

Accepting this lack of differentiation is an important logical conclusion of the

constructivist approach outlined above.

The discussion of Mabee’s work above demonstrates how a more historically and

sociologically accurate description of change in security policy reveals that the

security of the state and the security of society are mutually constitutive. This means

that dividing the international from the domestic will incorrectly separate the security

of the state from societal security, when these two concepts cannot be understood

fully without understanding the relationship between them. Ian Clark (1999:17)

argues that the “Great Divide” that separated the domestic from the international and

hence IR from Political Theory, is conceptually unsustainable in the face of

globalisation. Clark dedicates a chapter to discussing competing positions on

globalization, stating that there are nearly as many attempts at explanations of the

phenomenon as there are writers on the subject. He notes it causes controversy for

both those trying to describe it and address it normatively. It can be argued when

26

describing globalization whether is it an end state or a process; or whether it is an

economically determined process or has wider political and social roots (idid:34-9).

Also important is the debate over the normative aspects of globalization: does it

represent voluntarism or determinism? Is it a specific capitalist political project or

rather a process formed without political direction driven mainly by technological

advances? (ibid:40-1) Clark also notes that the idea that globalization subverts or

erodes the existing international order is a normatively loaded argument; some see

this erosion as positive, but that most writers seem uneasy about it (ibid:42).

To complicate the issue further, along with no clear definition of what globalization

is, we also have to accept that there is no one, pure model of a state on which to

measure globalization’s impact. Mann (1997) notes that the idea of the nation-state

comes closest to reality in what he calls “the ‘modest nation-state’ of the north” by

which he means north west Europe (ibid:476). He notes that even in Northern Europe

the nation-state (a state that claims its legitimacy from representing the nation – “its

people”) faced competing forms of state organization in the form of state socialism

and fascism until they were vanquished (ibid.477-8). In much of the rest of the world,

despite the United Nations that is a product of those modest nation-states, the idea of

“a true nation state remains more an aspiration for the future than a current reality”

(ibid. 478). This means that even the clearly trans-national financial flows of the late

20th century that most agree are an important aspect of globalization, will impact in

different ways on different states. Mann notes that the core of the states that have been

most “influenced by capitalist transformations” are the rich countries of the north, but

there is “an orderly extension” (ibid:484) of globalization from there outwards: for

example from the US to Mexico with NAFTA, or Japanese industrial investment in

Korea. We could add the enlarging European Union to Mann’s examples. Centrally, it

can be said that globalizing forces do change states, but in particular ways dependent

on the individual situation of those states.

The variety of effects that globalization has on different states demonstrates the

artificiality of the ‘Great Divide’; the differences stem from how differing domestic

orders interact with the changing international system. This is a two way process: “to

present globalization as a threat to the state, in isolation, is then to miss the central

27

point: what it destabilizes is not the state, but that particular accommodation between

the domestic and international components of the order”(Clark 1999:54). Clark’s

argument, therefore, “does not simply restate the uncontroversial position that the

international influences the domestic, and vice versa. It goes further in insisting that

the ‘domestic’ is what it is because it constitutes a part of a specific international

structure. Likewise, the international structure is what it is, at discrete historical

moments, in consequence of the nature of the polities embedded within it” (ibid:25;

emphasis added). The end of the Cold War represented a period of significant change

for Finland. This thesis will test, by looking at changes in its security policy, how the

globalising forces of that period were accommodated within the Finnish polity, and

how the changes in its international position, in turn, impacted upon the international

order.

‘The Great Divide’ has further implications: not only does it legitimise IR as a

separate area of study from Political Theory (the former began with the supposed

empirical observation that the international environment is one of anarchy, as opposed

to the domestic environment of rules studied by the latter) but it also allows for a

normative distinctions to be made. This divide is between communitarian thought,

that denies that the individual can have moral validity when removed from some

‘domestic’ constituency (state, polis, community), and cosmopolitan thought that

holds that moral worth is held in individuals themselves and, hence, is universal

(Linklater 1998:chp.2). ‘The Great Divide’ means that although within a state

“concepts of obligation, freedom, and justice could be articulated within the context

of universalist accounts… these claims to universal values and processes presumed…

a boundary beyond which such universals could not be guaranteed” (R.B.J. Walker

(1990) quoted by Clark 1999:15). The third hypothesis to be tested in this work

suggests this tension is apparent in the various strains of Finnish security and foreign

policy. This thesis therefore asks whether involvement in European integration is an

attempt to push the boundary of respect for ‘universal’ values outwards, and how the

necessity of dealing with ‘modern’ (non- or less-integrated) states, along with the

security dilemma that historical circumstances have bequeathed to Finland, works as

an opposing force pushing normative policy justifications toward a communitarian

understanding where obligations end at the state boundary.

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The thesis will apply Clark’s argument to Finland: that globalizing forces, such as

European Integration3, do not pressure the state – pushing against the ‘divide’ that

separates internal and external – making the role of the state smaller (the ‘retreat of

the state’ hypothesis [Strange 1996:3-4]), but rather the forces flows in and out of the

state, both affecting it internally, but also being affected and altered by the state. In

which case, for Finland, we can look not just at how the EU has changed Finland but

also what Finnish membership has meant for the EU to test this thesis: “the change

induced by the end of the of the Cold War lies in the nature of the accommodation

between ‘domestic’ and ‘transnational’ forces, rather than in the specifics of either.

The change is relational to both rather than particular to either.” (Clark 1999:5) This

is a central but not a novel idea. Chris Brown notes that this innovation; the realisation

that “the domestic political order of the state and its international behaviour are linked

in both directions” is one of Kant’s major contributions to international thought

(Brown 2002:46 [italics in the original]). This thesis, with its account of Finnish

security policy change, investigates how domestic and international politics are linked

to each other in both directions. In doing so, it will test the second hypothesis and

give an account of security that more accurately describes the politics of security

policy change.

1.4.3 Hypothesis III: Different normative positions, different worldviews, differentsecurity policies

Mabee’s work suggests that to understand fully security policy change we have to

examine the political relationships between the various parts of both the society and

state. Clark’s argument suggests the analytical weakness of over-estimating the

distinction between internal and external and points to a tension between different

normative positions that result from ‘the Great Divide’. This provides us with a tool

for studying the politics of security between these different positions. This insight

leads to the third hypothesis to be studied; that the different normative positions create

different worldviews and that security policy has to balance these. The thesis will

investigate how these normative distinctions create the worldview of differing actors 3 This is, of course, not uncontroversial – the extent that European Integration will be examined furtherbelow, but the basis of the argument is that the EU represents a post-modern phenomena, it isqualitatively different from federation resulting in simply larger modern state. See Chapter 2.

29

that interact and compete over the construction of Finnish security policy. It will see

whether the more communitarian-based normative positions of some Finnish security

policy actors conflict with the worldviews of those with a more cosmopolitan

normative stance. The communitarian position leads to a more state-based view of the

world, whilst cosmopolitanism leads to policies that more willingly accept integration

and influences that flow through national borders at both the state and sub-state level.

Both the communitarian and cosmopolitan normative positions can be used to

constructs discourses on security that can be either classically defined as ‘left’ or

‘right’. The thesis will ask whether attitudes to security do not just divide the left of

the political spectrum from the right, but also create division within each of those

flanks, leading to certain groups that would self define as leftwing, and others that see

themselves as rightwing, actually having similar attitudes towards security. The

debate over security policy in Finland will be shown to stem in the main from a

division based on these different normative bases – with the communitarian, state-

based positions favouring a security policy designed to deal with the “modern”

international world of sovereign states; whilst the cosmopolitan positions tend to

support more a more integrationist policy for a “post-modern” globalized

environment. The thesis will examine how actors see globalization and increasing

international integration has an important effect on the form of security policy that

they believe Finland should follow.

The pre-modern, modern and post-modern4

The view of the world during the Cold War was of a bipolar system, with the states

gathered around two ideological poles, and a smaller number of neutral and non-

aligned states who, with differing levels of success, stayed outside of the orbit of the

two superpowers. In the regions of the globe that held the highest importance to the

superpowers, Europe and North America, there was an enforced peace that has led to

4 The lower case “post-modern” is used here, as opposed to the upper case “Post-Modern”. Thisdistinguishes between the former meaning merely ‘after the modern world’, and the latter referring tothe Post-Modern school of social thought stemming at least in part from the “anti-humanist writings ofNietzsche and Heidegger” (Brown 1997:58-59). Cooper (2000) uses post-modern in the former sense.

30

the commonly held view of the stability of the international environment throughout

that period5.

Since the end of the Cold War the model of stability has been replaced with one of

instability ruling in much of the world contrasted with the stability of the liberal

democratic first world. This view has been proposed influentially by Robert Cooper

([1996] 2000)6, formerly a special advisor on Foreign Policy to the British Prime

Minster, Tony Blair, then playing the same role to the EU’s High Representative for

Foreign Policy, Javier Solana. Cooper outlined a three-way split between the pre-

modern, modern and post-modern worlds. Using Cooper’s model we can illustrate the

dilemmas that Finnish security policy now faces, and explore the contradictions that

stem from attempting to construct a security policy that can deal with both the post-

modern and the modern/pre-modern world. This thesis will test the extent to which

Finnish security policy since the Cold War has been the product of differing actors

trying to reconcile two visions of security. First, there is the vision of a Kantian, post-

modern, world of shared norms where a spirit of cosmopolitanism, or shared common

humanity, can exist for people even though they are bound by political communities

that we call nations-states (Linklater 1998:36-37). Secondly, there is the Hobbesian or

modern world; where force remains central “because any state may at any time use

force, [so] all states must constantly be ready either to counter force with force or to

pay the cost of weakness.” (Waltz 1959:161)

Cooper’s tripartite division is as follows: the pre-modern includes areas of the world

where “the state no longer fulfils Weber’s criterion of having the legitimate monopoly

on the use of force” (Cooper 2000:10). Cooper’s examples include Somalia,

Afghanistan and Liberia. Tellingly he notes that when the chaos of the pre-modern

world threatens other states they might respond: “If non-state actors, notably drug,

5 This idea of a stable, if armed, peace is of course an injustice to many millions around the globe whosuffered in small, often internal, proxy wars typified not by the increasingly high tech weapons systemsthat the Warsaw Pact and NATO raced each other to develop, but rather simple and ‘old fashioned’brutality and oppression. These wars from Angola, to Vietnam, to El Salvador, fuelled by the supportof superpowers, were anything but ‘Cold’ to those involved and show how easy it is for both policy-makers and academics to ignore, dismiss or forget about the marginalized and poor of the Third World.6 Cooper has updated and expanded slightly his thesis since the events of 9/11 (Cooper 2003) but hismodel remains essentially the same, and nothing that has happened since 2001 that challenges hismodel, and indeed most events, such as the post-modern West intervening in the pre-modern worldwhen it becomes a source of instability – al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan – seem very prescient.

31

crime, or terrorist syndicates take to using non-state (that is, pre-modern) bases for

attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may

eventually have to respond.” (ibid:11-12) This predicted the US invasion of

Afghanistan and Nigerian intervention in Liberia (and also US reluctance to be

involved in Liberia, as it constituted no threat to the US) rather accurately.

The modern world is in comparison: “orderly, but it remains full of risks.” (ibid:12), it

is not modern in the sense of new, but rather, in that it is fundamentally linked to the

engine of modernism – the nation-state. Where there is order in the modern world it is

the result of balancing within the system, such as between India and Pakistan,

Argentina and Brazil, and arguably between China and Japan. In other areas, outside

powers might have to step in to create the balance; Cooper suggests the US’s role in

the Gulf but Russia in Central Asia or South Africa and Nigeria in sub-Saharan Africa

might be other examples. Traditional theories of IR have been theories of the modern:

Neo-Realism focusing on the balance of power between different states and Liberal

theories looking at ways that states attempt to limit the anarchy in which they exist,

through international organizations and treaties. Sovereignty is the key concept, and

the United Nations the key organization of the modern world.

In the post-modern world, the modern state system is “collapsing into greater order

rather than disorder” (ibid:17). Cooper argues that two treaties are central to the post-

modern world, the Treaty of Rome that founded the European Union and the

Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE). The CFE “breaks new ground in

intrusion in areas normally within state sovereignty” whilst the Treaty of Rome “is a

conscious and successful attempt to go beyond the nation state”(ibid.). If the UN is

the pre-eminent organisation of the modern world, the EU is the same for the post-

modern. Sovereignty, guaranteeing the right of non-interference in domestic affairs, is

being reduced or changed within the EU with states voluntarily becoming part of a

body which removes domestic issues from their control. Although the EU is central to

the post-modern world, arguably it extends to other wealthy nations as well: through

other arms control agreements (allowing transparency and trust to become an

organising factor in international life; the rejection of force as a way of resolving

32

disputes); and with the reduction in importance of borders as trade and technology

make geographical distinctions less important.

Cooper’s argument, dividing the world in this way, is not unique. Writers in both the

IR and Peace Studies disciplines have argued similarly, identifying various groups of

states by their shared features. For example, Barry Buzan (2000:9-10) describes a

“two worlds” model:

One world (call it the zone of peace) is defined by a by a postmodern security

community of powerful advanced industrial democracies, and international

relations with this world no longer operates according to the old realist rules…

economies and societies are highly open and interdependent, transnational players

are numerous and strong, and international society is well developed. The other

world (call it the zone of conflict) comprises a mixture of modern and premodern

states. In relations amongst (and within) these states classical realist rules still

remain, and war is a useable and used instrument of policy… States expect and

prepare for the possibility of serious tension with their neighbours… economic

interdependence amongst neighbours is generally low, and populations are easily

mobilized for war. Especially within premodern, but also within some modern

states, political power is frequently contested by force.

Paul Rogers (2002:98) discusses this division more as between North and South, but

notes within the ‘South’ there are strong modern states such as China, India and Iran,

that he terms “the middle kingdoms”, not part of the interdependent ‘West’ but still

organised and powerful. Fundamentally Buzan and Rogers are identifying the same

division between the pre-modern, modern and post-modern.

This tripartite division is not unproblematic, there are numerous issues of

classification. For example, states that are central to the post-modern economy may

act in very modern ways; the clearest example being the United States, the wealthiest

state in the world and the leader of the world economy but still using force in

international relations. Other states might be seen as archetypically modern, but have

important impacts on the post-modern world through their economy: China and

33

increasingly India are the obvious examples. Yet other states are on the cusp of the

modern and pre-modern; modern and efficient where the government controls the

territory but wild and lawless where it does not – Uganda exhibits these

characteristics. Nevertheless the model’s value is not in describing exactly how the

world is, but in illustrating how differing security polices will be desired by actors

who believe they operate predominantly in the modern world, to those who believe

they exist predominantly in the post-modern world.

Security policy on the border of two worlds

Finland, being part of the EU, would clearly be part of the post-modern world in

Cooper’s classification, but its security policy focuses primarily on Russia, one of the

archetypal modern states. This thesis will argue that this ‘dual-world view’ is present

both at the level of state elites in Finland and of the wider society. Not only does this

have implications for policies pursued or not pursued both in terms of domestic and

foreign policy (EU policy make this distinction very fuzzy), it also allows for, or

indeed necessitates, different normative positions to be held in parallel: the moral

justification and reasoning behind how the state/nation should engage with the

Hobbesian modern world is very different to how it deals with the Kantian post-

modern world. This leads to the sometimes contradictory and conflicting nature of

Finnish security policy; the continued attachment to neutrality and non-alignment

with a territory/sovereignty-focused defence policy whilst at the same time being at

the centre of the of EU’s post-modern project.

It will be argued that the continuance of the modern mindset particularly in terms of

defence is not a ‘hangover’ of a previous era. Rather it is a reflection that Finland,

being on the periphery of the post-modern Europe, still constructs an image of itself

as a borderland, no longer between Christendom and the ‘Asiatic hoards’ or between

the democratic West and totalitarian East (Medvedev 1998:3,4), but now between the

Kantian post-modern world of international peace and the Hobbesian modern world

of international anarchy. Chp. 6, looking at the impact of the European Security

Strategy on Finnish security thinking, will attempt to demonstrate this.

34

This dual-world view of security is not in any way, unique. Despite that “[t]he EU is

the most developed example of a postmodern system” (Cooper 2000:24), it does not

mean that even the states that have been at the centre of the Union from the very

beginning have become totally post-modern in terms of security policy. France

continues to maintain its independent nuclear force that was created as a deterrent to

the USSR but was at least in part a response to its unspoken security dilemma with

Germany. Despite the fact that the Franco-German security dilemma has in effect

been resolved by the EU, France maintains its nuclear capability as a deterrent to

“threats from the South”, whatever they may be (Archer 2002:14). Germany itself

may have gone further than any other state towards a fully post-modern security

policy, although arguably this has been the result of the USA providing hard security

for Germany. Nevertheless, German troop deployments over recent years in the

Balkans and Afghanistan, and naval deployments – notably to the Horn of Africa –

have shown, as Cooper predicted (2000:39-41), that even post-modern states are

willing to use or threaten force when instability particularly in pre-modern areas has

potential repercussions for them. Indeed, in the summer of 2009 the Bundeswehr in

Afghanistan launched its first offensive operation since the Second World War (Behr

2009:7).

So it is possible to find examples of modern state behaviour even in states that might

be expected to be the most post-modern in nature, and this can still be seen in Finnish

security policy, and in the world-view both of elites and the wider society. Two

possible explanations for this will be considered in the case study chapters; first, that

history is a construction. One does not have to take a fully Post-Modernism stance

that denies any historical truth to see clearly that the parts of history used in

discourses on security, and the lessons drawn from those events, will greatly impact

on the security policies adopted. Secondly, there is Hans Mouritzen’s criticism of neo-

realist theory that this systemic approach ignores the geographical reality of states’

positions. They are not affected by all other states in the system to same degree but

the closer states take on more importance (Mouritzen 1997:79-80). Clearly for

Finland, its geographical proximity to Russia has always had a huge impact on its

security policy in both the classical geopolitics or realist sense of having a militarily

powerful neighbour, but also in a more complex identity construction sense: what you

35

believe those close to you to be, is more important in defining what you are or are not,

than those who are far away.

Both of these explanations suggest that the Finnish experience might have some

relevance to the states included in the EU’s 2004 and 2007 enlargement. Cooper

asserts that: “The key question for European Security, in the narrow sense, will be

how Russia turns out. It must be our central interest to draw Russia into the post-

modern European system.” (Cooper 2000:35) Finland’s neighbour remains resolutely

in the modern (and in places – notably Chechnya – the pre-modern) world. This

means that Finland and other states that neighbour Russia cannot leave the security

policies appropriate for the modern world behind them, and this will limit integration

into the post-modern to some extent. Finland never lost its sovereignty in the way that

the Baltic, Central and Eastern European states did during the Cold War, but its

sovereignty was threatened to a degree not experienced by the Western European

states during that period. Its geographical proximity to, and chequered history with,

Russia – which will be a reoccurring theme of this thesis – is something it shares with

particularly the Baltic States, but also to some degree Poland and other Central and

Eastern European states.

1.5 Concluding summary

As argued above, this study of Finnish security will use the tools provided by the

constructivist turn in international relations theory to test three hypotheses. These

hypotheses all consider the role of identity in forming a country’s security policy and

see how identities are mutually constitutive in their formation, both within the country

and beyond it. But in doing so, it accepts that the power of different actors in defining

security and producing policy is not equal, and outcomes can be the result of conflict

and struggle where some actors are marginalized.

Hence, the first hypothesis is that to understand security policy changes, we must look

at the historical and sociological context within the state, not only at the international

environment. Bryan Mabee’s argument points to the historical contingency of the

36

divide between the provision of external security (often called national security) and

internal security (including socio-economic security, not merely the physical security

provided through law and order), and that in reality both forms of security result from

the compact between the state and society. He also shows that the relationship is a

historical process that has formed over centuries7, and that developments in the

international environment have changed the balance and should, therefore, be

expected to continue to do so. Despite the main focus of this thesis being on what has

more traditionally been seen as ‘security policy’ – a mixture of foreign and defence

policy – the fundamental connection of both internal and external security provision

will be kept in mind. Indeed with the end of the Cold War there has been in increase

in the economic, political and social changes that are called globalization. In Finland

membership of the EU has been central to this. It should be expected, therefore, that

as well as changes in Finnish security policy post-Cold War, we will observe

connected changes in social and domestic policies. Asking these questions puts the

politics back into understanding security policy change rather than relying on the

reductionist idea of a national interest and considering only the international

environment.

The second major argument to be tested is that security policy change is a result of

how different groups within a country interact with the international environment both

in their own right and mediated by the state institutions. Ian Clark’s assertion that the

“great divide” artificially separates the domestic and international spheres, suggests

that security policy change should be understood by looking at how transnational

forces flow in and out of states, both changing them and being changed by them.

What we call ‘domestic politics’ are as vital in shaping Finnish security policy as are

‘international affairs’, not because they are more influential than the international

environment but rather because they not separated by a ‘great divide’ from

international life. This of course also means that the politics of security inside the

country will also have effects exterior to it.

7 Although arguably in Finland, the formation of the modern state was compressed by the experience ofRussian imperialism despite the early institutions of statehood having been present from the Swedish-era. See Chapter 3.

37

Finally, the third hypothesis is that different normative assumptions amongst different

security policy actors produces different worldviews, and that Finnish security policy

needs to be understood as trying to balance these different worldviews. Clark shows

that differing normative positions amongst different actors will lead them to

worldviews where the ‘great divide’ is seen as being more or less important to the

country’s modern security needs. It can be expected therefore that different actors will

support different policy solutions dependent on whether they see the world as more, in

Cooper’s terms, modern or post-modern. This points to a route for examining the

tension between the differing normative narratives – those that see Finnish nationality

from a communitarian basis and those that take a more cosmopolitan approach – used

to support different security policy positions within the Finnish debate.

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2. Definitions and Method

2.1 Definitions

Two concepts are central to this thesis, Finland and European integration. The thesis

is essentially a story of Finland in the post-Cold War world and of how the process of

European integration has changed it and to a much more modest degree has been

changed by it. As they are so central to the thesis, what is actually meant by “Finland”

and “European integration” deserves further consideration at this point, particularly as

they are connected to the theoretical model outlined above. Despite first appearances,

neither Finland nor European integration are simple or uncontested ideas and the

assumptions implicit when these terms are used in this thesis need to be made explicit.

2.1.1 Describing Finland

At first glance this appears quite straightforward – Finland is a country in Northern

Europe, west of Russia, east of Sweden and south of Northern Norway. Yet

geography has implications for identity and politics. On Radio Finland, the

international service of the Finnish national broadcaster YLE, in the mid 1990s the

daily news used to be introduced with “…and here is the news from Finland and

north-west Europe.” This phraseology was dropped in the late 1990s, presumably

because either editorial staff or listeners were asking – “if Finland is in north-west

Europe, where exactly is north-east Europe?” This is evidence of picking a

geographical reference group – northwest Europe – that was more to do with a

political assumption than cartographic accuracy.

Territory

39

Geography is static but territory is not. We tend to think of countries8 as static

phenomena; borders are physical reminders of this. This is particularly so when

borders are clearly visible such as a coastline, or as is the case the with the Russian-

Finnish border, visible as a wide area of cleared trees, cutting a swathe through the

border forest in an obviously unnatural line9. This clearance is visible from the air,

giving a line on a map a physical presence on the ground. But regardless of fences,

watchtowers, gates and customs posts, countries do move. Perhaps the most obvious

European example of this is Poland, which moved geographical position a number of

times in the 20th century and before. The German government’s urgency in signing

the Oder-Neisse border treaty in 1991 was to reassure the Polish government that the

reunified Germany recognised Poland’s geographical position to be now settled, and

that there would be no claims on any of the formerly German lands beyond the Oder-

Neisse line. Finland itself has also changed shape through history. After the Second

World War it ceded about 10 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union, including

much of Karelia, its second city Viipuri and its port on the Arctic Sea, Petsamo.

Indeed Finland did not even exist as a sovereign state until the end of 1917, until then

it had been only an administrative district of the Russian Empire10. So even as a

geographical entity, “Finland” is not an uncontested concept, for example there is still

a small, if vocal, lobby within the country that believes that Karelia should be

returned. Another example is that of the Åland islands, that were only confirmed as

part of Finland’s territory in 1921 by the League of Nation’s Åland convention having

become a source of contention between Finland and Sweden in the aftermath of

Finnish independence in 1917 (see Tiilikainen 2006:349-350).

State

If geography is not enough to define a country, we must next look at its existence as a

political entity, and as a social entity. The term ‘nation-state’ is often used as an

alternative to ‘country’ and it points to the heritage of the idea of the modern state 8 The word “country” is used here consciously; the complexity of “nation-state”, “nation” and “state”has been discussed already in chapter 1 and will be considered further below.9 See “Finnish and Russian border guards roll up sleeves to clear frontier zone” HSi 25 June 2002. Thephoto available at: http://www.helsinki-hs.net/picpage.asp?IsoID=4H2usNtUg show the nature of theclearance.10 Albeit, one with extensive rights to self government including customs controls between it and therest of the Empire (see Chp.3)

40

system, that has developed in Europe since the Peace of Westphalia was signed in

1648 ending the 30 Years War (Evans 1998:572-3). The year 1648 is taken as the

marker date for the beginning of the modern nation state as the Peace of Westphalia

enshrined the concept of sovereignty meaning within a territorial area, loyalty was

only owed to the rulers of that country. This can be compared with “‘pre-modern’

Europe [where] political authority was shared between kings, princes and the nobility,

bishops, abbots and the papacy, guilds and cities… these multilevel medieval

authorities were collapsed to just one all-important level, that of the sovereign

territorial state”(Axtmann 1998:6)11.

‘State’ is a complex concept: “arguably the most central concept in the study of

politics and its definition therefore the object of intense scholarly

contestation”(Mclean 1996:472-3). A generally accepted modern definition might be

along the lines of the political power structures that control a geographical area that it

shares a name with, but this not always the case. For example many states are not

fully in control of all of the territory recognised as being that country (the Kurdish

areas of the Saddam-era Iraq were part of Iraq but not controlled by the Iraqi state, the

status that Kosovo held within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia before

independence, etc.). Some internationally recognised states are virtually fictions that

exist only in the collective consciousness of the international community: when the

Taliban controlled Afghanistan, the internationally recognised state (i.e. the UN seat)

was still based upon the Northern Alliance which at the time held virtually no territory

in Afghanistan. Governments in exile are another example of how the international

community can grant legitimacy to state organisations that have no control over the

territory that shares their name. How states support their own legitimacy by respecting

the sovereignty of others will be examined further below12.

11 This is in a sense the same meaning of ‘pre-modern’ as Cooper is using to describe contemporaryfailed or failing states. Pre-modern states, both historical and contemporary, are typified by an absenceof any monopoly on violence (be that legitimate or not), and no uncontested claim to sovereignty.12 In considering European Integration it is easy to downplay the important that the concept ofsovereignty still has in the rest of the world. For example, as Ambassador Mei Zhaorong, President ofthe Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs (CPIFA) said at a seminar held at the Finnish Instituteof International Affairs (FIIA) (Helsinki) 18 September 2002, that in the modern world “sovereignty isthe last safeguard of the national interest” and therefore it is “cherished”, not only by China, but by allAsian countries. The use of aid by China and Taiwan given to small, poor states around the world, tocompete for diplomatic recognition from those states is indicative of this. These state are often tiny,such as some of the Caribbean island-states and have no influence on world affairs except for their vote

41

Considering these different ways with which it is possible to define the state, the

‘Finnish state’ is relatively easy to delineate. Finland has a stable government that is

accepted as legitimate by both the domestic population and the international

community. It has control over all its territory, there are no territorial claims upon it,

nor does it have claims on lands beyond its recognised borders13. Yet central to this

work will be the consideration of what ‘state’ means after globalizing forces such as

European integration have penetrated and how this changes something previously

seen as central to the state – the provision of security14. Joining the EU has made

problematic the idea of sovereignty for Finland (as it does for all member states). No

more is the state the Hobbesian Leviathan, all powerful within its territory and sole

guarantor of the “safety of the people” (Hobbes 1660:chp.30), nor does it any longer

seem to have what Max Weber described as “the monopoly of the legitimate use of

physical force within a given territory” (Weber 1918; see Held et al 1984:35,111 for

the relevant extracts from Weber’s lecture). There are difficulties in describing what

‘state’ means in the light of European integration and the various conception of

globalization. During the Cold War, Finland had to struggle to ensure that other states

respected its sovereignty, and defending the nation’s sovereignty was the prime aim

of Finnish security policy, but this has now changed. This thesis will need to consider

whether an engagement with the European integration process has led to a new view

of security where defending sovereignty is no longer the prime aim of Finnish policy.

If so, this is indicative of the move from modern to post-modern state forms.

Nation

Nation is generally accepted to mean a group who identify with each other, in

normally some sort of ethnic sense, but possibly also culturally or linguistically, or

through some shared historical tradition. Nevertheless, overall “no obvious technical in the UN and in their power of mutual recognition of other sovereign states (see for exampleEconomist 1 January 2005).13 Within Finland there are groups seeking the return of the areas of Karelia ceded to the Soviet Unionafter World War II. They remain relatively marginal and the both the Government and President havestated a number of times that the Finnish state is not seeking the return of Karelia.14 See Clark, Ian (1999) Globalization and International Relations Theory Oxford University Press,Oxford particularly Chp. 6 “The Security State”.

42

definition exists” (Robertson 1993:331). Benedict Anderson (1991) in his classic

study of nations and nationalism takes a constructivist approach and introduces the

idea of “imagined communities”. He takes the view that nations are one of the widest

social groupings that an individual can imagine being attached to: “It is imagined

because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their

fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the

image of their communion” (Anderson 1991:5). His study describes the structures that

support this national imagination. Linz and Stepan (1996) also address this point; first

they describe ‘nation’ by contrasting it to ‘state’: “The nation… does not have any

organizational characteristics comparable with those of the state. It has no autonomy,

no agents, no rules, but only the resources derived from the psychological

identification of the people who constitute it” (Linz 1996:22). But they add that,

despite the nation not having agents in the way the state does: “…there are individuals

who act as carriers, in the Weberian sense of Träger, of national sentiment in

movements or nationalistic organizations” (ibid.). It is these ‘carriers’ who create and

continue national identity. This is clearly visible with regard to Finland (see Chp.3).

As Arter (1999) writes, Finland is a “successor state” (Arter 1999:2) to a failed

empire – that of Czarist Russia. Before Russia annexed Finland in 1808, Finland had

been part of Sweden, although parts of eastern Finland had passed back and forth

between Sweden and Novgorod. Thus until the latter part of Russian rule there was no

definable sense of Finnish nationalism, not even the language gave a sense of unity as

social elites used at differing times Latin, Swedish and Russian, whilst the rural

population spoke Finnish (which did not even have a written form until the mid 16th

century, and of which there were distinct regional difference, further fragmenting

society). Some concept of Finland as a distinct entity began to form in the late 17th

century, the latter part of Swedish rule (see Chp.3), but the wider creation of a

national idea – “Nineteenth-century nationalism, in the spirit of Hegel and Herder”

(Arter 1999:23) – occurred as a form of opposition and resistance to Russian rule.

One example of this nationalist project was the work of the philologist and nationalist,

M. A. Castrén in the late 19th century into the origins of the Finnish language. Castrén

made a fundamental mistake in confusing language with ethnicity, leading him to

43

presume that the Asiatic roots of Finnish (the language), meant the Finns were an

Asian people. Archaeological evidence now suggests that the Finns descended from

tribes who had been in the area of modern Finland for a very long period of time, and

that they had mixed to a certain degree with other European groups15. This though,

gives a good example of the constructed nature of ‘nation’; the ethnic/linguistic/tribal

origins of the Finns are really besides the point, what is important is that Finns believe

they are Finns and identify with other Finns – imagining the relationship between

each other. The Finnish people coming to see themselves as a “nation” created the

willingness for independence (Stenius 2002:157), the takeover of Russia by the

Bolsheviks created the opportunity. This willingness – the national consciousness –

was not a pre-existing; it was “created by historians and poets, artists, and composers”

(Jakobson 1998:13).

Within Security Studies, the term “society” is often used to mean something virtually

analogous to “nation” in the above discussion. One example of this – Bryan Mabee’s

(2003) study of the relationship between states and society in the provision of security

– has already been looked at in some depth in the preceding chapter. Another example

would be Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s writing on the concept of “societal

security”, where what is to be secured is the “we identities” (Buzan et al 1998:120).

The most important point is to be able to see the society/nation as something distinct

from the state, even if in many cases – such as established European democracies –

the two often have a relatively harmonious relationship to the point where non-

political scientists might not see much distinction. In this thesis the terms “society”

and “nation” are used interchangeably as in the case of Finland there are very few

distinctions. Confusingly, and demonstrating that lack of strict terminology in the

field, the term “national security”, as is often used as a reason by governments for not

releasing certain information, almost always refers to the security of the state not of

the nation.

Nation-state

15 More recent genetic analysis suggest that Finns are 75% Indo-European stock and only 25% Uralic.See Horn, Frank (1999) “National Minorities in Finland” Virtual Finland(http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/ english/minorit.html accessed 4 October 2002)

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Finland, under the Russian Empire, was given the title of a Grand Duchy. It had its

own administrative system, including a central bank and its own currency and

eventually a Parliament (although suffrage was not universal). It was, in Max

Jakobson’s (1998:13) words, “a state looking for a nation”, the nationalists provided

that and with independence in December 1917, Finland became a nation-state.

Barry Buzan (1991) gives four model-types of nation-state: 1) Primal nation-states;

here the nation precedes the state, and the state is established to protect the nation

(France, Italy and Japan are examples). 2) State-nations; here the state precedes the

nation – this is commonly seen in states that are created by immigration (US,

Australia, the Latin American Countries). 3) Part nation-states; this is when a nation is

divided between two or more states. One national group might be in control of both

states (Korea, pre-unification East and West Germany), or just one of the states they

are spread between (Hungary and Hungarian minorities in the surrounding states). 4)

Multination-states; where the state includes a number of different nations, as in the

United Kingdom. Multination-states can be further subdivided in imperial states,

where one nation is dominant (previously the Russians within the USSR and still now

within the Russian Federation, Punjabis in Pakistan, Tutsis in Burundi), and secondly,

federative states where the national groups have at least theoretically equal rights

(Canada, Switzerland and pre-dissolution Yugoslavia) (Buzan 1991:72-76).

Finland at first sight fits neatly into Buzan’s first model – the primal nation-state – but

Jakobson’s suggestion that the nation was created only once the Finnish state was

already an existing entity (even if it was really more of a proto-state being still under

Russian rule), should lead us to consider again the socially constructed nature of both

concepts. Secondly, Finland is not a purely mono-national state (indeed, very few

are); despite the fact that the vast majority of Finnish citizens identify themselves as

“Finns”. There are what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website, Virtual Finland,

calls “national minorities”. These include: the Swedish speakers, the Saami, the Rom

(Romanies or Gypsies), the Jews, the Old Russians and the Tatars. Most of these

groups are small so do not have any influence on a national level – but the exception

is the Swedish speakers (Suomenruotsalaiset – literally “Finland’s Swedes”) as they

are more normally referred to as a “linguistic minority” (Kielivähemmistö).

45

The Swedish speaking Finns show the difficulties in the concept of ‘nation’, the

difference is linguistic far more than ethnic. They are not a new immigrant population

- Swedish speakers have been present in Finland since at least the Viking times;

intermarriage, the movement of people in both directions from one language

community to the other, and the ‘Fennoization’ of many Swedish family names

during the national-romantic period, all make the idea of an ‘ethnic’ distinction

nonsensical. Nevertheless the position of the language is constitutionally protected

and the Swedish speaking community have political power, most notably through the

Ruotsalainen Kansanpuolue (RKP) – the Swedish Speakers Party16. Linz and Stepan

(1996:24) write: “In the successful effort to craft state loyalty, Finland made Swedish

one of the two national languages and granted broad citizenship rights. In this context

the Swedish minority easily developed loyalty to the democratic state of Finland

while retaining important Swedish cultural institutions, which were recognized as

legitimate by the Finnish state.” They suggest that the Swedish speakers’ loyalty is to

the state, the Republic of Finland, rather than the Finnish nation, but in reality these

are of course difficult to separate. There are no reasons to presume that someone

cannot carry different identities simultaneously when one identity does not seem to

threaten another, i.e. being both a Swedish speaker and a Finn (even a European) at

the same time, and this will be considered further below. Nevertheless Swedish

speakers made up only 5.5 percent of the population in 2003 (Jungner 2004) and the

community, that has been historically very powerful politically, seems to be

continuing in a constant decline in size as Swedish speakers increasingly marry into

the Finnish speaking community forming either bi-lingual or Finnish speaking

families.

The above discussion of territory, state, nation and nation-state is important in that it

is a reminder that the word “Finland” carries with it more implications than it might at

first seem. It is a political term, infused with certain political meanings. Therefore,

when speaking of ‘Finnish security policy’ it is clear that this is not a neutral concept:

certain groups within the society and state – the government, the involved ministries,

16 The Swedish Speakers Party is their chosen English translation (see their website: www.sfp.fi), fromboth their Swedish and Finnish title “The Swedish People’s Party” might be a more literal translationand suggest a stronger idea of a community.

46

relevant MPs such as those on the Foreign Affairs and Defence committees, the

military high command – have far more influence on the vision of what is to be

secured by “Finnish security policy” and once those goals have been decide upon,

what policies should be followed to try and attain to them. In well-functioning

democratic societies it is sometimes easy to forget that the creation of security policy

is not an organic and harmonious process, but as noted above in Clark’s discussion of

constructivism, an asymmetric one. Cynthia Enloe uses a more stark example that

demonstrates this when looking at the NAFTA negotiations between the United States

and Mexico. She argues that we become accustomed to journalists saying things like:

‘Mexico negotiated with the US on…’, in reality the negotiations are between certain

groups within those two countries who do so “under the more or less credible pretence

that the states they spoke for were functioning and durable” (Enloe 1996:190-1). She

points out that some within those states are marginalized from the political process –

Enloe’s example is the Chiapas Indians of southern Mexico – and gain nothing from

these international interactions, despite the negotiators claiming that in representing

the state they are represent all its citizens. It is hard to find a correspondingly extreme

example when looking at Finland (for reasons that will be considered below), but it

does make us consider that when we discuss state provision of security, we must not

think that the answer to the question: “security for whom?” is either simple or pre-

given17.

This question will be central to the following investigation into changes in Finnish

security policy – it will attempt to determine what has changed, how it has changed

and, importantly, why it has changed. We should now turn our attention to trying to

define the main agent of Finnish security policy change – European integration.

2.1.2 What is European Integration?

17 Stephen Gill argues that Gramsci was central to the development of theories that ask not only howpolitical systems, and therefore political order, works but also why they work as they do and in whoseinterests. Gill, Stephen (1993) Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International RelationsCambridge, Cambridge University Press (see chp.1 “Gramsci and global politics: towards a post-hegemonic research agenda.”)

47

Integration can be “both a process and an end state” (Evans 1998:253), but for this

study, European integration will be seen solely as a process, and considered only in

the context of how that process has impacted upon Finnish security policy. The end

state, the point where we can say, “now Europe is integrated” will be left for

politicians, current and future, to decide.

Even as a process, giving the term some useful meaning is difficult. European history

is a history of integration: the Roman times, the Holy Roman Empire under

Charlemagne or the Napoleonic period are clear examples of how parts of geographic

Europe have been brought together under one political power structure. But there are

also the periods when communications, trade and other contacts have broken down or

declined, or when states have looked inwards rather than outwards. Nevertheless

people living in one geographical area cannot but help be affected by those living near

to them, be that by the transfer of ideas, technology or even disease. So even during

the rise of nationalism in the mid 19th century and again in the interwar period, when

countries looked very much to themselves, we can see that the spread of the very idea

of nationalism from one region to another is in a sense a form of ‘integration’.

A usable definition

A definition of a complex social process will always focus on certain matters and

ignore others, it is a model chosen to enable the study of some issue or phenomena.

What is needed is a usable definition for European integration for the purpose of

considering change in Finnish security policy.

With this in mind, this study will use the term in the specific sense of the forming of

organisations or institutions created consensually between states, that are given

supranational powers by the states that form it. In other words states come together to

form bodies that have binding powers on those constituting states. Secondly these

new institutions are not temporary, or up for renegotiation after a certain period of

time, they are enduring (Dedman 1996:7-8). The consensual nature of the agreement

is central; otherwise the Warsaw Pact could be seen as a form of European

integration.

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This obviously is a definition that leads to seeing European integration as analogous

to the development of the European Union; this is intentional but needs further

justification. Why should the view of integration in this study be limited to only to

states’ willingness to create supranational power structures? There are alternative

ways that Europe could be seen as integrating; for example there is diffusion of

technology – the internet might be argued to be bringing people in Europe together.

There is the diffusion of cultural norms; young people travelling across Europe today

find that they have far more common cultural reference points than their parents

would have done 30 or even 20 years ago; from the trans-continental experience of

democracy, to dance music18. There is even the increasingly normal use of English as

a common language across all parts of Europe. All of these issues could be seen as

integration – so why should we not use them to define what we mean by “European

integration”?

The answer is uniqueness – these are not phenomena unique to Europe, rather they are

evidence of a process of globalization more generally. The consensual creation of a

supranational body, with power over its constituting member-states, is something that

is unique to Europe. No other region has gone as far; other parts of the globe have

created free-trade areas (NAFTA, ASEAN, MERCOSUR), but none have surrendered

as much of the autonomy traditionally given to the nation-states as the EU members

have. Lindberg, writing as early as 1963, said:

The Europe that gave birth to the idea of the nation state appears to be well on

the way to rejecting it in practice. The Treaty establishing the European

Economic Community (EEC), signed in Rome on 25 March 1957, represents

the latest in a series of steps designed to break down the bastions of European

national separatism. (Lindberg 1998:100)

In distinguishing the uniqueness of the European project, we can clearly hear echoes

of Cooper’s (2003:18-37) separation between the modern and the post-modern world.

The distinction between the EU as a post-modern (and to some degree, a post- 18 This can be interestingly illustrated by considering the importance of one small Spanish island, Ibiza,in shaping dance music across Europe.

49

sovereign) entity, and the ‘modern’ international organisations made up of sovereign

states is clear. It also suggests why neo-liberal institutionalism theories do not

sufficiently describe the European integration process. Neo-liberal institutionalism

agrees with neo-realism on the fundamental level that states rationally pursue their

self interests in an anarchic environment (Keohane 1995:39); they differ on what role

international institutions can have in helping states reach their interests, and whether

states looks for absolute or relative gains – but at their heart they are both positivist

approaches (Terriff 1999:48-9). In that sense, neo-liberal institutionalism arguably

remains a theory of the modern not of the post-modern, not fully accounting for the

post-sovereign nature of the EU.

European integration (as defined) and the nation-state

The debate on whether integration is destroying nation-states or not depends upon

one’s chosen definition of “the nation-state”. If we see it as a clearly defined endpoint

of separateness: “predicated on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs

of the state from outside” (Axtmann 1998:6), then yes, integration is destroying the

nation state. But this definition of the state is flawed; all nation states are

interdependent to some degree, and in particular are influenced by other states either

overtly or covertly. During the Cold War to question whether the United Kingdom,

with its clear commitment of its military strength to a unified NATO command, or

Finland, continually having to defend itself against covert and overt Soviet pressure,

was more a nation state than the other would be a problematic. It is better to see

nation states as a social process, and integration as one major factor that makes that

process go in certain ways, just as technology and trans-national economic trends

infiltrate the state. The state can and does change; this study will consider how one

important aspect of one state – security in Finland – has been changed by European

integration.19

19 See Clark, Ian (1999) op. cit. especially Chp. 3 “Globalization and the State”

50

Inclusion/exclusion

Michael Emerson (1998) uses a useful matrix of four sections to consider which parts

of Europe are included in the European integration process (as defined above). The

table shows the dominant language groups and religions within each of the four

sectors of Europe in bold type, minority language groups and religions are recorded in

normal type:

North West:

Germanic, Latin

Protestant, Catholic

North East:

Slavonic, Turkic

Orthodox, Islamic

South West:

Latin

Catholic

South East:

Turkic, Slavonic, Latin

Islamic, Orthodox, CatholicFrom: Emerson, Michael (1998) Redrawing the Map of Europe London: Macmillan (p.13)

Emerson notes that although divisions are now cultural and political, the division also

make sense from a geographical sense as “at the heart of these three zones flow the

Rhine, Rhone, Danube and Volga, all in their different directions. There is a near-fit

with the four sea basins – the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean and Black/Caspian

Seas.” (Emerson 1998:11) From this we see that European integration as defined

above, is something that until 2004 was a process between the North West and the

South West. Emerson argues that the central EU partnership of Germany and France

represent this NW-SW alliance, the heart of the EU integration project. This excluded

the Slavic North East and Turkish South East; William Wallace notes “Turkey and

Russia thus represent Europe’s outer limits, each uncomfortably aware that its case

for inclusion is not conclusive” (Wallace 1990:19).

Finland is on the geographical periphery of the area experiencing European

integration. Only its Protestantism would attach it to the Northwest quadrant of

51

Emerson’s model (Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language, unlike Swedish which is

Germanic). The religious affiliation is enough though to put Finland on the western

side of the line – both literally and metaphorically – on the map (Russia being on the

other side) that is included in Samuel P. Huntington’s classic essay: “The Clash of

Civilisations” (Huntington 1993:30). The line separates what he calls the

“civilisations” of Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. This

division from Russia, with Finland seeing itself as part of the west and therefore

naturally part of the integration process, whilst Russia remains outside, is an

important theme that will be returned to. Of course there are arguments both from

within Russia and from elsewhere, that Russia is intrinsically part of the Europe, but

there seems little enthusiasm for an understanding of European integration in the

sense that the term is being used here.20

2.2 Method

The approach outlined above would support a more qualitative approach to the

research questions than quantitative. If we look at issues of identity, normative

commitments, understandings of what international events mean to Finland, lessons

learnt from history, there are obviously significant difficulties in how these things

could be measured in any quantitatively meaningful way. The obvious approach

therefore would seem to be to focus on the actors and attempt to interpret their actions

and to re-create their world-view. This also has methodological advantages for a

dissertation, in that it can be attempted by interviews with certain policymakers and

from analysing primary sources, such as speeches given by the major actors in the

area of study, and not looking closely at the area of structure. This would be an

acceptable approach if one adopted a radically constructivist agenda – seeing that the

social world is purely a product of ‘speech-acts’: that the world is purely a social

construct and that questions of material matters are not important. It also would fit

20 On this issue see for example Baranovosky, Vladimir (2002) Russia’s Attitudes Towards the EU:Political Aspects Helsinki, Ulkopoliittinen Instituutti and Insitut für Europäische Politik (pp.18-20)Baranovsky identifies three major schools of thought on Russia’s identity, the European Paradigm, theAsian Paradigm and the Eurasian Paradigm. The first and last consider Russia to be part of Europe,although to differing degrees.

52

well to an investigation that was trying to attempt an explanation of security policy

change from a predominantly domestic level. But, as argued above, this thesis is

attempting to see security policy change as a result of international and domestic

forces that exist in a mutually constitutive relationship.

The reverse is also true for methodology; if one was to focus purely on structure – for

example a neo-realist approach – then the understandings of actors, however senior,

would not matter as the domestic level would not be considered significant in

accounting for change, the focus would only be on the level of changes in the

international environment. This thesis’ position is, as Wendt argues, that the truth lies

somewhere in between: “society is not the unconditioned creation of human agency

(voluntarism), but neither does it exist independently of it (reification). And

individual action, neither completely determines (individualism) nor is completely

determined by (determinism) social forms” (Wendt 1987:361).

This suggests that the study will require a multi-level methodology to understand both

“agent” and “structure” levels of Finnish security policy. The actions and the

understandings of actors are important, but the structures of the international

environment condition to a certain degree those actions. As Wendt notes, individual

agents monitor the structure of the international world and act, in response, in a way

that they see as being in accordance with current structure, even if they are wrong or

their action is based on flawed information (ibid:359). This suggests that for this

thesis it is necessary both to explain the structure of the international environment that

has been relevant21 for Finnish security policy decision making since the end of the

21 The idea of the “relevant” structural environment is difficult but crucial. It is important at this pointto differentiate between security policy, foreign policy and defence policy. I take security policy toinclude major sectors of both foreign and defence policy, but to be less than the sum of them. Finnishforeign policy covers policy areas, such as third-world development, and geographical areas such asLatin America, that have little bearing on security policy as it is conceived in Finland. Thisdemonstrates that security is very much a “derivative concept”, the construction of which is “political”(Krause 1997:ix), as it is relatively straightforward to argue why, for example, third world poverty doeshave security implications for Finland, despite it not being discussed as such within the Finnishdiscourse. In Finland the relevant structural environment is still conceived geopolitically (althoughthere are signs that this is slowly beginning to change), with the greatest focus being on the neighboursand immediate region. With defence policy, particularly in the Finnish case where there are no bindingtreaty commitments that would require military aid to be given at times when it might not be at all clearif this was in the ‘national interest, it is much easier to say that virtually all of defence policy fallsunder the rubric of security policy. The Finnish concept of defence, for reasons explored in detailbelow, has always seen its “relevant” area to be exceedingly limited (basically: allow the enemy to

53

Cold War, and to also attempt to understand the worldview of policymakers and

opinion-formers who were both reacting to and partly constructing that environment

during the period of study.

Understanding how the world is seen by others is fraught with methodological

difficulties, particularly so, when looking at security policy actors. Many admit after

their public life has finished that their public statements are what they feel they had to

say at the time rather than what they truly believed22. Also one does not have to be a

cynic to believe that politicians might well say at times what they think is to their

electoral advantage as opposed to what they really believe is the optimum policy. A

pure-constructivist might argue that this is not particularly important as, in a socially

constructed world of narrative, it is what is said – “the speech act” – that matters

rather than the intention behind that speech-act. But this, to a great extent, misses the

impact that policy choices have on the non-socially constructed material world. A

Finnish politician could say in numerous speeches: “we remain committed to

territorial defence and the security of the whole nation”, whilst at the same time

approving budgets where progressively more and more of the armed forces’ spending

is going on equipping a small specialist rapid reaction forces designed for multi-

lateral operations abroad. This would result in the hollowing out of the territorial

defence system. It will not matter how strongly the politician made their original

commitment to territorial defence, or how much the general public believed her; if the

territorial defence system was tested it would be found wanting.

Therefore this thesis will examine evidence beyond that of the speeches and views of

major players, and also look at material indicators of policy such as changes in

budgets, military strategies, force formations and equipment, the legal framework

covering international issues and international cooperative endeavours (both civilian

and military). The relevant international environment for Finland will be considered –

most centrally changes that have taken place in USSR/Russia. Again, here there are invade and then defeat him once he is on Finnish soil). This suggests overall that the “relevant” areas ofthe structural environment for Finland has been relatively limited both geographically and politically,although this thesis will argue that this concept has widened significantly in the post-Cold War era.22 The president at the time of EU application, Mauno Koivisto later wrote in his memoirs: “Thestrongest reason for seeking EC membership seemed to me to lie in the realm of security policy. Theeconomic reasons were secondary. However, this was not something we could say in public or use asan argument” (Koivisto 1997:246).

54

both material changes that are important (for example: the changes in the military

balance that resulted from the CFE treaty, or the collapse of the Russian economy in

1998) and changes in the ‘narrative’ – important statements of policymakers or

opinion-leaders (for example: Gorbachev’s acceptance of Finnish neutrality in 1988,

or the “Zhirinovsky-factor” in the mid-1990s). How such factors affect Finnish policy

makers and how their response will, in return, affect the future policy choices and the

international position of, for example, Russia demonstrates how the domestic and

international levels are in a mutually constitutive relationship – although in this

example that relationship is clearly asymmetric due to Russia’s size.

Therefore a mutually constitutive explanation of Finnish security policy change since

the end of the Cold War will look both at the changes that took place after the fall of

the Berlin Wall, both internally and externally. It will attempt to discover how

security policy makers understood these changes and through what historical prisms

they saw them, but then also – how the decisions they took then went on to alter

Finland’s international environment. Finland’s security policy decisions then created a

changed environment for other national actors who then changed their policies to

lesser or greater degrees, creating a feedback loop.

The thesis will also seek to demonstrate that this is not a smooth organic process – it

is a political phenomena like all others – the decisions that are taken domestically are

a result of different amounts of political power held by different groups (this could be

elites versus general public, different political parties fighting for influence, or

different sections of the state – e.g. government versus president – trying to gain

dominance over the other). At the same time the mutually constitutive relationships

outside the domestic arena are also typified by an asymmetric distribution of power.

As an example, the impact on Finnish security policy decision makers will not be

same in response to the movement of several divisions of Russian troops from Central

Europe to the Leningrad military district as a result of CFE treaty obligation, as it

would be in response to a new initiative emanating from the Nordic Council. The

relative importance for Finland of these different aspects of the international structure

is not objectively determined. The response to them is the result of conflicting

identities and interests within the country, and will reflect the different success or

55

failure of different domestic actors over time. This also demonstrates why studying

normative commitments and justifications used in the political process is important. In

a democracy, it can be expected that the state elites will be able to maximise societal

support for their interpretations of the international situation, and their policies for

reacting to it, by appealing to the norms held by the majority of the population. The

thesis will also seek to demonstrate that by considering the normative dimension we

have a method for examining how the same policy can be ‘sold’ in different ways to

different sections of the target audience – the domestic audience; demonstrating the

third hypothesis of this study.

2.2.1 Information and data collection: method, difficulties, advantages

How should a thesis that wishes to employ a multi-level methodology, to examine

both the level of agent, structure, and the interplay between the two, go about

collecting information and data to test the theoretical structures and support the

argument proposed? One of the major problems facing PhD students is that of

resources; although a PhD student might not face the time constraints some other

researchers face, financial considerations set certain limits. For this thesis most of the

‘fieldwork’ has focused on the agent side of the agent/structure duality.

Investigating the worldview of Finnish actors:

To study the agent-level of the agent/structure relationship it is necessary to

understand how those who make, or contribute to, the policy-decisions, and those who

help set the terms of the debate, saw the world which is the object of those decisions.

This is problematic as there are many differing levels at which to consider the

influences on the actors. This can be discussed in terms of identity: national identity

might be the primary, but there are many other forms of identity that could play a role

such as the transnational level (Nordic-ness, European-ness) or sub-national levels of

identity such as party affiliation. The nature of these identities can be ‘decoded’ both

from words of actors and actions. The sources used for this thesis to do this include

the following:

56

1. Primary sources: there are two major types of primary sources used in this

study – statements and speeches made by important policy makers or opinion

formers and, secondly, official government documents.

a) Statements by major actors in the security policy area during the period

under study can be obtained from various sources. The Nordic tradition

of openness and transparency plus high levels of organisation and early

use of various technology, is of great value here. Even before the

widespread use of the internet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)

published annual collections of major foreign, security, defence and

related policy speeches – such as the annual New Year’s Day

Presidential address, speeches opening the Parliamentary session, and

addresses to the United Nations. The widespread use of the internet

since the mid-1990s has made this even easier (an extensive collection

of such material sourced from the internet in printed form was made, to

guard against the dangers of archived material ‘disappearing’ as

servers are updated). As noted above there are clear issues to be

considered in using such sources: public statements, particularly major

speeches, often tend to be bland and full of diplomatic niceties. A

tendency to hold a certain line, sometimes across the political

spectrum, can develop (as was clearly case in Finland through the late

Cold War period), meaning that this line can become a liturgy –

spoken but not believed. This would seem to be the case at the start of

the 1990s when it was still repeated that Finland as a neutral country

could not join the EU, whilst the political preparations for membership

were underway. Therefore such sources should not be used in isolation,

but judged against other contemporary evidence of policy being

followed at the time.

b) Official Government documents, such as the Defence White Papers or

the Report for the Parliament on the European Union, provide

important basic sources that can be seen as majority views of the

Finnish state on issues. Quite clearly they are a result of political

conflicts, so should be considered as statements that will marginalize

57

some views, and will not be solely the product of equal compromise by

all parties.

2. Secondary sources: These would primarily be the work of other researchers,

including interviews they have conducted with policy-makers, but also media

reports of statements made by politicians. Sometimes off-the-cuff comments

made by important actors can be more illuminating of their general mindset

than their official statements, but quite clearly either the media, or other

writers, can add a distortion or a certain perspective to a description of an

event or political process. This must be kept in mind when dealing with these

secondary sources.

3. Semi-structured interviews: a series of interviews were done for this thesis

with various Finnish politicians, civil servants, academics, journalists and

political activists. In each interview the same questions were not asked, but

rather tailored questions for the individuals being interviewed. This approach

was adopted to take advantage of the specific knowledge held by the differing

interviewees – for example, there is little point in asking a civil servant about

how the journalistic community understood the process of European

integration, whilst a journalist might have a more valid opinion on that matter.

The tactic of asking each interviewee to suggest other people to be interviewed

on the issues discussed and this seemed to be an effective way of reaching

people who might not otherwise have been considered as having relevant

insights on the issues at hand. Of course all the standard social science

criticisms on using interviews have some validity: the questions asked might

be leading people to answer in a certain way; recollections of events of (with

period of study) up to 19 years ago might not be faultless; the interviewee has

had time to reappraise their attitudes of the time – i.e. what is heard now is

what they now think they should have thought a decade ago, not what they

did; the interviewer may misunderstand the interviewee’s point and the

interviewee may be reporting an issue, or someone else’s opinion, that they

themselves misunderstood. A number of interviewees seemed aware of these

issues and would offer interesting statements such as: “at the time we thought

that this would be a problem but as it turned-out later, it was not a problem at

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all.” Semi-structured interviews give the interviewer a chance to encourage the

interviewee to find these interesting moments of reflexivity.

Investigating the structure of the international environment:

If the differing levels that have an impact on how actors construct their worldview

present methodological difficulties in studying the agent-level of security policy

change, then studying the structure – the international environment – is also fraught

with problems, many of them fundamental questions of social science epistemology.

The post-positivist research agenda, the various different types of post-modern

approaches, have drawn attention to philosophical problems of knowing anything

about the social world. This means that all data and information becomes open to

criticism, that what might have been seen previously as a basic statement about the

material world might be classified by some as just one narrative – perhaps the

dominant one – that excludes other truths. This thesis, despite its use of a

constructivist methodology, remains positivist in many senses. Material factors are

important, and knowledge of them can be gained through direct study, or by using

other sources that are believed to be accurate. This does not mean, however, that this

is to completely dismiss the impact that post-modernism has had on social science in

general and Security Studies in particular. The post-modern approach demonstrates

the value of a certain level of criticism that might have been lacking in some positivist

approaches. The idea of “deconstructing” phenomena or narratives is valuable, as it

means that the analyst should consider issues like power when studying an event or

process. For Security Studies it has been fundamental to analysts beginning to

question fundamental questions like what is security, and security for whom?

Nevertheless, for studying the environment in which Finnish security policy decisions

are taken, certain material factors are important. The limitations of the time and

resources means that in many of these areas the thesis relies more on secondary

sources than when compared to studying the Finnish decision makers themselves. For

example, developments in Russia are central to Finnish security policy change, but for

a description of what has happened there and why, it is necessary to rely on expert

secondary sources rather than fully research the area. Of course, as the post-

59

modernists would suggest, this leaves one at the mercy of those who write those

narratives: on their mistakes, understandings and misunderstanding, and pre-

conceived ideas. Yet again, it seems the only practical solution to this is to ‘read

critically’, and to compare different writers looking at the same issue.

2.2.2 Language and Living

This study relies mainly on English languages sources. I have not reached a

proficiency in Finnish to be able to use Finnish-language sources without assistance

or to conduct interviews in Finnish. In the case of Finland this has turned out to be

less of hurdle than might be expected for the following reasons. Firstly, in Finland the

average level of competency in English is high, right across society. It is unusual to

meet people in professional positions who are middle aged or younger who cannot use

English to at least a functional level. For the interviews conducted for this study, none

of my interviewees even mentioned the subject of language; all were happy to talk in

English. Indeed, many of my interviewees are quite used to English as their working

language. Of course, the researcher must remain aware of possible linguistic mistakes

or confusions that could take place, but for the reasons stated below it was possible to

identify these problems when they took place. It must also be considered that Finns

might discuss issues related to their country’s security to foreigners in a slightly

different way than they would to their countrymen, but during the interviews this was

not a particularly distorting effect. Indeed, it is not certain that even if the interviews

were conducted in Finnish by a non-Finn, this effect might still not emerge. During

the interviews when the interviewees had decided that the interviewer’s knowledge of

Finnish political history and modern-day politics was at least equal to non-specialist

but educated Finns, their responses would subtly change. This change would be from

what could be described as a non-controversial description of events, to a more

politically informed discourse. Having in the past also spent two years teaching

English to Finns professionally, the writer is well aware of common errors that Finns

make in English and this knowledge was also helpful in clarifying the ideas that the

interviewees were trying to express. Finally, although my Finnish is not of a level

where I could interview in Finnish, my vocabulary did allow me to offer translations

for the some words for which an interviewee was searching in English. In sum, I

60

believe that the language issue did not present any serious problems in conducting

interviews.

With regard to source material, not being able to use Finnish language material

without help from Finnish speakers is a limitation but has not proven to be

insurmountable. This is in part due to the chosen subject of this thesis (relating to both

security and European integration) where many basic documents have always been

translated into English because of international interest; and secondly due to the

period (since 1989) which has been a time of opening up in Finland and looking

outward far more than in previous decades. This has meant that many researchers and

policy makers have written in English hoping to engage wider audiences than the

purely domestic. A certain belief in a ‘European vocation’ is perhaps reflected by this,

but more important is a tradition of openness and transparency within Finnish political

culture. This tradition has been bolstered since the end of the Cold War when people

began to realise the extent of the self-censorship that went on particularly during the

Kekkonen-era, but that continued into the 1980s, with regard to relations with the

USSR (Majander 1999:88). Not repeating the sins of the past means valuing openness

now. It is often claimed that certain aspects of Finlandisation live on; it remains a

country where consensus is an important ideal in political (and what could be called

‘national’) life, even if the ideal is not always reached, and this can also lead to forms

of self censorship. Finland is also very aware of its national image, something noted

by a number of the interviewees for this study and clear from following the national

media, meaning the country’s achievements are constantly referred to but certain

debates, particularly on less favourable moments of Finnish history23, have remained

predominantly debates carried out between Finns in Finnish. To a lesser degree there

is also the feeling that some discussions will simply not be of interest to non-Finns

and hence tend also to remain mainly Finnish language discussions.

23 This would include debates over the last decade such as extra-judicial violence during and after thecivil war; the extent of sympathy to Nazi cause during World War II and including anti-Semitism andsome Finnish complicity with the Gestapo; and the extent of Finlandisation – particularly the list ofFinns who spied for East Germany contained on the so called “Tiitinen list”, named after the formerhead of the Security Police (SUPO). The list was famously locked in his office safe on receipt of itfrom West German Intelligence at the end of the Cold War (see HSi 3.9.2007).

61

In both of these cases living in Finland over a number of years has helped me counter

these problems, as has being based at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs

(FIIA). I first moved to Finland in October 1996, and from then on have followed

daily the Finnish news that is available in English. Originally this was in the form of a

half hour news programme everyday produced by YLE24 and broadcast in the

Helsinki region on the YLE Capital FM radio channel, and later renamed YLE

Mondo. The service was scaled back to a ten minute daily news bulletin in 2003 due

to budget constraints, but was joined by a short news bulletin in English on YLE TV1

each morning. From 1999, the leading Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, which

has the widest circulation of any Nordic paper, launched a five day a week internet

based International Edition in English. Whilst this is not a full translation of the paper,

it does tend to cover the agenda-setting stories of the moment. Through these media

outlets plus others25 I have followed the Finnish political debate for a decade,

developing both an awareness of longer terms themes and stories within the Finnish

political discourse and giving context to specific events.

Being at first a visiting researcher and later an employee of the FIIA has been a huge

assistance for this research. Primarily, it has brought me into daily contact with some

of the finest analysts of Finnish politics and the Finnish international position working

anywhere. Secondly, the regular seminars, workshops and conferences that the

institute arranges have greatly widened my perspectives on international relations

generally and on Finland’s international position in particular. Thirdly, FIIA’s name

and reputation has opened many doors, particularly into the circles of Finnish policy-

makers, adding much to this work. This has included spending six months as advisor

and assistant to Pekka Haavisto, the chair of UNEP’s Post-Conflict Assessment Unit

and previously the Finnish Minister of Environment, 1995-1999. Also during my

employment at the FIIA I have worked with members of both the Parliamentary

Foreign Affairs and Defence committees, with the Ministry of Defence research

department and Ministry for Foreign Affair political department, as well as

24 YLE is the national broadcasting corporation, paid for by a licence fee on a model very similar to theUK’s BBC.25 Perhaps the other most useful English language sources for researchers following Finnish politics arethe Finnish news agency STT wire reports that are carried unedited on the Ministry of Foreign Affairswebsite Virtual Finland – Newsroom (http://virtual.finland.fi/news/), and also YLE English languagenews website (http://www.yle.fi/news/).

62

developing contacts with sections of the Helsinki diplomatic corps, the Finnish

defence forces and the Finnish security police – SUPO. Since 2007 the FIIA has been

owned by the Finnish parliament and has allowed the writer a further, albeit limited,

inside view of the political process in Helsinki.

Finally two close friends who are both very interested in their country’s politics and

keen students of its history have been very helpful in providing me with Finnish views

on Finnish politics. Despite the informality of the settings making it difficult to

describe it as ‘research’, the scores of hours of heated debate and argument with them

over numerous years, and their constant patient clarifications and alternative

interpretations of various obscure moments of Finnish political history have been as

valuable as any text book.

In many ways living in Finland and working at the FIIA has been a form of

participant observation, with all the strengths and weakness that research method is

known to include. The period of time that I have spent at the FIIA has been of great

assistance in that, as Macionis and Plummer (2005:56-7) put it: “At the outset of a

field study, social scientists typically have just a vague idea of what they will

encounter. Thus, most field research is exploratory and descriptive. Researchers

might have hypotheses in mind but it’s just as likely that they may not yet realise what

the important questions will turn out to be”. This has proven true and it was after

beginning research and interviews in Finland that the choice of the case studies

became clearer as it became apparent which issues various security policy actors

interviewed saw as illustrative of Finnish security policy change.

In conclusion, the inability to use Finnish language sources and to interview in

Finnish has not been as problematic as first seemed. My knowledge and experience of

Finland arising from ten years of living in Helsinki, and particularly working at the

FIIA for eight years, has greatly balanced this disadvantage.

2.3 Justification of period

63

Some limit needs to be placed on the time period purely for practical reasons. The

study focuses on what can be called the “post-Cold War period” although for Finland

this can be seen from a different perspective to much of the rest of Europe. This thesis

is predominantly concerned with the events that have taken place between 1995 when

Finland joined the EU to the present day.

The post Cold War period can be considered in two sections, pre- and post-9/11. The

removal of the conflict between the super-powers affected the entire globe, but

perhaps most obviously changed Europe. The “long decade”26 from 9 November 1989

to 10 September 2001 was, in many ways, a European decade. Europe saw the

removal of the constant threat of a huge, possibly nuclear, conflict happening on its

territory. The country at the heart of the continent, Germany, separated by the Cold

War ideologies for half a century was reunified, whilst other countries, their

centrifugal forces no longer contained by those same ideologies, flew apart. For some

– Czechoslovakia and most of the western parts of the USSR – this was achieved

peacefully or with minimal amounts of violence. For others, Yugoslavia and the new

countries of the Caucasus, it was accompanied by much violence and suffering.

European integration progressed to new levels as the EC became the EU and member-

states “pooled” ever more of their sovereignty. At the same time European integration

was expanding its reach to include more and more countries of Europe as states joined

the EU or restructured their economies and legislation in preparation to join. The

other great international organisation of Europe, NATO, also expanded and changed,

bringing in new members for whom membership would have been unthinkable just a

few years previously. The United States, the last remaining superpower, was generally

seen as a positive and stabilising influence in Europe: showing its continued

commitment to European Security in Bosnia and Kosovo. Russia, whilst at times

chaotic, maintained a working relationship with the rest of Europe. Its warmth toward

the west that typified the first years of the decade did not last, but fears of an

aggressive resurgent power did not materialise. But the situation for Finland was

different. Although Finns obviously recognised the huge changes in the international

environment brought about by the fall of the Berlin Wall, Finland’s security dilemma

had always been with the Soviet Union and the fall of the Wall and even the 26 The “long decade” is inspired by Eric Hobsbawn’s idea of the “short twentieth century” (Hobsbawn1995).

64

independence of the Baltic states did not change this. The end of the Soviet Union on

the last day of 1991 was obviously very important, yet the successor state of Russia

was not different enough for the security dilemma to dissolve. As discussed in more

detail below, Finland looked for other ways to resolves this dilemma, and its decision

to seek accession to the EU was central to this. Finland faced the second half of the

1990s as an active EU member and arguably with an associated confidence.

11 September 2001, or 9/11 as it has become internationally known, tore attention

away from Europe. Whilst “the long decade” had been typified by the liberal ideas of

Kant, made concrete in Europe through the legacy of Monnet, Adenauer and

Schuman; the post-9/11 world has been to great extent defined by a conflict between

two very different philosophical traditions: Islamism and Neo-Conservatism. The

intellectual legacies of Sayyid Qutb and Leo Strauss have replaced cooperation with

conflict at the centre of world politics. Europe has not remained above this conflict,

and even Finland has not been exempt. The conflicts resulting have been both

political – such as the splits within the EU over US policy in Iraq – and actual – seen

most clearly in the carnage caused when ten bombs ripped through packed trains in

Madrid in March 2004 and the bombing of the tube in London in July 2005. Security

has become a central interest of the EU, and this has impacted on all the member

states including Finland. The tension in Finland between these new security threats

and the older inter-state geopolitics is explored through the case studies of this thesis.

2.4 Introduction to and justification of chosen case studies

This thesis uses case studies to test the three hypotheses laid out in chapter one. The

hypotheses under examination are: 1) that security policy is not just the result of

international relations and international environment, but the products of how the

international environment is understood through historical experience and power

relations within societies/states. 2) That the concept of ‘the internal’ and ‘the external’

resulting from state borders is an artificial divide and security policy cannot be

understood without questioning this divide. 3) That different actors in making security

policy may hold different normative assumptions about how the world works (and

65

should work) and these create different worldviews – security policy is a result of a

compromise between these views reflecting the relative power of the actors.

As the preliminary research was done, and particularly during early interviews,

certain issues arose that seemed particularly interesting in that they appeared to be

demonstrative of the hypotheses to be tested. The three cases chosen were a) Finland

and Ottawa Convention against anti-personnel landmines; b) the military conscription

system in Finland; and c) Finland and the European Security Strategy. The three cases

studies were also suitable in that the main events involved were in the recent past,

meaning that policy makers who had been involved were easily identifiable and some

were available for interview. This was important as only limited amount of secondary

material was available in each case.

Finland and the Ottawa convention: this case study arose out of interviews with

policy makers in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs who identified it as an early case

where Finnish policy came under sustained pressure from what they saw as above and

below the normal level of policy making on a defence related issue. There was the

international campaign carried out by non-governmental groups around the world.

This campaign was transnational in that it linked civil society groups within states to a

wider international network. This created a two-way process in which information

was fed into states, to local groups, who then exerted political pressure upwards on

their government to change policy. Secondly local Finnish groups fed information

into the international network allowing the anti-landmine campaign to lobby other

friendly governments who then in turn put pressure on Finland intergovernmentally to

change policy. The most clear demonstration of this was in the EU adopting a

common position to ban mines, with Finland coming under sustained pressure

because of its desire to remain within the EU mainstream. Whilst this clearly is

connected to the second hypothesis, on the need to understand security policy beyond

the internal/external divide, how the Finnish defence forces responded to the pressure

to get rid of landmines was helpful in exploring thesis one, on how security policy

represents power within and between the society and state. The political conflict also

66

illustrates the differing worldviews of different security actors as suggested by thesis

three.

Military conscription: In studying security policy change, it is helpful to also

understand what does not change. The continuance of almost universal military

conscription in Finland makes it unusual amongst advanced western states –

investigating why this might be was therefore an obvious research question.

Conscription represents a fundamental link between the state and society, and

therefore was a clear way to investigate thesis one – on security policy as product of

historical experience and as an expression of state/society relations. The worldviews

used to justify the continuance of the system would clearly be instructive in

investigating thesis three, and whilst there are less obvious transnational political

influences on the conscription system (thesis two), there are some – in particular the

professionalization of militaries of many of Finland’s neighbouring states, and the

increasing need for professional soldiers created by Finland’s activism with the EU’s

ESDP structures.

Finland and the European Security Strategy: The basic statements of Finnish security

policy over the last decade have been the governments’ security and defence reports,

what have become known as the “white books”, that are published approximately

every four years. These are an obvious resource for the researcher considering change

in Finnish security thinking in recent years. As the EU has become since membership

arguably the most important non-domestic influence on Finnish policy making in all

areas, it seemed important to find a way in which to test its influence of Finnish

security policy. The European Security Strategy (ESS) was the first attempt by the

Union to provide a statement of what a common European security policy should

secure and how this was to be done. Comparing this to the Finnish white books that

were published before and after the ESS was published was an obvious avenue to

investigate the impact of the Europeanisation on Finnish security policy. Whilst this is

most clearly a test of hypothesis two, crossing the “Great Divide” between internal

and external, the different discourses readable in the texts also demonstrated

hypothesis three, on different worldviews causing conflict over what security policy

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should be. How this was resolved therefore also tests hypothesis one – on who has

power to make, change or not change security policy.

2.4 “The NATO debate” – Finland’s central and ongoing security dilemma

The question over whether Finland should join NATO or not has recently been

described by a prominent journalists as “Mission Impossible: Finland’s 15-year

standoff over NATO” (Hämälainen 2011). The term ‘stand-off’ is useful in reflecting

that in public at least, discussion over whether to join NATO or not is rather

circumscribed and on a number of occasion, prominent figures such as President

Halonen have even stated that the current time was not, in some way, the proper one

for discussing NATO membership. Nevertheless, despite attempts by some politicians

– who may well be either pro-membership or against – to not discuss the issue for

reasons of electoral politics, it remains a central question in Finnish security, and as a

result there have been a number of publications both analytical and polemical on the

subject (for analysis rather than polemic see for example Forsberg 2002, Ries 1999).

But with ardent supporters and opponents the debate is not likely to end, even if

Finland does eventually join the alliance or the next president, to be elected in 2012,

is outspokenly anti-NATO membership. As a result, the NATO debate itself does not

lend itself to making a good case study, but the three chosen case studies above all

shine much light on why different Finnish actors react to possible NATO membership

in the way that they do.

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3. The historical context to current Finnish security policy

This thesis seeks to provide a sociologically and historically nuanced reading of

Finnish security policy. Hence an appreciation of the history of the country’s security

situation is important. This study’s first hypothesis suggests that security policy needs

to be understood partly as a balance of demands and expectation between the state and

society – what security the state offers to society, and how the society provides the

state with that capacity. The striking of this bargain is the result of a historical

process. The second hypothesis considers how the international and domestic political

realms are not distinct and affect each other. Various historical episodes show that,

although this may be more visible in an era of globalisation, it is not novel. Finally,

the third hypothesis considers the importance of different worldviews held by

different security actors. These worldviews have to be understood as lessons learnt

from historical experience, and that not only one lesson can be taken from the

country’s history.

3.1 Finland before 1808 and inclusion in the Russian Empire

Max Jakobson a former diplomat, scholar and leading commentator on all things

Finnish, pronounced that “as part of the Kingdom of Sweden, Finland had been a poor

and neglected province, a ‘developing region’ we would call it today, with no political

or cultural identity of its own” (Jakobson 1987:20). This of course does not mean that

the period prior to 1809 is insignificant in the history of Finnish security policy and its

relationship to European integration. The identity and political culture of that period is

still writ large upon the Finnish political community. Indeed Heikka (2005) refers to

the political entity of that era as “Sweden-Finland” (ibid: 97-100) to suggest how

Finland was an integral part of the Swedish Kingdom, and began to develop a

strategic culture aimed at balancing against potential regional hegemonic powers –

most notably Russia – during that period as part of Sweden. Tiilikainen (1998:28)

makes a similar point, arguing that Finland’s experience, as part of Sweden, of the

reformation was vitally important because it distinguished what would become

Finnish (and Swedish) political culture from other systems of governance in Europe

based on the Catholic, Orthodox and Calvinist traditions. Hence even before any

notion of Finland as a political entity existed, social and political traditions were in

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place that would distinguish it from other parts of Europe, most notably the Catholic

nations to the south and the despotic political systems of Russia to the east. This

history of how the state, society, and the relation between the two developed over

time is important to understanding modern security thinking. This claim is a central

component of the first hypothesis of this thesis.

Finland’s separation from Sweden in 1808 was directly the result of war between

Napoleonic France and Britain. Sweden maintained trading links with Britain,

breaking French attempts to blockade Britain. France used Russia to pressure Sweden,

and Russia invaded Finland in February 1808 before the Royal Navy could enter the

Baltic due to ice, to assist Sweden. Local forces were defeated and Sweden did not

send significant reinforcements. A peace treaty was signed in 1809 and Finland

became a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire (Wuorinen 1965:110-113; Jutikkala

1962:178-183).

The story of Russia’s conquest of Finland is important due to its repercussions on the

security debate even to today. The idea that Finland is a ‘small’ country at the mercy

of the actions of great powers both far and near is still apparent in much popular

debate on security. This repeated view mainly stems from the Second World War

experience, but its roots lie in the Russian invasions and eventual conquests of

Finland centuries earlier. It is justified to a degree; Britain played the role of strategic

balancer in the defence of the Swedish heartlands, whilst Finland was left to contend

with Russia on its own, and this resonates into the modern era (Heikka 2003:27). How

these periods are remembered is important in understanding the worldviews of

modern security policy actors, as suggested by the first and third hypotheses in this

thesis.

3.2 Finland as part of the Russian Empire

Derry (1979:218) writes that Finland after 1809 “had fallen into a different political

orbit [to the other Scandinavian countries]. Yet its future was to be shaped by

institutions derived from its long association with Sweden.” Finland was allowed to

keep its laws and institutions and in some areas its autonomy was actually enlarged

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from that of the Swedish period. This allowed the idea of a distinct Finnish nation to

arise. Lönnrot’s publication of the Finnish national epic Kalevala in 1835 was central

to this. He had collected and embellished traditional folk stories from areas of Eastern

Karelia to produce this monumental poem. Soon scholars had collected extensive

information to inform the Finns of their own distinctiveness. The accuracy of these

claims matters little – many were dubious – but that they gave the Finnish public a

self-awareness not present before (Singleton 1989:75). Jakobson (1998:13) argues

that Finland under Russia was at first “a state looking for a nation”, that Finns had no

“consciousness of a shared past and a common destiny” and that this could “only be

created by historians and poets, artists, and composers.”

This was a conscious project through the 19th century. Language was a central issue; it

was promoted by cultural-nationalists such as J. V. Snellman and Adolf Arvidsson,

although ironically, being from the middle and upper classes many of these figures

spoke Swedish as a first language. Snellman in particular was influenced by Hegelian

national romanticism that stressed the important of language to a nation27. Finnish

increasingly became the language of education, (including the first University

lectureship Finnish in 1843) meaning that as the 19th century progressed, more of the

influential middle class spoke Finnish and held positions of importance in society.

The 1863 Language Decree of Alexander II gave Finnish and Swedish equality in all

aspects of official life. There were some delays in implementation in certain sectors

but it was of central importance (Wuorinen 1965:143; Singleton 1989:77-82).

The Crimean War (1854-1856) showed yet again the importance of the European

balance of power to Finland. Finland was directly affected with British and French

naval attacks along its Southern coast, most notably on Suomenlinna just off the coast

of Helsinki, but far more important were the effects on Russia. Russia’s defeat and its

obvious weakness meant that the western powers, the UK and France, became more

important for Finland with their influence increasing in the political, cultural and

economic fields. Russian weakness also led to liberalisation in Finland (Jussila,

Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:41-43).

27 “Nineteenth century nationalism, in the spirit of Hegel and Herder, argued that the boundaries of thestate should be contiguous with those of the nation and the nation and the state should constitute anorganic whole. Primacy was given to language as the heart of the nation…” (Arter 1999:23)

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Proto-political parties were set up; originally the language issue was central - the

Fennomen were aggressively pro-Finnish whilst the Svecomen still supported Sweden

and the Swedish language. More modern types of parties began with the Liberal Party

set up in the 1870s by Professor Leo Mechelin. This was laissez faire and tried to stay

above the language debate but, once in the senate, they drifted towards the Svecomen

position. The Fennomen split into two groupings; the Old Finns, who became known

as the ‘Compliants’ as they choose to appease Russia in many cases, and the Young

Finns who, although still focused on language, also had a progressive social policy

(Singleton 1989:93-94).

Russification began when Alexander III became Tsar in 1881. Russian increasingly

became the language of administration, Finnish nationalists with state jobs were

pushed out or resigned, nationalist politicians went into exile, even independent

institutions like the Post Office were put under central Russian control. Nicholas II

came to power in 1894 and increased the pressure; Bobrikov was appointed governor

general of Finland in 1898 and was soon hated, eventually being assassinated by a

Finnish nationalist in 1904. The ‘February Manifesto’ of 1899 took most autonomy

away from the Senate. The Finnish defence forces were disbanded, moral pressure

both from Finland and leading European figures had no effect on the Tsar (Singleton

1989:94-98; Wuorinen 1965:202-205). These changes within the Finland had

transnational origins: Russia feared German strength under Bismarck and tried to

exert greater control over its dominions.

International security considerations again would change Finland’s domestic

situation: the first general election took place in 1907, allowed by Russia that was so

weakened by war in the east (the Japanese invasion of 1904) and by the attempts at

revolution within the state (Singleton 1989:99-101). Russia soon tried to retrieve the

autonomy and the pressure greatly intensified with the outbreak of the First World

War as national security was invoked. The Finnish left increasingly gave up on

parliamentary politics and sided with the socialist revolutionaries in Russia; indeed

many Russian revolutionaries hid from the Tsarist forces in Finland with their allies.

The outbreak of war had other effects; some profited whilst others lost out from the

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disrupted economy and heightening social tensions. Many young Nationalist Finns

went off to Germany to volunteer to fight against Russia in the German Army, they

later became the Jaeger brigade central to White victory in the civil war (Wuorinen

1965:205-207; Singleton 1989:106-111).

3.3 Independent Finland

The ‘March Revolution’ of 1917 in Russia meant a breakdown of control over

Finland, and Finland claiming its independence. Right and left became polarised in

Finland and violence increased, with Red and White Guards and leaderless Russian

soldiers all playing a part. Lenin took power in November 1917 in Russia and urged

Finland to take its independence, expecting that the Socialists would take power in

Finland and soon seek some kind of union with the Russian Socialist republic.

Independence was announced on 6 December 1917, but the Western governments

held off recognition until Russia also recognised Finland. This forced the Finnish

Government to go to Lenin and the Council of Peoples Commissars, as the Bolsheviks

were now the de facto power in Russia. Russia recognised Finnish independence on

the last day of 1917 (Singleton 1989:104-109; Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:87-

104).

3.3.1 The Civil War

The civil war that followed in Finland was, although relatively brief, bloody both in

terms of the actual battles and the killings and reprisals during and after that were not

directly connected to the fighting. The war remains a sensitive subject in Finland, and

different people interpret it in differing manners. Hentilä writes:

The war fought in Finland in the spring of 1918 has been variously described

as a war of liberation, a revolution, a class war, a revolt, a civil war, and these

terms and their variations have been used both as opposing and as parallel

interpretations. (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi1999:113)

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The way that these interpretations were constructed is worth considering as the

implications had a major effect on Finnish security policy afterwards, and the role of

outside powers in the conflict is quite central here. When discussing the war as a

“War of Independence”, the interpretation favoured by the victorious White side, the

role of Russian troops on the side of the Reds, is often emphasised. For a modern

portrayal of the war in this light, Ries’ history of the Finnish Armed forces (1988), is

an example. Hentilä’s account is markedly different; he accords the Russian troops

less importance and portrays a civil war fought mainly amongst the Finns. Upton’s

exhaustive account of the civil war argues that foreign intervention was vital for both

sides, although those who write from either perspective have a tendency to overplay

the importance it had for opposition. The Reds, or Socialists, relied greatly on

weapons and support from Soviet Russia, but were not, as believed by many in

Finland, Russian troops fighting in Finland (Suutarinen, Brunnell, and Törmäkangas,

2000) 28. Russian staff officers were vital for the Reds military organisation, and there

were many Bolshevik volunteers as well, but overall “the Russians can be estimated

to have constituted some 10 percent of the Red front line troops at the time of their

maximum participation in the war”(Upton 1980:421). Also the interim government in

Red Finland was also not revolutionary communist; as Hentilä writes “the leaders of

red Finland aimed not at a proletarian dictatorship in the doctrinaire style of Lenin but

at a parliamentary democracy based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people:

the revolutionaries were Social Democrats not Bolsheviks” (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:109).

In opposition, the Whites relied on assistance from Germany and Sweden. Sweden did

not give aid directly but did allow officers of the Swedish army to go as volunteers;

Upton writes “their work was of inestimable value to White victory” (Upton

1980:329). The civilian politicians were all thoroughly pro-German (Upton

1980:214); they had even found a German prince who they planned to install as

monarch after the war. But Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, military leader of the Whites,

was not pro-German at all, and there was much friction between him and the

28 Findings from a national study related to the IEA/Civic Education Study in Finland. Institute forEducational Research – University of Jyväskylä. (http://www.jyu.fi/ktl/civicsIII/tfingb-t.html accessed8/14/01), found that more young Finns thought that Red support was predominantly from Russiansoldiers (37%), than knew correctly that it was from workers and tenant farmers (33%).

74

politicians, firstly as he looked on democratic politics with a certain degree of disdain,

and secondly, and more fundamentally, he favoured a Scandinavian orientation and

the Entente Powers of Britain and France (Upton 1980:241,527). The civilian

politicians requested German military assistance almost as soon as fighting broke out.

Mannerheim was so outraged by the request for German intervention that he was at

first going to resign – the treaty that had been agreed to in return for German help

would have made Finland little more than a client state of Germany (Upton 1980:337-

9, 340-2). Mannerheim realised he needed a quick and decisive victory over the Reds,

before the Germans arrived, so that Finland could show the world that it had liberated

itself – this victory came with the Battle of Tampere. This is again indicative of the

difficulty of separating international and domestic political realms. The Germans

landed in Finland just a few days before Tampere fell to the Whites – hence were not

decisive although the White army would have soon faced the issue of it

predominantly farming volunteers needing to return to their farms, had the German

forces not speeded up the victory (Upton 1980:475).

Mannerheim was forced out once the civil war ended in May 1918; he resigned over

the influence of Germany over the new Finnish Army and state. Mannerheim began

negotiations in London and Paris, first as private citizen but soon as a representative

of the Finnish Government. He pledged Finland to a pro-western line. Svinhufvud

was forced to resign as Regent in December 1918 and Mannerheim took his place,

German troops still present in Helsinki were expelled.(Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:125). As Heikka (2004) argues, this choice of looking to the West or Central

Europe to help balance Russia, has been a theme through Finnish strategic history. It

would occur again in the Second World War and has echoes now in Finland’s choice

to align itself as closely as possible to the EU mainstream, including Germany, or to

consider joining the Atlantic alliance of NATO.

3.3.2 The Interwar Period

Heikka (2003:42) argues that newly independent Finland needed to find ways of

dealing with its security dilemma with Russia/USSR. Early attempts to engage

Germany (1918-19) through electing a German prince as Monarch failed; this was

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followed by attempts to engage Britain and France (1919-21). The Royal Navy was

operating in the Gulf of Finland attacking Bolshevik naval forces and Finland allowed

them access to Finnish ports. This strategy failed as the Western powers came to

accept the existence of the Soviet Union and its ‘legitimate’ zone of interest. The

Royal Navy left the Gulf of Finland in 1920 and by 1921 had exited from the entire

Baltic. In the early 1920s Finland looked to a coalition of states around the Baltic to

balance the Soviet threat, yet never progressed far. The Baltic States were small and

relatively weak – indeed Finnish troops and aid had been a major factor in the success

of the Estonian war of independence at the end of 1918 (Nevakivi 2001:22) – whilst

Germany was suspicious of Poland which meant that they did not look kindly on

Finland cooperating on intelligence and military matters with that country.

In the 1920s the founding of the League of Nations was seen as very important for

Finnish security. The League proved useful to Finland from its outset when it ruled in

favour of the Åland Islands remaining under Finnish sovereignty with extensive

autonomy (Arter 1999:247). More significant was Finland’s shift under the League of

Nation towards a Nordic identity and a strategy of neutrality as its method of

managing its security dilemma vis-à-vis the USSR. Importantly neutrality began

purely as a tactic aimed at securing the central normative commitment – the

independence of Finland. It was tried only after balancing various powers against one

another was rejected as unsatisfactory; Finnish neutrality has always been a de facto

policy as opposed to the de jure neutrality of Switzerland and post-war, pre-EU

Austria (Archer 2003:60). It is possible to argue that the neutrality of the interwar

period was not a success for Finland as it still became embroiled in the Second World

War but nevertheless it laid the foundations for the reapplication of the policy in the

post-Second World War period. Despite its ultimate failure, the League’s basic

concept of using international law as the basis of international relations was a good fit

to Finland’s historical experience.

Finland and Sweden took different positions within the League on how collective

security should be ensured, with Sweden following the British camp favouring

disarmament and the Finns with France who favoured sanctions against aggressors

and rapid assistance for their victims. The accession of the Soviet Union to the

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League in 1934, followed by Germany, Italy and Japan leaving, demonstrated that

Finland could not trust the League to provide its security. In the last few years before

war broke out, there were discussion between Finland and Sweden on what was called

“better neutrality protection” (Nevakivi 2001:27), but this came to little. The Åland

islands became central and mutual suspicions over this issue between Finland and

Sweden resulted in neither of them being ready for war when it. Overall the

negotiations had little effect when war broke out beyond allowing deliveries of

weapons to Finland through Sweden. This failure of Nordic security cooperation has

resonated through Finnish security thinking to contemporary times; although there are

huge cultural, political and social influences from Sweden on Finland, there has

remained some scepticism over the limited value of cooperation in security policy.

In the 1930s Finland did not attempt to ally itself with the emerging power of Nazi

Germany as a method of balancing Soviet interests. Whilst this might have seen

superficially attractive, particularly considering the traditional pro-German sentiments

of many on the right and in the military, willingness to deal with the Nazis was by no

means universal on the right, let alone across the political spectrum. Indeed it was the

anglophile Mannerheim who was important here and in the late 1930s the German

Ambassador to Finland said that the Finns could not be relied upon to support

Germany in a war because the Finnish population was so strongly attached to the

democratic ideal (Heikka 2003:49). Therefore when Finland joined Germany as co-

combatants against the USSR during the Second World War, rather than a marriage of

conviction, it was one of convenience stemming from a failure of the Western

democracies to assist Finland.

3.3.3 The Second World War

This period of Finnish history is extensively covered elsewhere with English and

Finnish sources. For Finland the Second World War consisted of three separate wars:

the Winter War (1939-40), the Continuation War (1941-1944) and the Lapland War

(1944-45). These were very costly to Finland; the country lost about a third of its

landmass in reparations to Russia including its access to the Arctic Sea and its second

city Viipuri, in addition to some 87,000 Finns who died in the fighting (Jakobson

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1998:40). The wars involved the mobilisation of the entire country in an effort to

defend Finnish independence in the face of truly overwhelming odds; many credit the

experience of the Winter War in particular with finally healing the wounds that had

festered on from the Civil War. Not just Social Democrats (SDP) but even communist

joined the ranks, and the heroes of one of the most important defensives battles of the

war were from a working class area of Tampere, many of whom had lost their fathers

in fighting and reprisals during the Civil War, while their commanding officer had led

White troops at that time (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:188). Tensions between

right and left and within the SDP became more apparent in the period between the

Winter and Continuation Wars, and during the latter, but overall national unity was

maintained (Kirby 2006:218).

The transition from the Winter War to the Continuation reflected a shift in Finnish

diplomacy stemming from an alternative vision of how to secure its independence.

Through the Winter War Finland looked to the western democratic powers, notably

France and Britain, to come to its aid. Aid was forthcoming, but it was little beyond

symbolic despite a great deal of sympathy on the part of the public’s in the west.

Britain and France were already at war with Germany – even if this was the period

known as the ‘phoney war’ – and western calculations on what they could and would

do to assist Finland were very much made in this light. The public support for the

Finnish cause in Western countries perhaps was responsible for expectations of

military assistance amongst the Finnish population which were never realistic

(Jakobson 1998:30).

The failure for the western democracies to aid Finland more significantly had

important psychological effects for the country – in discussions on security many

Finns still express the sentiment of theirs being ‘a nation destined to stand alone’.

This idea is typical of a collective amnesia of which national history and myth often

consists. In the Continuation War, Finland found a country that would support it in its

fight against Soviet domination to the extent of placing an entire army group of six

divisions (more than 200 000 men) on Finnish territory in addition to giving it large

amounts of military equipment and weapons (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:198,

217; Arter 1999:252). That the failure of the Western powers to aid Finland in 1939-

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40 is remembered, whilst the aid given to it in 1941-44 by Nazi Germany is lost from

the public consciousness suggests that there were strong traditions within Finnish

political culture that made its alliance with Germany uncomfortable. Finland was

never officially an ally of Germany, but rather a “co-belligerent”. This differentiation

had certain diplomatic successes; for example the USA never declared war on Finland

– only breaking diplomatic contacts. The UK also resisted declaring war until 6

December 1941 when Finnish troops after taking back the territory they had ceded to

the USSR in 1940 crossed the old 1939 border into Eastern Karelia – an area that had

always been part of Russia.29 Nevertheless, as Jakobson (1999:37) writes, the policy

of co-belligerency was too subtle for the majority of the Finnish population to

understand, they came to see Germany as their allies,30 whilst the goodwill from

western publics dissipated as they saw Finland allied with Nazi Germany, and the

drafts of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty declared Finland to have a been “an ally of

Hitlerite Germany” (US Dept. of State 1946:109). Recent historical research has

shown that the previously held idea that Finland resisted Nazi policies on racial

matters is not true, and that large numbers of refugees and prisoners of war who the

Nazis saw as not fitting their racial or ideological ideals were deported to central

Europe where many disappeared into death camps (Sana 2003; Marttila 2004:23).

There now seems little doubt that Finnish police and military forces were involved in

these deportations and complied with Nazi requests with little protest (Vanhanen

2004; Jakobson 2003). Despite the fact Mannerheim had refused categorically to

involve Finland in the siege of Leningrad or to cut the Murmansk-Leningrad railway,

all organisations with perceived fascist leanings were abolished in the post-war peace

treaty with the USSR, some of these such as the Lotta Svärd,31 the women’s auxiliary,

played important roles in the Finnish defence forces.

29 Churchill sent Marshall Mannerheim a private note on the 28 November 1941 pleading with him tostop his troops at the old border and make a “de facto” exit from the war. (Telegrams betweenChurchill and Mannerheim 1941: copies from FCO archive, writer’s personal collection).30 From a military point of view co-belligerency, as opposed to ‘allied’, meant little. Some Finnishforces were put under German control, and along the whole front offensives were jointly organised bythe staff-HQs of the two forces. German ground forces were limited to the northern half of the country,but the Luftwaffe gave air support to Finnish operation on central and southern parts of the front(Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:198, 208).31 It is common practice in Finland to for families to put death notices in the newspapers, particularlythe national daily Helsingin Sanomat. The death notices for women who served as ‘Lottas’ include themotif of the organisation which, due to the fact the organisation was outlawed, never updated its image.A Swastika remains the heart of the motif.

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Stalingrad in February 1943 signalled to Finland that Germany would ultimately be

defeated although Mannerheim had had doubts from as early as the end of 1941

(Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:203). The leaders started to look for ways to make

peace with the Soviet Union and maintain Finnish independence even if facing defeat.

For this reason the closing battles of the Continuation War in June 1944 were vital.

Finnish forces were pushed back by a huge offensive to similar lines that had existed

in 1940 at the end of the Winter War (Jakobson 1998:38). Despite ultimately losing

the recaptured Finnish territory and having suffered heavily during the Soviet

onslaught, the Finnish army remained mobilised and still not beaten. During both

wars Finland had caused massive losses to the Red Army which particularly in the

Winter War lacked in most things except man power and had sent wave after wave of

soldier to their death on the Finnish lines. The Soviet Union knew that they would not

simply be able to occupy Finland, and as their forces were needed for the advance on

Berlin, this enabled Finnish leaders to come to terms with the USSR which stopped a

long way short of unconditional surrender. Finland had to cede territory, accept many

restrictions on it future political makeup and conduct, pay huge reparation and force

the troops of its erstwhile ally, Germany, out of Northern Finland in the Lapland War.

The Finnish experience of the Second World War was of total war. As Heikka

(2003:52-3) writes:

The willingness of the Russians to suffer casualties during the invasion, and

the amount of killing the Finns had to do to stop it, obviously left their scars

on Finnish strategic culture... the experience of being on the receiving end of

a full-scale mechanised Soviet deep strike operation had effects on Finnish

political culture. For Finns, the imperative of ‘never again war’ became

synonymous with avoiding a situation where overwhelming power is aimed

at ending the existence of the nation.

3.4 The Cold War

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The Cold War was for Finland a period of, arguably, externally enforced political

stability. Yet at this time of stability in the political ‘outer shell’ of the country, it was

internally a period of massive social and economic change. The country’s population

went from being predominantly rural to predominantly urban, and its economy from

agrarian and forestry-based to industrial. Maintaining the competitive position of

Finland’s export industries, particularly in regard to Sweden, was an important

consideration in Finnish external policy, but economics by no means trumped all

other political consideration – and indeed in many cases came second to them.

One figure dominates the 1945-89 political history of Finland: Urho Kekkonen. Along

with being president for 25 of those 44 years (1956-81), during the presidency of

Paasikivi he was the prime minister from 1950 to 1953 and then again from 1954 to

1956, having held various ministerial portfolios before that. His legacy continued

after his stepping down from the presidency in 1981 due to ill health (he died in

1986). Despite changes to the constitution under the President Koivisto, such as a two

term limit for the president to “prevent a recurrence of the worst excesses of the

Kekkonen-era” (Arter 1999: 237), Finnish foreign policy through the 1980s did not

deviate from what had become known as the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line. These excesses

stemmed from the personalisation of political power in the figure of the president.

This began with foreign policy where Kekkonen positioned himself as the only figure

that the Soviets would trust, and therefore vital for maintaining the good relations

with the USSR that were said to ensure Finland’s independence. Kekkonen did this so

successfully that by the height of his powers he became utterly dominant in the

domestic political arena that no party was willing or able to challenge him. He was

“functioning increasingly as the de facto prime minister” (Häikiö undated) involving

himself in such domestic matters as negotiating an incomes agreement (Jussila,

Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:302). Perhaps the most clear example of Kekkonen’s

dominance over domestic affairs was the exclusion of certain parties from Finland’s

often wide and non-ideological coalition governments for ‘general reason’ – meaning

that they did not enjoy the confidence of the Kremlin. This was true of the Social

Democratic Party (SDP) until 1966, and for the National Coalition Party from 1966 to

1987 (Arter 1998:41,42). In the case of the National Coalition this was particularly

galling in the 1979 general election when the party became the second biggest in the

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Eduskunta [the Finnish Parliament], yet were still not invited into the government

(Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:317). The second hypothesis of this study argues that

foreign and domestic politics cannot be separated, and a consideration of the

Kekkonen’s presidency provides much evidence for this idea.

3.4.1 From the end of the Second World War to Kekkonen’s first presidency

Kimmo Rentola (2000:95) notes that since the War of the Hats (1741-3) Finland’s

relations with Russia have been determined by either a policy of accommodation or

active resistance. In the first years after the Second World War President Paasikivi

pursued a policy of accommodation. Indeed, Browning (2002) notes that this was a

period when Paasikivi believed that Finns needed to be taught that Russians were not

to be hated,32 and did this by using the language of the Enlightenment such as realism

and rationalism, making the previous views of the USSR appear to be the product of

hotheads who thought emotionally not scientifically (ibid.:52). Paasikivi said: “the

notion of the Hereditary Foe [perivihollinen] must be abolished once and for all”

(quoted in Karvonen 1984:143). Politically the foundation of this was the 1948 Treaty

of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA). The FCMA was the best

deal the Finns could get in light of their recent defeat, and it left enough room for

differing interpretations by the two countries. The Soviets saw it as the basis of

including Finland in its emerging anti-Western bloc. It would, therefore, seem that

Paasikivi was applying what he had learnt during the pre-independence period of his

long political career: “that the essential national interests of the Finnish people, above

all their cultural identity, could be preserved only through the prudent appeasement of

the strategic interests and prestige of the Russian empire” (Jakobson 1998:52). Yet

this is only half the story, for at the same time that Paasikivi was imprisoning Finnish

wartime political leaders for ‘war crimes’33 and giving up key strategic areas of

32 A recent survey shows that anti-Russian sentiments are stronger in Finland than any other Europeancountry except Kosovo which questions how deep the friendly relations with the USSR that Paasikiviand Kekkonen cultivated really were. See: HSi (11 Oct 2004) “International poll: Anti-Russiansentiment runs very strong in Finland.”33 None of the ‘war criminals’ needed rehabilitation in the eyes of Finnish government or people ontheir release: for example the wartime president, Ryti, was given a state funeral in 1956 and the leaderof the SDP, Tanner, (who was particularly hated by the Soviets for having ensured that the Finnishworking class had fought for their nation in 1939, not sided with the Soviets) after prison returned toParliament and to lead the SDP again (Jakobson 1998:55). Their imprisonment was little more thanpolitical theatre for the benefit of the USSR.

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Finnish territory, both to meet Soviet demands, there was what one Finnish general

described as a “silent continuation war” ongoing (Gen. Erik Heinrichs, quoted in

Rentola 2000:77). Western intelligence agencies were active in the country setting up

potential resistance networks and using Finnish war veterans to undertake

reconnaissance raids deep into Soviet territory (ibid.).34 Despite Paasikivi’s overt

acquiescence to the USSR, covertly the government either turned a blind eye or even

assisted in these activities.

Kekkonen was appointed prime minister in 1950 after losing to Paasikivi in the

presidential election, Häikiö (undated) writes that: “he began placing ever greater

emphasis on the 1948 Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance... it

became ‘the basis of everything’.” He was forced out the prime minister’s job in

1953; before this happened it seemed that the USSR had not yet invested all their

plans for Finland in him and were willing to consider other candidates, but as the

ousting looked more and more likely the Soviets offered Finland a preferential

economic deal if Kekkonen stayed on as PM. Paasikivi resisted this fearing that

already Finland was becoming too dependent on the USSR and that Kekkonen should

not be linking his political career to an issue so important. Interestingly when

Kekkonen was forced out the USSR did not retract its offer as they had said they

would (Häikiö undated; Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:265). The tension between

the economic pull to the West and political pressures pushing Finland towards the

East, would continue up to, and even after, the collapse of the USSR and Finnish

integration into the EU.

From the beginning Kekkonen used foreign and security policy considerations to

influence and consolidate his control of domestic policy. Indeed he was only elected

to the office of president in 1956 after the Kremlin directly ordered the Finnish

communist party to cast their votes in the electoral college for Kekkonen (Rentola

2000:87). Kekkonen had cultivated direct contacts to the USSR through the KGB in 34 Colonel Magill (see note 46) states that a “comparatively large number” of Finns were approachingthe British military mission in 1944 to “offer their services”, and Dorril notes that MI6 already had“close links” to Finnish intelligence from the war period through Maclachlan Silverwood-Cope theMI6 officer in Stockholm (Dorril 2000:278). Even during the Lapland war, Finnish officers privatelyhid large dumps of weaponry to prepare for a resistance war if the Russians actually occupied, whenthe government discovered this many of the officers and men were imprisoned (Jussila, Hentilä,Nevakivi 1999:223-4).

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Helsinki, unlike Paasikivi who was uncomfortable about direct contact and always

used a ‘middleman’.35 In the run up to the 1956 presidential elections the Soviets had

been inclined to back Paasikivi for another term, but were worried about his advanced

age. Kekkonen was able to persuade them that he would reliably continue the line that

Paasikivi had taken based upon the FCMA.

3.4.2 Kekkonen as President

Kekkonen’s presidency was the blending of domestic and foreign policy so that they

became connected in so many ways. Domestic economic and social policy depended

on successful foreign trade; certain sectors of the economy relied on trade with the

USSR and this of course rested on ‘good neighbourly relations’ with security policy at

its heart. Other sectors of the economy were founded on exporting to the west – the

UK and West Germany remained vital markets for many Finnish firms. To maintain a

competitive position in these markets, particularly vis-à-vis Sweden, Finland needed

the same rights of access to those markets as the Swedes, but any moves that looked

like ‘European integration’ even on economic matters raised the suspicions of the

Eastern neighbour requiring much diplomacy and deals to counter the impression that

Finland was ‘sliding to the West’. Beyond economic policy, loyalty to the President,

meaning loyalty to the mantra of good neighbourly relations, was the way of

progressing in a political career (and indeed many other careers36). Many others in the

political elite started to create their own contacts to the Soviets through relationships

with diplomats of one type or another at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki. The

importance of the President’s role for those engaged in export industries, be that to the

east or west, also meant that even outside the political elites people knew that it would

not be in their interests to take positions different from that of the President. In the

latter half of Kekkonen’s presidency the press became more careful about what they

said. There was never direct censorship of the press, but there was a clause in the

1947 peace treaty with the USSR included a ban on anti-Soviet propaganda, and by

35 The Paasikivi Society notes this in a rather terse manner on their website: “Kekkonen differed fromhis predecessor in that he developed a direct relationship with the highest Soviet leaders, whereasPaasikivi had contented himself with the traditional forms of relations between states.” (PaasikiviSociety undated)36 Arter notes that “The President’s power to appoint senior officials–extending down to universityprofessors!–created a deferential elite in the upper echelons of the civil service.” (Arter 1999:232-3)

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1948 this was updated to threaten journalists with imprisonment for slandering

foreign states. This law was to be enforced at the President’s discretion (Arter

1997:43), suggesting to journalists the subjects on which they should tread warily.

This process has become known as ‘Finlandisation’. The term was originally used in

the debate in West Germany to refer to what some there believed to be an unhealthy

accommodation of Soviet interests but quickly became more used in reference to

Finland itself. The full details of the debate in Finland during the Cold War are

beyond this thesis but is important as the legacy of this period still causes debate and

plays a role in the framing of contemporary security and foreign policy. A number of

particularly famous incidents concerning Finnish foreign policy have come to typify

this era.

Firstly, Kekkonen’s election to president, as noted above, happened when the Finnish

communists were directly ordered to cast their electoral college votes for Kekkonen

by Moscow. But previous to this, to gain support for Kekkonen from the wider public,

the USSR clearly let it be known that the return of the Porkkala peninsula and naval

base in January 1956 was due to Kekkonen (Jakobson 1998:66). The return of the

base was part of the Soviet Union’s wider geopolitical agenda during the immediate

period after Stalin’s death, but it was used in Finland to gain support for the person

the Soviets believed would continue stable relations with Finland, allowing them to

use their resources elsewhere against the perceived growing NATO threat.

Secondly, there was the “night frosts” (yöpakkaset) period of 1958. Kekkonen’s first

two years in power was not what the USSR had expected. Historians still disagree on

the reasons that the Soviets started applying various diplomatic and economic

pressures on Finland in the latter half of 1958 (see Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:276-7 and Rentola 2000:89 for alternative explanation). But the ‘night frosts’

took the form of the withdrawal of the Soviet ambassador from Helsinki, ending

various diplomatic and trade discussions and hints that a request for military

consultations over a supposed threat from Germany – as the FCMA treaty had

provision for – would be made. The latter was most serious and would return in the

future: by calling for military consultations, in effect Moscow was saying that Finland

85

was an allied/client state, not a neutral Nordic country. The tensions were ended by

Kekkonen’s visit to Leningrad in January 1959 where he met with Khrushchev and

Khrushchev reaffirmed Finland’s internal sovereignty whilst reminding the country of

its obligations under the FCMA treaty (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:277). The

Soviet pressure broke the strong government of Prime Minister Fagerholm that had a

majority of the Eduskunta behind it,37 and left one person looking as if they alone

could maintain stable relations with the USSR – the President.

The second important foreign policy event that had major implications for the

domestic situation was the ‘note crisis’ of 1961. The note was a formal request under

the FCMA for military consultations in October 1961. It was openly delivered to

Helsinki whilst Kekkonen was on a state visit to the United States. The day it was

delivered the USSR also tested a huge nuclear weapon on the Arctic island of Novaya

Zemlya ensuring the world’s attention was focused on the north. Kekkonen made the

long trip back to Finland and then immediately departed for various meetings in

Siberia with the Soviet leadership. After a month of tension Kekkonen met with

Khrushchev and was able to return home victorious – having persuaded the Soviet

leader to drop the demand for consultations. Some historians, such as Jakobson, are

uncertain how much of this was real and how much was theatre cooked up between

Kekkonen and the KGB, but Nevakivi at least seems in no doubt that Kekkonen

arranged the crisis for his own political benefit. That Khrushchev had in 1960 already

publicly said that the Soviet Union wished to see Kekkonen remain president lends

much weight to this and it has been confirmed by Yuri Deryabin, a Soviet and

Russian diplomat to Finland (Jakobson 1998:70; Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:278-

81; Häikiö undated; Arter 1999:286, 291).

The 1960s and 1970s was a time of liberalisation of many social laws and mores; this

changed Finnish society along with the movement of people out from the countryside

to the cities and abroad, unemployment was low and prosperity increasing (Jussila,

Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:301). This period also saw a major success for Finnish

diplomacy in beginning and, in 1975, successfully concluding the Conference on

37 Fagerholm resigned after the Agrarians ministers serving in his government resigned. He wasreplaced as PM by the Agrarian Sukselainen, heading an Agrarian led minority government whichpresented no threat to the President’s control of foreign policy.

86

Cooperation and Security in Europe (CSCE). The Finnish aim for the CSCE process

was to formally state that countries have a right to be neutral, which the Helsinki Final

Act did (Jakobson 1998:78), and also to demonstrate the benefits of its neutrality to

mediate between power blocs.

The ultimate example of how Kekkonen used international politics to control internal

affairs was his ‘re-election’ to the presidency in 1973 under what was called the

“Exceptional Law”. The background was that Kekkonen had in the 1968 presidential

election faced two candidates who actively and to some extent successfully

campaigned against him. The president said that he did not want to face re-election by

the voters but rather wanted the Eduskunta to re-elect him by exceptional methods

because there were important foreign policy issues to be resolved. Häikiö (undated)

suggests that the real reason was not foreign policy, but rather that Kekkonen wanted

a way to ensure that he did not have to face a race against Mauno Koivisto who would

have been the SDP’s candidate for president. No matter what the reason was, to begin

with there was not a big enough majority in the Eduskunta willing to countenance this

method. But at the end of 1972 a memorandum on negotiations between Kekkonen

and the Soviet leadership was leaked and published in Sweden. Kekkonen claimed,

even at the time most believed speciously, that this had cost him the confidence of the

Kremlin and he would not stand for president. This danger pushed those undecided in

the Parliament behind re-electing him by way of the exceptional law: the necessary

five sixths majority was achieved. This method of extending his period in office was

not in the constitution, and it is also now known that in December 1971 the Kremlin

appealed to him directly to continue in office after the end of his third term was

scheduled to end in 1974. It is possible therefore to question the extent of Finland’s

democracy during this period (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:298-307; Arter

1999:232-233; Häikiö undated). The irony is that had the president stood for re-

election the normal way, he would have been returned by a large majority. Arter

suggests that this period should be called one of “compulsory consensus politics”

(Arter 1999:232).

At the same time as these visible successes both internationally and domestically,

there were undercurrents of tension in Finland’s eastern relations. Korhonen, a

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confidant of Kekkonen from that era, typifies the period in the late 1960s after the

Prague Spring and into the 1970s as one of “continuous diplomatic trench warfare”

between Finland and the USSR. The USSR would stress the importance of the

military clauses of the FCMA whilst Finland would stress its neutrality. This

interpretation has also been confirmed from ‘the other side’ by Deryabin

(Vaahtoranta/Forsberg 2000:10). Jakobson notes that: “at no time did the more

assertive tendency towards Finland express itself in dramatic demands or overt

pressure; it was more like an undercurrent flowing below the surface of official

policy” (Jakobson 1998:84).

It is a credit to Kekkonen’s skills as a politician that the Finnish public through this

time on the whole maintained its belief that the nation’s foreign policy was being

conducted optimally. It is indeed hard to argue that Finnish security policy was not a

success through the Cold War when looking at the facts of how the country emerged

into the post-Cold War era: free, wealthy and with an equitable society based on the

welfare state and societal consensus. In some ways the debate on how ‘Finlandised’

was Finland, is an argument over this. Those who argue that Kekkonen’s excesses –

the self-censored media, the use of Moscow’s influence to defeat political opponents

– were the price that had to be paid to maintain Finnish independence, see

Finlandisation as a success; a necessary policy for a difficult time. Those who believe

that Finland betrayed its democratic and liberal heritage with Finlandisation, argue

that there were alternative policies to appeasing the USSR, but these were not used

because either the president did not understand them, or that he had too much to lose

(personal political power) in moving away from appeasement (see Heikka 1999).

Objective criteria to say whether neutrality was or was not the correct policy for the

time have not been found. What is clear though is the linkage of the internal and

external politics of the country as suggested by the second hypothesis tested in this

study. The internal situation was changed by the political forces from the outside; yet

the reverse is also true – the internal politics allowed the president to carry out his

foreign policy as he wished, with implications for the world beyond Finland.

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3.5 From Kekkonen’s fall to the fall of the Berlin Wall

Kekkonen was re-elected in 1978 with a huge 82.4% of the vote, although notably

turnout fell considerably to 64.5% (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:317). He had

become so dominant with the country’s politics that even the National Coalition Party

which was kept out government from 1966 to 1987 for ‘general reasons’ – they did

not have the approval of the Kremlin – selected him as their candidate (Arter

1998:41). Quite deliberately it now seems, the media did not report signs of his failing

health but it became apparent that his grip on power was slipping when in the spring

of 1981 rumours abounded that he wished the prime minister, Mauno Koivisto, to

resign. Koivisto resisted this pressure and stayed in office. The full extent of

Kekkonen’s ill health became apparent in the autumn and he resigned. Koivisto took

over as president until elections were called in 1982 where he defeated Johannes

Virolainen of the divided Centre Party and Harri Holkeri of the National Coalition

Party.

Although Koivisto would later become associated with a hard-nosed Finland-first

realism, particularly over the independence of the Baltic states, when he took over the

presidency he introduced a number of very important changes to Finnish law to

ensure that the excesses of the Kekkonen era could not be repeated. Indeed Raimo

Väyrynen (2003:118) goes as far as to say: “the Koivisto regime was an indispensable

counter-movement in re-establishing Finnish democracy.” In the main, these reforms

had to wait for his second Presidential term (1988-94), as he felt he had still not

gained enough political support in his first. From the beginning he stressed the role of

the parliament – the Eduskunta – and in foreign affairs the parliamentary Foreign

Affairs Committee gained much more influence. Koivisto introduced a two term limit

to the presidency, and abolished the president’s right to dismiss governments that still

enjoyed the confidence of the Eduskunta. He also changed the presidential voting

system from an electoral college to a two-round direct election. In a marked contrast

to the situation before Koivisto’s presidency, all governments since 1982 have served

out their full terms. Although still coalitions, they have all been majority

governments, guaranteeing their stability (Arter 1999:237; Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:324-5).

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Political stability at home under the new president, a successful economy both in

terms of the sectors that were reliant on trade with the USSR and with western

markets – predominantly the EEC – and the beginning of the improvement in East-

West relations with the ‘Gorbachev Era’, all played into a great sense of comfort in

Finland during most of the 1980s. Finland’s welfare state had basically caught up with

the all encompassing level that of the Swedish model. Jakobson (1998:102),

paraphrasing Harold Macmillan, wrote that this was when the Finns “had never had it

so good”, but this meant that “people satisfied with things as they are do not expect or

predict change, because they do not believe that change could be for the better.”

3.6 A brief post-war economic history

The superficial strength of the Finnish economy in the mid-1980s was not something

that might have been predicted in the 1940s. The decades that followed the Second

World War were hard in many respects, and Finland’s economy, although vital, often

seemed to be a secondary consideration for the government to the country’s political

relations. The somewhat reluctant refusal to take part in the Marshall Plan in July

1947 was indicative of this and of the trouble that Finland would have in taking part

in Western European Integration for the next 40 years (Paavonen 2001:53).

The Finnish economy of 1945 was dependent primarily on agriculture and forestry,

and although forestry continued to be an important sector of the economy,

engineering, technology and other industrial sectors became more important through

the 1950s and 1960s, partly assisted by the war reparations that Finland had to pay the

Soviet Union mainly in the form of finished industrial goods (Singleton 1989:153-6).

Through the Cold War, Finland’s economic imperative was to not lose access to

markets to which its rival, Sweden, had access (the main ones being the UK and West

Germany). When the other Scandinavian states began negotiating with the UK to

form EFTA in response to the formation of the EEC, Finland also wanted to be

involved. To allay Soviet fears Finland did not seek membership of EFTA, but rather

signed the FINEFTA agreement in May 1960, whilst promising Moscow the same

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access to Finnish markets that the EFTA states would have (Jussila, Hentilä,

Nevakivi. 1999:286, Arter 1999:322). Paavonen (2001:59) writes: “The western

governments were upset…but eventually accepted the Finnish proceeding in order to

safeguard Finland’s participation in the West European integration process.”

There was an attempt in the late 1960s to form a Nordic customs union (NORDEK)

that ultimately failed. Finland bears some of the responsibility for this as when, at the

end of 1969, the EEC offered both Denmark and Norway the chance to negotiate

membership of the EEC, in response Finland declined to sign the NORDEK

agreement. Prime Minister (and future President) Koivisto was worried that the Soviet

Union might see NORDEK as a stepping-stone to the supranational EEC, and

therefore cited foreign policy reasons for not signing. The alternative explanation is

that Kekkonen suspected that domestic rivals might use any Soviet unease for their

own political advantage against him. The decision was not well received in the other

Nordic countries nor in certain circles within Finland (Paavonen 2001:62-3, Jussila,

Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:310-11).

In summer 1972, Norway, Denmark and the UK signed accession treaties to join the

EEC,38 followed soon by Sweden successfully negotiating an industrial free-trade

agreement with the Community (Arter 1999:322-23). Finland looked again like being

left behind by western integration, so also needed to negotiate a free trade agreement

with the EEC. There was domestic resistance from the communists (SKDL) but also

from some in the SDP who saw EEC as capitalist enterprise. The government

responded to domestic resistance to this limited integration with the EEC by creating

a special law to protect some industries from adverse effects of freer trade. This got

parliamentary support for an EEC agreement in 1974, which was also acceptable to

the Soviets who were following the situation closely. Continuance of duty-free trade

with the USSR was a precondition of the negotiations on the Finnish side. A deal was

reached by July 1972 but the government dramatically did not sign it.

Instead, as outlined above, Kekkonen let it be known that he would only consider a

fourth term in office if he had cross-party support and was returned to power by 38 Norway was not destined to join as the Norwegian electorate soon rejected the government’s attemptto join, as they would do again in 1994.

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emergency procedures and not by an election. The emergency law was duly passed by

five sixths of MPs and Kekkonen was granted another term in January 1973. The

passage of the emergency law was directly linked to the need to balance gaining the

free trade deal with the EEC and the concerns of the Soviet leadership; the majority of

the Parliament sent the signal that they believed only Kekkonen was able to do this.

The EEC agreement was finally signed in the autumn of 1973 (Paavonen 2001:63-64,

Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:306-7). The outcome was successful for both Finnish

business interests worried about their access to Western markets and for the foreign

policy mandarins focused on the maintenance of good relations with an all powerful

neighbour, few questioned at the time the implications of the ‘non-election’ for

Finnish democracy.

By 1984 over half of Finland’s foreign trade was with the EEC. The Soviet Union was

putting less pressure on Finland, allowing Finland’s full membership of EFTA in

1986, and this lessening of pressure culminated with Gorbachev’s unreserved

acceptance of Finnish neutrality in 1989 (Paavonen 2001:66). The economy appeared

to be booming: in the latter half of the 1980s Finland was being referred to as the

Nordic Japan and World Bank figures for 1988 on GDP per capita, placed it as the

eighth richest country in the World (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:331).

Nevertheless, there were serious structural problems in the economy: in many respects

the economy was still highly protected. The bilateral trade agreements with the USSR

meant that a significant sector of Finnish industry was operating in a protected

market. Between 1945 and 1990 the USSR accounted for an average of 16% of

Finnish trade, and some years this reached 25% (Paavonen 2001:54).

In the mid-1980s before the Soviet economy crashed, it was accounting for

approximately 20% of Finland’s foreign trade. The Soviet collapse led to it

accounting for less than 10% of Finnish exports by 1991. In the late 1980s the Finnish

government tried to maintain the level of bi-lateral trade by granting the USSR

concessions such as low interest credit, but these did not work and ultimately cost the

Finnish taxpayers more. Up to 1987, government spending had also been increasing at

a rate greater than national income growth. Although this allowed a high quality of

welfare services, it was not sustainable (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi 1999:331-2).

92

Finland was also supporting EFTA in the creation of the European Economic Area

(EEA) to form a common market with the EC and was itself increasing its

involvement with Western European integration. This led in to the liberalisation of

international capital movements to allow for participation in the European financial

markets in the late 1980s (Paavonen 2001:67). Both the government and households

took advantage of cheap foreign money to go into debt. Money was also flowing

overseas to fund Finnish investments abroad, particularly in Europe, leading to a lack

of money within the domestic economy. Too much of the economy was based on

debts – the period became known as the ‘Casino economy’ (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:332,334).

3.7 From the fall of Berlin Wall to membership of the EU (1989-1995)

When considering the post Cold War changes in Finnish security policy, in particular

the decision to seek EU membership, three related processes must be examined.

First, there was the geopolitical process – this can be mainly seen as happening to the

east of Finland (but also arguably to its south). This dynamic was visible, in

chronological order, in the removal of Soviet power, as expressed by the Warsaw

Pact, from Central and Eastern Europe; the independence of the Baltic States; and

finally in the breakup of the Soviet Union and the re-emergence of Russia. Secondly

there was a geo-economic process – and again this can be conceived of as a process

happening to the west of Finland. This geo-economic transformation was based on the

accelerating integration of Western Europe, typified by the EC’s Single European Act

(SEA) of 1986 and the subsequent creation of a single European market within the

EC. Thirdly, there was a domestic economic crisis, not seen in the post-war era. One

in five of the workforce was unemployed, banks went bankrupt and others only

survived due to massive bailouts from the government; the economy that had been

happily growing for decades nose-dived. It came not only as a financial shock to the

country, but also had profound social implications, not least about the previously

sacrosanct welfare state. It marked the end of Finland’s total welfare state and

changed the structure of society permanently.

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3.8 Geopolitics

On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, signifying the end of the Cold War. This

event was only the visible culmination of the political, economic and military

processes that made up the Cold War, but it has come to be seen as a seminal

moment, when the world appeared to change radically.

3.8.1 The end of the FCMA treaty

In the aftermath of the events of the autumn of 1989, Finland looked strangely static;

the litany of the Cold War years continued to be mouthed by political elites: relations

with the country’s eastern superpower neighbour, the Soviet Union, would continue to

be based on the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (FCMA),

the bedrock of Finnish foreign policy for the previous 41 years. President Mauno

Koivisto said just weeks after the dramatic events in Berlin: “Major interests are

vested in preventing too radical changes from taking place, and there exist many

checks that can be applied for this purpose” (Koivisto 1990:57).

Whilst it might seem that Finland was basically unaffected by the changes sweeping

the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), it faced a new geopolitical

reality itself that had come about only weeks previously. Gorbachev clearly stated that

the Soviet Union accepted the central thrust of Finnish foreign and security policy of

the last half century (Gorbachev 1990:51). Gorbachev’s speech was supported on the

same day by the Declaration between Finland and the Soviet Union: New Thinking in

Action 26.10.1989 in which Finland is described as “a neutral Nordic country”

(Ulkoasiainministeriö 1991:183). Despite the claim of neutrality, the FCMA had

always made this questionable. The treaty was for Finland, as Pursiainen writes:

“clearly asymmetrical and hegemonic in spirit… [although of the options]… perhaps

the best at hand in 1948” (Pursiainen 2001:146). For the USSR, the purpose of the

treaty was to guarantee that Finnish territory would not be used to launch attacks

against it, as had happened in 1941-44. Article 1 of the treaty states that if Finland, or

the Soviet Union through Finland, is attacked:

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Finland will in such cases use all its available forces for defending its

territorial integrity by land, sea, and air, and will do so within the frontiers of

Finland in accordance with obligations defined in the present agreement and, if

necessary, with the assistance of, or jointly with, the Soviet Union. (Cited in

Singleton 1989: 190, my italics)

This seemed to suggest that Finland was obliged to plan its defence jointly with the

USSR. The second article added to the ambivalence: “The High Contracting Parties

shall confer with each other if it is established that the threat of an armed attack as

described in Article 1 is present” (ibid). This was used in 1961 in the Note Crisis and

the Soviet Union continued suggesting joint military exercises up until 1978

(Jakobson 1998:83-84; see also Pursiainen (2001:145-148).

Therefore, the unambiguous acceptance by the USSR of Finland’s neutrality, as stated

by Gorbachev in 1989, seemed at the time to be a defining moment in the history of

Finnish security policy. Of course President Koivisto’s view noted above, that there

would not be more radical changes in Europe, was wrong and within 18 months the

USSR would be no more, but for Finland the fall of the communist regimes in the

CEECs was, in geopolitical terms, less important than the Soviet Union’s acceptance

of Finnish neutrality. A useful comparison can be made with another Nordic state,

Denmark. Throughout the Cold War Denmark saw itself as virtually on the frontline

but the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Mouritzen (1997:46-47) argues, gave Denmark a

huge amount of “strategic space”, allowing it to start a far more activist foreign policy

including strong support for the Baltic states, unlike Finland.

Another issue changing the Finnish position was the process that culminated in

November 1990 in the signing of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE).

Dörfer (1997:24) writes:

Finland, Sweden, and the Baltic States have been beneficiaries of the treaty

even though they, unlike Norway, Iceland and Denmark, do not subscribe to it.

The treaty limited equipment (TLE) level in the Leningrad Military District

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has been set so low by the CFE treaty that it precluded a Russian conventional

attack on Finland and Sweden.

The CFE was indeed, “a windfall profit for Nordic defense” (Dörfer 1997:24).

One of the first signs of the new position was in September 1990, when President

Koivisto declared the sections of 1947 Paris Peace Treaty that limited Finnish military

structures, were invalid in the light of the re-unification of Germany (Jussila, Hentilä,

Nevakivi 1999: 339). Haavisto, who was on the Foreign Affairs committee of the

Eduskunta at the time, recalls that the committee was summoned and merely informed

of the President’s decision, but as far as they were aware, the President did not consult

anyone before making the decision (Haavisto interview 2001).39 The then head of

political department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Jaakko Blomberg

(1998), supports Haavisto’s recollections of Koivisto’s, basically, unilateral

management of the treaty changes (see also Pursiainen 2001:170, note 31). Penttilä

(1994:22) argues that the unilateral nature of the act was central: “that Finland should

act alone, without consulting Moscow first, as if to emphasize that it was no longer

necessary to do so”.40 Ries argues that it was also “an attempt to gauge the climate

and see how the Soviets would react” to such unilateral moves, and it prepared the

ground for the ending of the FCMA treaty a year later (Ries interview 2001).

3.8.2 The re-emergence of the Baltic States

Jakobson writes that the former Estonian President, Lennart Meri, who was an

ethnographer during the Soviet era who travelled all over the Soviet Union for his

work, had realised in the early 1980s what the West refused to believe – the USSR

was a “vast colonial power doomed to share the fate of all such empires” (Jakobson

39 Haavisto also notes that of the signatories to the Paris treaty, the UK was most active in monitoringFinnish compliance to the treaty. At one time the used the treaty to stop the Finnish air force frombuying German made jet trainers, leading them instead to buy British made Hawk trainer jets instead(see also Koivisto 1997:161).40 This may also account for Koivisto seeming to make the decision with little, or no consultation,particularly within the parliament. If Koivisto had not sounded out the Russians on the idea beforeannouncing the changes, he could be sure that they would find out if he told the parliament. A secondinterpretation was that he wanted to avoid political battles with the pacifist section of the Eduskunta,who were just against entire weapons types that were limited by the treaty that Finland was about torenounce.

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1998:101). Lithuania had declared independence on 11 March 1990, one of the first

clear signs of the impending crisis within the USSR for the outside world to see. In

1990, the Finnish response was very cautious in comparison to the attitudes of the

other Nordics states, the government immediately saying that it could only recognise

Lithuania once the USSR had. On 22 April the Danish foreign minister, Ellemann-

Jensen, convened a meeting of the Nordic foreign ministers in Copenhagen, but

Finland resisted a harsh statement on the Soviets’ reaction to the independence

declaration saying it was not well founded (Events… 1991:61,77). This set the pattern

for the official Finnish response over the next 18 months. The beginning of 1991 saw

a rapid increase in tension in the Baltic, but President Koivisto stated Finland’s

official position clearly on 10 January 1991, saying that Finland recognized de facto

the incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR and therefore it was a purely

internal matter for the Soviet Union – he did go on to add the Soviet constitution gave

the Republics to right to secede, and this should be the route to follow, rather than by

direct action and negotiation with the Russian Federation. Secondly Koivisto

(1991a:51) made Finland’s geopolitical interests clear in the matter when he said:

“Voices calling for an end to support for the Soviet Union and Mikhail Gorbachev are

clearly in conflict with our goals.” The policy was that Finland’s interests were best

served by the Soviet regime led by Gorbachev. Independence for the Baltic States

could unbalance this favourable situation for Finland.

On the night of the 13 January, Soviet forces stormed the Television tower in Vilnius

resulting in 11 deaths amongst the civilian demonstrators (Dobbs 1997:338). Three

days later Koivisto again went in front of the media to comment on the events. In the

statement there was no condemnation of the Soviet authorities actions, although he

hinted that those carrying out their orders picked a manner that would cause “scandal”

and “bloodshed”, but he went on to blame “radical right wing” groups within

Lithuania, and argued that it was their “arrogant attitude” that was stopping any

negotiated end to the crisis (Koivisto 1991b:51). Koivisto’s reaction to the crisis has

been described as an “Old Finn coldly pragmatic real-politik approach” (Vainu

1991:42), and although this was meant as a criticism, it rather clearly sums up the

Finnish governments approach. The Baltic crisis was judged primarily in the light of

Finland’s geopolitical needs, and those were a stable USSR as a neighbour. The Baltic

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issue remained unsettled through the spring of 1991, with Finland resisting attempts

through February by the other Nordic Council members to show solidarity by giving

the Baltic States observer status within the Council (Events… 1992:67-68). In

comparison Iceland became the first state to give diplomatic recognition to Lithuania

on 31 January (Keesing’s 1991:37945). The issue was only resolved after the next

momentous event in Soviet/Russian history – the Moscow coup by unreformed

communists of 19 August 1991.

3.8.3 The end of the Soviet Union

In response to the coup, Estonia declared independence, with Latvia doing the same

on 21 August. Once the coup had taken place it became clear that the Soviet forces in

the Baltics were far from unified on whether to follow the orders of the coup leaders,

and the Soviet Baltic Fleet commander in particular was clear that he would not do so

(Taagpera 1993:201). By 21 August it was clear that the coup had failed, Yeltsin had

solidified his and the Russian Federation’s position, and Gorbachev returned to a very

different Moscow and a very different role (Dobbs 1997:371-417). Finland’s reactions

to the coup, whilst not being exactly ‘noble’, fitted the established pattern of ‘USSR-

first’ policy. Koivisto said, in response to critical journalists the day after the coup

failed, that:

We have the principle that we do not intervene in the internal affairs of our

neighbour, or align ourselves with others against our neighbour. We apply it

with crass realism – good relations whoever is in power. (Koivisto 1997:204

my italics)

Helsingin Sanomat, the leading national newspaper, on the first day of the coup

editorialised that the Soviet people might rise up against the Junta, but by the second

day of the coup it pre-empted what Koivisto would say a day later, and accepted that

maybe Finland should seek the positive aspects of the situation:

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In the emerging situation new opportunities could arise for Finland’s trade

with the east, which has seriously declined. If the power of Moscow is going

back to the military industrial group, the state will again become an important

buyer, and the role of officials will grow. After all, that is what many veterans

of the Soviet trade have been longing for. (quoted in Snellman 2001)

This attitude suggests how the Finnish elites were surprised by the coup and were

unsure of what to do next but, as it crumbled, most could see that a major turning

point had been reached. Many in Finland accepted that the Soviet Union was ended

and a number of actions resulted. First, Finland officially accepted the independence

of the Baltic States on the 29 August (Events… 1992:82), after Russia (but not the

USSR) had done so on 23 August (Koivisto 1997:209); the issue was, to a certain

extent, fudged in that the Government used what was described as a “Restoration

policy” (Apunen 1992:46). The government argued that due to the fact that Finnish

recognition of the Baltic States’ incorporation into the USSR was only ever de facto

as opposed to de jure, Finland only needed to restore the recognition of the Baltic

States that had been originally granted in the inter-war period. The speed at which this

was done (the US did not grant recognition until 2 September and the EC not until 6

September (Taagpera 1993:204)) was hoped to recover some of the political capital

lost in the hardness of the Finnish attitude before the coup (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:340).

Secondly, Koivisto on 12 September 1991 wrote to Gorbachev41 saying that it was

now time to renegotiate the FCMA. A team went to Moscow to conduct the

negotiations (4-5 November) and a new treaty was prepared. This treaty had not been

signed by the time the USSR was dissolved at the end of the year (Koivisto 1997:212-

214). This was because only a day before the treaty was due to be signed (18

December), the Russian Federation let it be known that it did not want Finland to sign

a treaty with the USSR (which only had days left). Finland had been negotiating since

November with the Russian Federation, in parallel to the Soviet negotiations.

Ultimately the treaty that was signed with Russia on 20 January 1992 was the same

41 Koivisto did this alone, through the head of the KGB’s Helsinki office, with Prime Minister Ahoonly being told later, and the MFA only finding out in 1995 with the publication of the, by then,former-President’s memoirs (Pursiainen 2001:170,end note 31).

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basic text as had been negotiated with the USSR (Pursiainen 2001:151-152). Jaakko

Bloomberg described the new treaty as meaning that:

All in all, the difficult heritage of the FCMA was buried without any notable

discord and the new treaty included no special bilateral security policy

obligations that would go beyond those binding all European states already on

the basis of agreed-upon general conventions. (quoted in Pursiainen 2001:

151-152).

3.8.4 Instability: extending the concept of security

The Soviet Union’s recognition of Finnish neutrality can, as noted above, be seen as a

victory for Finland in the diplomatic ‘trench warfare’ that typified their Cold War

relationship. Relations with Russia were put on the ‘normal’ footing of two European

countries both respecting CSCE norms.42 Particularly in the early days of the new

Russian Federation, there was optimism due to the Russia’s rapid westernisation and

friendly foreign policy, particularly with Kozyrev as Foreign Minister from 1991 to

1993 (Medvedev 1999:35). Not only did the previous might of Red Army seem more

questionable due to the economic pressures that Russia was under; but also because

the security dilemma had, at least in the eyes of optimists, been resolved. But Finland

approached the new situation with a clear sense of trepidation. Koivisto said on

Finland’s 75th Anniversary in December 1992:

A Europe split down the middle is a thing of the past, and the arms race and

confrontation between military alliances are over. While we sigh with relief,

we also await materialization of the promise of a new and better world, or a

new and more united Europe. We observe with disquiet the emergence of new

threats, the development and spreading of new conflicts. (Koivisto 1992:55)

42 CSCE norms included territorial integrity but also the statement that the contracting parties:“consider that their frontiers can be changed, in accordance with international law, by peaceful meansand by agreement.” (Helsinki Final Act 1.a.I see: www.osce.org) This was important to some inFinland who felt that the new treaty with Russia did not exclude the possibility of the return of FinnishKarelia, annexed to the USSR in 1944.

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The Finnish government found its new threats as the movement of people became

securitized. First there was the fear that economic and political crisis in Russia might

lead to Finland being swamped by refugees. Koivisto’s New Year’s speech of 1991

said:

Especially when large numbers of people migrate, extensive problems arise

both in the areas they leave and in the areas they seek to enter. In the Soviet

Union, extremely high authorities have warned that a very large group of

people is likely to seek a better livelihood in the West. We should not ignore

these warnings. (Koivisto 1991:40)

The government pledged billions of Finn marks for projects in the former Soviet

countries with millions being spent on just food aid for areas close to the Finnish

border (Events… 1992:68,90-91). Considering Finland’s dire economic position, the

commitment of this level of resources is indicative of the level of threat that the

government perceived from migration.

In 1990 Finland faced another migration ‘crisis’ – the arrival of Somali refugees

fleeing civil war in their own country and arriving in Finland via the USSR. Finland

had only started taking refugees under the 1951 Geneva Convention in 1973 after the

coup in Chile, followed by some Vietnamese from 1979 (Koivukangas 2002) and was

very racially homogenous. The arrival of the Somalis created panic both at the level

of the society and of the state. Media coverage was seen as unfair, prejudicial and

sensationalist (Sullay 1995), but at times the government did little to help the

situation, for example making it a political issue with the Soviet authorities and trying

to turn back a ferry from Tallinn in February 1991 with 160 Somali asylum seekers on

it (Forsberg and Pursiainen forthcoming). By the end of 1990 there were 1,441

Somalis in Finland seeking asylum (Sorainen 2002:12). The reaction to the Somali

refugee ‘crisis’ shows the widening of the concept of security. The migrants were

seen as threatening “societal security”, they could not be in any objective sense

considered as a threat to the continuation of the Finnish state, but rather in a very

homogenous population, their presence was seen as changing society.

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3.8.5 To EU membership.

Foreign Minister Pertti Paasio said in a speech to the Eduskunta on 29 November

1989:

In negotiations between EFTA and the EC, the Finnish Government has in

principle continued to pursue the line it adopted on European integration back

in the '50s. We wish to safeguard our commercial interests and further our

competitive position through solutions that harmonize with our foreign policy

line… We must be able to pursue a credible neutrality policy in future too, and

we do not wish to become a member of the EC. (Paasio 1990:58)

This position would be reversed in the next two years, but economic reasons appeared

to lead to this radical repositioning rather than security. Sweden submitted its

application to join the then EC in July 1991 and very rapidly after it became expected

within EC circles that Finland would also apply, with Prime Minister Esko Aho’s visit

to Brussels in September being seen as confirmation of this (Kuosmanen 2001:9). The

government presented an integration plan to the Eduskunta in January 1992 that

gained majority support. The Swedish application was seen as the spark for the

Finnish application because Finland could not allow Sweden to gain preferential

access to the EC market, particularly in paper products (Jussila, Hentilä, Nevakivi

1999:340), especially after the huge depression that Finland had been plunged into by

the collapse of the Soviet preferential trade and the bursting of the property bubble.

However, many have stated that security swiftly became a (possibly even the) central

consideration. This has included both analysts who were looking at the process as it

happened (Salovaara 1993) and decision makers looking back after joining. Most

notably President Koivisto (1997:246) has since written: “The strongest reason for

seeking EC membership seemed to me to lie in the realm of security policy. The

economic reasons were secondary. However, this was not something we could say in

public or use as an argument.” Security did become an issue both in the application

negotiations and domestic debate over membership. Minister for Foreign Trade Pertti

Salolainen, who lead the negotiation with the EU for Finland, told a ministerial

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meeting at the opening of the accession talks that Finland had an open mind about

future defence cooperation through the EU (Salovaara 1993:20) but the Commission

still expressed some concern that even if Finnish neutrality was not de jure, the

country might still resist future integration in that field. Hence, the government took

to using the phrase military non-alignment to replace neutrality and suggesting a

willingness to see integration in security. Nevertheless, to the domestic audience the

unlikelihood of EU defence cooperation was being stressed (see for example

Bloomberg 1993:65-6) to remove one of the concerns about EU membership.

Tiilikainen and Raunio (2003:24) argue that the original focus on the necessity of

integration was “cloaked in economic terms” as this avoided the issue becoming very

politicised immediately, the “full politicisation” only happened after the

Government’s official application to the EU in March 1992 (ibid).

Tiilikainen and Raunio describe how security moved from a major reason for not

joining the EU to a major reason for joining as the debate became more “daring”

through 1993 (ibid:31). EU membership as a buttress against instability in Russia was

explicated, publicly showing an increasing willingness to discuss foreign policy issues

in contrast to the Cold War era. With the exception of the Centre Party, Finnish elites

in politics and business were almost uniformly pro-accession with identity, economy

and security all being strong arguments for ‘joining Europe’. On the other hand the

opposition was ad-hoc with no unifying argument (ibid:30-31). The referendum on

membership took place in October 1994 and the ‘Yes’ side won with a comfortably

57 percent to 43 (Arter 1999:335).

The security reading of Finnish EU policy has continued (and will be examined in

more detail in the following chapters); for example the then Foreign Minister, now

President Halonen, described the decision to join the Euro in a similar way:

in Finland a security policy significance tends to be read into any European

integration. Our EU membership was dictated by security policy aspects, just

like the approaching monetary union. Everything which binds Finland closer

to the European core favours the country’s security. (quoted by Knudsen

1999:99).

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On joining, Finland rapidly became an active player – showing it was a security

producer in the EU, not only a consumer, with the overt intention of gaining influence

through participation (Ojanen 2000:23). This took the form of the Finnish-Swedish

initiative to create EU crisis management capabilities that would move the WEU’s

Petersburg Tasks into the EU, and then the establishment of the Northern Dimension

initiative (Forsberg and Vaahtoranta 2001:72).

But at the same time, the public procrastination over security integration in the EU

continued reflecting a continuing disquiet over this in a significant part of the public.

President Halonen in 2000, shortly after her election, said that Article J.7 of the

Amsterdam treaty, concerning the possibility of a future common defence, was a

“development vista” that only “could” lead to common defence (Halonen 2000).

Jakobson (2001) suggested a reason for this continuing two-level game: “somewhat

shamefacedly, we dub the military activities being developed within the EU as ‘crisis

management’, in order to avoid the uncomfortable leap that someone might make to

the idea of Finnish soldiers being sent off to war outside our borders.” Not only were

the concerns over Finnish soldier being involved in international crisis management

operations abroad, but also on how EU membership was impacting on Finnish

defence solutions. The chapter that follows is an in-depth study of one of these

significant debates: whether Finland should give up its anti-personnel landmines in

the process that would culminate in the Ottawa convention.

This tension between public expectations of Finnish security policy, formed

throughout the Cold War era around the continually stressed importance of neutrality,

and the impact of the European integration on security policy will be a central theme

in all the following case study chapters. Through analysing specific policy areas

where this tension is apparent, the hypotheses of this study can be tested. Firstly; the

historical context outlined in this chapter is necessary for understanding how the

relationship between state and society in Finland has formed: how changes in the

state’s security policy create a rebalancing of the relationship, and what the

implications are for Finnish society’s regard of the state. Secondly, this historical look

at security policy has demonstrated some significant episodes over time where

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international politics have not only had effects on Finnish security thinking, but how

those politics have crossed “the Great Divide” and clearly altered and have been

altered by Finnish domestic politics. Thirdly, this chapter has provided the context

and historical development for the various normative approaches, particular the

Hobbesian or realist school viewing Russia as a constant threat, and the more Kantian

or idealist position that took from the neutrality experience the value of international

law and cooperation between states. The following case study chapters show how

these different worldviews still jostle for influence over current Finnish security

thinking.

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4. Finland and the Ottawa Convention

The debate as to whether Finland should join the Ottawa Convention banning anti-

personnel landmines (APLs) provides a clear example of Finnish policy being

uncomfortably poised between two worlds – the post-modern world of law governing

international and post-national relations, in particular with the European Union at its

centre, and the modern world of realism and the balance of power.

Within Finland those who argued against joining the convention say that for a country

with such a large land border APLs remain vital to ensuring the credibility of

Finland’s defence. They believed that Finland should not accede to the treaty until it

had replaced APLs with alternative weapon systems that could have the same effect

but are not outlawed. This would have major budgetary implications and, to put it

simply, Finland could not currently afford to give up landmines. Further it is argued

that Finland has no landmines in place, they are safely stockpiled by the defence

forces to be used only in a time of war and hence present no danger to civilians – the

type of danger that the Ottawa convention aims to curb. The opposing argument is

based around respect for international treaties and laws, maintaining Finland’s

reputation as a state that believes in and supports these international instruments,

supporting peace and development globally, and remaining with the mainstream of

the European Union.

The two opposing sides in the argument over landmines demonstrate the two different

worldviews outlined above in Chapter 1. Firstly there is the defence-based realism

where Finland remains threatened by a powerful and unpredictable neighbour; and

must be prepared to repel aggression. Secondly there is the belief that norms and even

‘setting an example’ can transform international relations from an inherent anarchy to

a desecuritized community of states, where states do not consider each other to

represent an existential threat by the other’s mere presence, and that also Finland has

to act in the same way as its reference group of states (Europe).

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4.1 The Treaty

The “Convention on the Prohibition on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer

of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction” was signed in 1997 in Ottawa,

Canada, and has since become simply known as “the Mine Ban Treaty” (MBT), “the

Ottawa Convention” or just “Ottawa”. The ban went into effect for signatory states in

1999. The Ottawa Convention was the result of an international coalition of lobbying

non-governmental groups (NGOs) that came together as the International Coalition to

Ban Landmines (ICBL), and this is even recognised in the preamble of the MBT43.

The ICBL and its head, Jody Williams, won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for their

work.

The process that would eventually finish with an international, legally binding treaty

began during 1991 and 1992 when a number of human rights and other humanitarian

non-governmental organisations (NGOs) independently began focusing on the APL

issue. By the end of 1992, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the

Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Medico International, Handicap

International and the Mines Advisory Group had come together to coordinate one

campaign; and NGO umbrella groups in Germany and Sweden began national

campaigns. Over the next two years more and more national campaigns were begun,

and various international organisations such as the European Parliament, ICRC and

various UN agencies joined the effort (ICBL 2006). By 1995 the first governments

began to be involved: the Norwegian Parliament passed a binding resolution requiring

the government to work towards banning landmines; the Canadian government gave

its support to the effort as did Switzerland (ibid.). As one writer puts it: “The land

mines campaign forged a new relationship between ‘like-minded’ nongovernmental

and governmental actors in pursuit of a common goal” (Clegg 1999:49). At the start

of 1996 the ICBL convened a meeting in Geneva where the pro-ban states and

organisations agreed to push for a total ban rather than to work towards elimination,

and in October 1996 in Ottawa a declaration of intent to ban APLs was negotiated.

43 “Stressing the role of public conscience in furthering the principles of humanity as evidenced by thecall for a total ban of anti-personnel mines and recognizing the efforts to that end undertaken by theInternational Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the International Campaign to Ban Landminesand numerous other non-governmental organizations around the world...” (the treaty text is availableat: http://www.un.org/Depts/mine/UNDocs/ban_trty.htm accessed 16 Oct. 06)

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But Lloyd Axworthy, the Canadian foreign minister did not leave the matter there, he

challenged governments at the Ottawa meeting to return in a year’s time and sign a

ban treaty. This has become known as “the Axworthy Challenge” (Williams 1997)

and started the Ottawa process, in which over the next year the Austrian government

took the lead in producing drafts of a treaty that were negotiated over, leading

ultimately to the signing of the Treaty by 122 states in December 1997. Axworthy had

not even informed his Prime Minister that he would make this challenge, and hence

went far “out on a diplomatic limb” (Cameron 1999:97) risking his own, his

department’s and his government’s reputation with this “big gamble” (ibid.). Not even

the pro-ban states were quite prepared for the speed that they would be asked to move

at and the amount of public support and lobbying in favour of the Ottawa process they

would encounter. And for states that were either against a ban, or where the issue was

still not decided upon – such as in Finland – the sudden diplomatic activity would

cause panic.

4.2 The Finnish debate before the “Axworthy Challenge”

Swedish NGOs and civil society groups were amongst the first to begin organising on

the landmine issue and as early as 1992, the Swedish parliament passed a resolution to

ban landmines. At the same time Swedish groups began to contact their Finnish

counterparts, alerting them to the gathering momentum around the issue. Laura

Lodenius, information officer of the Finnish Peace Union, remembers that the first

contacts came via the Swedish Save the Children group. Finnish Save the Children

was at the time not taking part in international activities, so the Swedes went to other

organisations (Lodenius interview 2001). Interviews with two central figures from the

NGOs that were involved in the campaign demonstrated tensions within the

campaign, or at least between activist peace groups and more traditional humanitarian

organisations. Lodenius recounted that the Finnish Peace Union coordinated a

campaign of NGOs that included the Finnish Red Cross, UNICEF, KEPA

(Kehitysyhteistyön palvelukeskus – the Service Centre for Development Cooperation),

various peace groups and the Finnish Organisation for the Handicapped – although

she noted that UNICEF and the Red Cross were not willing to join at first (ibid). Per

Stenbäck, at the time the president of the Finnish Red Cross (FRC) and a former

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minister of foreign affairs, stated that the FRC “kept our distance” from the

“traditional peace organisations” considering them to be “politically contaminated”

and having “their own agenda” (Stenbäck interview 2007). This position may account

for Lodenius’s belief that the FRC was reticent in its support but Stenbäck recalls that

August and September of 1996 was the period in which the issue was discussed

internally, and in October 1996 the FRC along with UNICEF and KEPA jointly called

on the government to support the treaty. The Finnish Red Cross took its official

position backing the International Red Cross’ position in favour of a treaty on 21

January 1997, and it was decided to campaign in Finland both on the policy and

public opinion levels44.

The increased international activism around APLs coming from both NGOs and

governments meant that by 1996, the Finnish government felt the need to defend its

position say that the nation’s defence could “crumble” without landmines (Helsingin

Sanomat 12 August 1996). Nevertheless, the government’s report on security and

defence (known as the “white book”) of 199745 makes scant mention of APLs in

comparison to the 2001 and 2004 Security white books, by which time mines had

become a major issue. The 1997 White Book states that:

Finland supports a world-wide, legally binding a verifiable ban on anti-

personnel mines and adopts the position that negotiations should begin at the

Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1997.” (Council of State 1997:30)

The Finnish position in recommending that landmines be dealt with by the

Conference on Disarmament (CD) was already splitting away from the ‘core group’

of nations proposing a total ban through the Ottawa process. At that period this core-

group involved two of Finland’s Nordic partners, Norway and Sweden, and a number

of other EU states – but crucially at the time the white book was being written -- not

all the EU states. (Cameron 1999:93; Long 2002:433) The CD in 1996 had

reconsidered the position of APLs within the 1980 Convention on Certain

44 Minister Stenbäck provided the author with a copy of the minutes of that FRC board meeting.45 The white book was presented to Parliament in March 1997, meaning that the majority of theenquiry, research and drafting of the report would have predated the “Axworthy challenge” fromOctober 1996.

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Conventional Weapons (CCW) but the multilateral UN process allowed the continual

watering-down of the text, particularly by the United States which threatened to veto

the changes if its wishes were not granted. The end result was described by Jody

Williams of the ICBL as: “a useless treaty, with loopholes so big that you could drive

a tank through them” (Davis 2004). Particularly amongst their fellow EU member

states who supported a total ban, those countries that felt the CD process was the way

to deal with APLs came to be seen as supporting a process that they knew would have

little real positive outcomes from a humanitarian point of view. It was, in effect, a

polite way to do nothing and unsurprisingly the 1997 CD did do very little on the APL

issue, ironically citing the Ottawa process as the reason for this (Boese 1997). The

Finnish foreign minister at the time (now President) Tarja Halonen wrote that despite

rhetorically supporting a total ban on APLs, because Finland was supporting the

Geneva process “our position lacked credibility because the Geneva track has been

painfully slow” (Halonen 2006[1997]).

The government’s position in 1997 was the result of early debate on the issue: already

in 1995 the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) announced that it would be impossible for

Finland to renounce the use of landmines. The minister of defence from 1990 to 1994,

Elisabeth Rehn, had supported this position despite later, after working for the UN in

the Balkans46 and seeing the damage done by landmines, stating that she felt the FDF

had misled her on the subject (Lodenius interview 2001; Stenbäck interview 2007).

The mobilisation of Finnish civil society in support of the Ottawa process was not as

unproblematic as in many other countries. Laura Lodenius noted that there is a long

tradition of Finnish NGOs purposely not involving themselves in security issues, and

the FDF and its supporters in government framed the APL issue as a matter of Finnish

national security rather than a humanitarian one. Lodenius said that to be a “good

person or a good NGO you don’t say anything about what the military says. They are

the experts and you can’t doubt them” (ibid.). She stated that the Finnish UNICEF

branch had to be ordered by the international organisation to support the campaign

46 UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human rights in The Republic of Croatia,FRY, Bosnia and Herzegovina and FYROM 27.9.95-15.1.1998; UN Under-Secretary-General, SpecialRepresentative of Secretary-General in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16.1.1998 – 15.7.1999(http://www.elisabethrehn.com/cv.htm accessed 25 Nov. 06)

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and that the issue was divisive within the Finnish Red Cross (FRC)47. Stenbäck

disagreed strongly with this view, stating that actually the FRC traditionally has

closely followed ICRC precedent knowing that they never take positions that do not

follow international humanitarian law. Stenbäck said: “it is part of the Red Cross

mandate to try and ban weapons that do unusual harm… starting with the dum-dum

bullets a long time ago, so this was absolutely in the Red Cross tradition” (Stenbäck

interview 2007).

Nevertheless Stenbäck does acknowledge that there were some within the FRC who

were uncomfortable campaigning against the government on what was defined as a

security matter. He said the FRC includes “people with different political views, so of

course there were some voices of dissent but they were very weak – they referred to

the Finnish, let’s say, ‘classical’ approach to these matters”. Therefore “we were

under certain pressures, no doubt about that… the ‘traditional’ opinion was clear, and

the Red Cross is seen as part of the establishment. It is an old organisation, it is a

neutral organisation, it doesn’t really fit into the thinking of activists… so the activist

were prejudiced against the Red Cross because they couldn’t believe the Red Cross

was taking the lead, but still it was the Red Cross who after the Canadian activists

started… who took the ball… and brought the issue up to the level of establishment”

(ibid). Stenbäck also believes that the established position of the FRC in Finnish

society also helped them campaign. He said he met military officers who were very

upset by the Red Cross’s position, but “no one would dare to come to the Red Cross

and say ‘you should not do that’ – no way” (ibid).

Another Finnish group that refused to support the Ottawa convention unlike the

majority of their international counterparts was the Finnish Medical Association. Dr.

Markku Äärimaa spoke against a resolution to support a worldwide ban on land mines

during the 50th World Medical Association General Assembly in Ottawa, stating

Finland needed mines to defend its borders (Wharry 1999:471). Finally, the Finnish

Lutheran Church refused to back the ban. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) had

47 Lodenius notes that those active within the Finnish Red Cross include many former military officers,and the close links between FDF and FRC go back to the post- Second World War period whenproperty and assets of organisations seen as nationalist by the Soviets and that were about to be bannedunder the terms of the peace treaty with the USSR were handed over to the FRC (Lodenius interview2001).

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supported the process to ban APLs from early on. Its 1997 Hong Kong declaration

reasserted that commitment and further urged “all member churches to request their

governments to support the establishment of an international norm of prohibition

through the ‘Ottawa Process’ and to sign the international treaty to ban anti-personnel

landmines in Ottawa in December of this year” (LWF 1997). As a result the LWF sent

lobbyists numerous times to try to get the Finnish Church to agree with the

international position, but it would not (Lodenius interview 2001). This can be in part

accounted for by the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church being closely tied to the

military and these connections seemed to have trumped the lobbying efforts of the

wider Lutheran movement (Evl.fi 2007). Padres are civil servants paid by the state,

and the highest cleric in the military is both a bishop of the church and a general of

the army. Before, and once the Ottawa process was underway, in Finland the

military’s claim that mines were vital in the defence of the nation won out.

4.3 Debate on the military utility of APLs

As the Ottawa process progressed, and particularly through 1996/97 as more and

more countries joined the pro-total ban camp, it became clear that many other

militaries around the world did not see APLs as a vital part of their arsenals. Nick

Brown, in Jane’s Defence Weekly writes: “there is a school of thought that says the

removal of APLs is no real loss to modern armed forces. A spokesman for the British

Army’s School of Infantry at Warminster said: ‘the withdrawal of victim-activated

APLs from service has fundamentally made very little difference to infantry training

or tactics’”(Brown 2001).

The FDF have argued that APLs are important to their concept of territorial defence:

that the defence forces would defend all of Finland. The central military tool for this

is the maintenance of mass conscript army, and APLs form a cheap weapon for that

mass army to use. Yet the 1997 Defence white book showed that Finnish strategic

thinking was moving away from what is essentially a Second World War doctrine.

The 1997 white book notes in a number of places that Russian conventional military

strength is significantly reduced (Council of State 1997:22,42), whilst at the same

time it notes the increasing importance of crisis management operations for the

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military and how Finland is reconfiguring its defence spending to allow involvement

in these kind of international missions (ibid:34). The 1997 white book also discusses

how increased readiness and mobility are necessary to be able to resist a strategic

strike against, for example the government of the nation, or other vital infrastructure

(ibid:57). It notes that although Finland’s air defence have been much improved by

buying modern aircraft48 only the capital region could be defended against air attack

at any altitude (ibid:63)49. As Arto Nokkala notes, the military’s insistence on keeping

APLs seems at odds both with the claim of a decreased threat from Russia, and with

“developing ‘a sharp technological edge’ for the armed forces against strategic

strikes” (Nokkala 2000). Countries that support the Ottawa treaty have continued to

persuade Finland of the lack of military utility of APLs (HSi 15.4.2002), but

ultimately the question of military utility became secondary to wider political

considerations.

To date the military establishment still make the case that APLs could continue to

play a role in Finnish defence planning. Pauli Järvenpää, head of the defence policy

department at the Ministry of Defence, argues that even now APLs could be used

against a strategic strike, to limit the mobility of attackers moving on from wherever

they landed. He argues that in particular Finland needs to delay a potential attack in

order to allow time for a reserve-based military to muster and deploy (Järvenpää

interview 2008).

4.4 Accounting for the strength of the Finnish Defence Forces position

How do we account for the FDF controlling the decision on APLs when, as Maxwell

Cameron writes: “AP mines have never been a weapon of strategic importance in the

arsenal of states, and have little impact on the distribution of capabilities among

states: they rarely confer a long-term advantage on any military force; they have never

caused a country to win or lose a war; although they are still widely deployed by

many states with border conflicts, they are more commonly used in civil conflicts than

48 F-18 Hornets procured by the Finnish Air Force in the early 1990s.49 Even leaving aside air assaults, the Gulf War of 1991 had demonstrated that mass use of mines didvery little to slow modern armoured forces, although coalition air-dominance over southern Iraq didassist by enabling aerial reconnaissance of minefields (Brown 2001).

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intra-state conflicts”(Cameron 1999:86-7)? Is there something particular about the

Finnish strategic situation that requires landmines? In the early stages of the process it

appeared the FDF believed so saying in 1995 (as noted above) that it would be

impossible to give up mines. By the publication of the white book the position had

shifted to that there were viable alternative weapon systems, but huge new resources

would be needed to purchase them (Council of State 1997:61). It appears ultimately

that the FDF took a stance against Ottawa for reason of budgetary considerations,

rather than pure military need.

The FDF controlled the early debate, pushing the arguments to keep APLs. Lodenius

claims that Finnish military professionals in private would agree with the military

studies from other countries on APLs being unnecessary, and probably not even the

best military option for the role they are meant to play, but until they had the funds to

procure alternatives they would not say this in public. This led to conscripts and

reserve forces continuing to be taught about the necessity of APLs for Finland, even

as the issue became a topic of debate amongst policy makers. As Lodenius notes, this

resulted in the mine debate becoming a gendered discourse, with polling showing that

women supported a ban for humanitarian reasons, whilst men tended to support the

FDF’s security argument (Lodenius interview 2001)50.

The non-professional nature of the Finnish defence forces gives them a huge societal

influence not present in states with smaller, fully professional militaries. More than 80

percent of young Finnish men complete their military service (FDF 2006). This figure

is high compared to other European countries that also still maintain a conscript

military (see chp.5 below). This provides the FDF with at least six months with each

yearly cohort of conscripts51 to indoctrinate conscripts with the military’s view on

matters of security politics. Secondly, all conscripts after finishing the period of

training join the reserves; reserve re-training is no longer carried out on the scale that

has been in the past due to other budget priorities, but nevertheless thousands of

Finnish men return to the military each year for refresher training providing another

opportunity for them to hear the army’s views. Thirdly, the small and interlocking

50 More recent opinion polling shows that this is still clearly the case (ICBL 2004)51 Six months is now the minimum period of service; between 27,000 and 30,000 young Finns aretrained each year (Defence Staff 2005:8-9)

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nature of Finnish elites, across cultural and political sectors, public and private, means

that an institution as respected as the military has little trouble in getting across its

point of view. For example the by-invitation, national defence courses, run by the

National Defence College, bring together elites from across Finnish society and create

influential alumni networks that remain close to the FDF, with refresher training after

five and 10 years (“National Defence Courses” 2009). Unto Hämäläinen writes about

how the national defence course alumni are used: “the Finnish Defence Forces use

their reserves very craftily on their behalf. Those who have been on the courses… are

nicely brainwashed into looking kindly on the FDF’s projects, even if it is the Finnish

way not to say so officially.” (Hämäläinen 2001) Hämäläinen may be gently poking

fun at an institution that he is most likely part of himself, and will have many

colleagues who are also, but his central point is important – nearly all high-ranking

politicians, civil servants, diplomats and captains of industry are invited to take one of

the courses, and subsequently form an important network who are at the very least

willing to listen to the military’s point of view on security issues52.

The strength of shared understandings also means that the military did not have to

directly criticise the proponents of the treaty, but rather proxies could do this.

Stenbäck, as the president of the Red Cross was attacked in the media by Pekka

Kouri, chairman of Officers’ Union (Upseeriliitto). Kouri said that the former

minister for foreign affairs “obviously doesn’t understand anything about Finland’s

defence system” and that “I used to consider him as a reasonable and thoughtful man

but my idea of him has changed” (Iltalehti 4 Sept. 1996:2). Kouri was speaking as a

trade union representative, but in the article is pictured wearing his colonel’s dress

uniform of a serving officer. He is also speaking not about the working conditions of

52 The website of the National Defence College, which runs the courses, notes that they began in 1961:“Since then, 180 National Defence Courses have been arranged and a total of 7,094 persons in leadingpositions in society have attended the courses” (“National Defence Courses”http://www.mpkk.fi/en/courses/ accessed 6 April 2009). One of the central aims of the courses is to“promote, in disturbances and exceptional circumstances, the mutual cooperation between nationaldefence and the persons, who serve or are planned to serve in the vital tasks of the different sectors inthe whole society, and the communities they represent” (ibid.). In effect the courses are an importantway of bonding society to the state and in that sense they emphasis involving representative of allsectors of society in terms of gender, region, political affiliation etc. Women were first invited on thecourse in 1963 (ibid.) and Prof. Raimo Väyrynen recounted to the writer that he was the first courseattendee who had done civilian not military conscript service when he was invited to attend a NationalDefence Course in the early 1970s. A colleague of the writer attended a National Defence course in2005 and her recounted experiences only reinforce Hämäläinen’s points, she also stressed the socialnetwork that comes out of the course.

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military officers but about national security, so clearly his position is ambivalent to

say the least. In the same article Kouri also expresses his disappointment in Elisabeth

Rehn, the former minister of defence, who had also come out against landmines.

Kouri claims that as the former minister “she, if anyone, should know how things are”

(ibid).

The high esteem in which the Finnish defence forces are held is not limited to certain

parts of the political spectrum. As an example, respect for the military in the US

political discourse if generally associated with more conservative or pro-Republican

voting. In contrast in Finland the military gains support from across the political

spectrum and conscription is central to this. According to a 2005 poll only 19 percent

would like to see the current conscription system replaced with an all volunteer force,

and over three quarters want it to continue. People who vote for the Left Alliance and

the Green Party are least in favour of conscription, but even amongst those parties’

supporters, over half still favour the current system (HSi 9.5.2005). The institution of

the universal conscription is seen as having progressive social value in that it forms

one of the pillars of an equal, social democracy. Hence, support for continued

conscription from politicians is often voiced in social terms rather than in those of

military need. A conscript army is also associated with defending the homeland rather

than the use of the military as a tool of foreign policy and being part of wider military

alliances with the baggage the latter brings in the Finnish debate. It is in this sense the

ICBL (2002) correctly states that:

Anti-personnel mines have become a symbol of the old kind of ‘people’s

army’ and their replacement is seen as the development of a more technical

army that many oppose (including those supporting humanitarian values who

would otherwise be in favour of a mine ban).

In addition to these specific methods with which the FDF can lobby for their position,

the rhetoric around the landmine issue played strongly to the Hobbesian, realist

tradition in the Finnish security discourse. Lodenius noted that the idea of Finland

being left alone to defend itself was an important factor in gaining popular support for

the anti-ban position (Lodenius interview 2001): that other countries would not show

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Finland solidarity in times of need, so why should Finland dispose of its mines simply

in the name of solidarity? This idea, of the nation destined to stand alone, remains

influential in Finnish security debates. The idea has its roots in the experience of the

Winter War, where in 1939 the western democracies offered much sympathy to

Finland as the Soviet Union attacked but minimal practical assistance (see p.69

above). Whilst this experience may well have ‘scarred the national psyche’, it also

demonstrates how history is selectively remember and interpreted. Helsinki

University historian Laura Kolbe explains the commonly held narrative:

The image of Finland involves a David vs. Goliath set-up, in which Finland,

a small country, fights against a large enemy. Sweden let us down, the

Western powers let us down. The best strength that Finland has is in the

steadfast skill of the Finnish soldier. Finns have always built their own

success story” (Aitamurto 2007)

But the ‘standing alone’ idea is not historically accurate: Finland, from 1941 to 1944,

fought alongside Nazi Germany, with Germany providing Finland with extensive

amounts of equipment and even providing air support in some of the crucial battles of

1944 (see p.70; Nokkala interview 2008). Even earlier, the victorious White forces in

the Civil War had also gained support from Germany. Support from the losing side of

the First World War and the Second World War is minimised or even ignored in the

popular consciousness; for example a journalist writing in the Financial Times

succinctly, if historically inaccurately, puts it: “an overwhelming majority of Finns

share [President] Halonen’s caution towards Nato. Ever since 1939, when Finland

stood alone in the face of the Soviet Union invasion, Finns have been sceptical of the

benefits of military alliances” (Munter 2006). The journalist’s point is only made by a

major distortion of history.

It is ironic that this narrative should be raised in the discussion of antipersonnel

mines, for Germany actually provided Finland with large numbers of both anti-

personnel and anti-tank mines during the Continuation War53. It is not the failure of

any states to come to Finland aid during the Second World War that is now 53 The origins and types of mines, along with the tactics used, by Finland in the period on 1939 to 1945are covered in great detail by amateur historian website Jaeger Platoon (2007).

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remembered. Rather it is the failure to help by the states that Finland now identifies

itself with – the western democracies – that remains in the background of security

discussion more than 60 years later.

This discourse of Finland being left to stand alone is most often heard in discussion

on NATO (Ries 1999: section 5.1), but the underlying assumptions were used in the

APL discussion. This forced pro-ban campaigners onto the ground of debating

military doctrine and tactics – arguing that landmines were not necessary in modern

warfare – and hence that Finland could agree to Ottawa without degrading its defence

capability. On defence matters peace campaigners are obviously seen as not having

the same credibility as the military experts. In particular, those against the treaty used

the language of rationality whilst claiming that the pro-treaty campaigners were

emotional: the spokesman of the officers’ union said of the Red Cross president: “it is

easy to be against mines like Stenbäck is, in an emotional way whilst showing

pictures of wounded civilians” (Iltalehti 4 Sept. 1996:2)54. Also, the anti-ban lobby

would point to other countries who were refusing to sign (such as the United States

due to the heavy use of mines within the DMZ, the de-militarized zone, splitting the

two Koreas), and claim that Finland was another exceptional case – that its eastern

border was not only its own frontier with a former super-power with an uncertain

future, but it was also the EU’s border55.

Taking into consideration all the above points, it is not hard to see how the FDF’s

position became dominant domestically, but it did not remain unchallenged.

Demonstrating Clark’s fallacy of “the Great Divide” between internal and external

politics, it was international pressures that began to challenge Finland’s anti-Ottawa

stance, and gave increasing influence to those inside the country who supported

Ottawa.

54 Browning (1999:9-10) notes that the appropriation of the language of rationalism and realism for thediscourse on Finnish security goes back to President Paasikivi and the immediate post-WWII era.Paasikivi wanted to set apart his new policy towards the USSR from what he saw as the pre-waremotional Russophobia that led Finland into conflict with its neighbour.55 The idea of Finland having exceptional situation due to its border with Russia is, like the “destined tostand alone” discourse, both powerful, enduring and questionable. Norway also shares a border withRussia – albeit one remote from its heartlands – but was still one the central states in pressing for thetreaty. Also Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have all signed the treaty, and in the case of Lithuania theysigned before getting either NATO or EU membership. These countries also form part of the EU’sborder with Russia but claim no exceptions because of this.

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4.5 External Pressures

Finland’s self image, and the image projected internationally, has at least since the

1960s been that of an internationalist Nordic state: supporting third world

development and making use of its neutral position to work as an arbitrator between

power blocs. As the leftwing magazine New Internationalist put it: “the Finnish

refusal to support the landmine ban sits uneasily with its status as a large aid donor,

donor of mine action resources and its role in international peacekeeping” (NI 1999).

In terms of its international actions, Finland’s ‘natural’ terms of reference group was

the pro-ban coalition, the ICBL, that: “from its initial six organizations… has grown

into an international coalition of over 1,000 human rights, humanitarian, peace,

disability, medical, de-mining, arms control, religious, environmental, development

and women’s groups in over seventy-five countries” (Atwood 1999:21). The ICBL

was also supported by states like Sweden, Norway and Canada that Finland identifies

closely with as fellow, advanced social democracies. Despite the lobbying activity

carried out by Finnish NGOs and civil society groups, albeit limited in effect by the

divisions within that grouping, the military’s position remained dominant within the

domestic debate. Yet since the Finns had taken the decision to join the European

Union at the beginning of the 1990s, it is the EU that has become the pre-eminent

reference group for Finland. The EU position on Ottawa would be crucial.

David Long notes that up to 1996, there were many divisions amongst EU member

states over APLs. Some smaller members were active in the campaign to ban mines,

whilst the UK and Italy actually manufactured mines for sale and had no interest in

seeing a ban (Long 2002:431). During this period the anti-ban lobby within Finland

did not need to worry about the EU taking a position on the matter as it would be an

issue decided under the intergovernmental Common Foreign and Security Policy

(CFSP) and hence unanimity would be required for any joint action, and that seemed

exceeding unlikely. But this situation changed in a period of just over a year between

the Axworthy challenge in 1996 and Ottawa conference in December 1997. The

process benefited from what a Norwegian official called “circumstantial luck”

(Cameron 1999:97) in that general elections during 1997 in the UK and France

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brought pro-ban governments into power. Even in January 1997 there was still

support from France, the UK, Finland, Greece, Italy and Spain for an American

alternative initiative to the Ottawa process that would take the landmine issue to the

CD that year (Long 2002:435), but the elections swung the balance within the EU

towards states that were ready to meet the Axworthy challenge and ban APLs

completely as France and the UK joined this camp. After these changes, the EU took

the autumn of 1997 to negotiate a CFSP joint action (Joint Action… 1997) on anti-

personnel mines in preparation for the Ottawa conference. Long calls the document,

97/817/CFSP, a “fundamentally ambiguous document” and that centrally it “omits

any mention of the prohibition of use or stockpiling of landmines” (Long 2002: 437)

This ambiguity allowed Finland to stay within the EU fold, but by the time that the

joint action was agreed, Finland was alone in continuing to oppose the treaty. The one

other EU holdout, Greece, had announced at the Oslo conference in the September

1997 that it would also sign up to the ban.

David Long’s article states that there are factors beyond classic intergovernmentalism

that resulted in the joint action the EU produced. He argues that there is the process of

Europeanization of government officials, pushing them towards a consensus view –

particularly in the case of the Finns who were on the defensive through the latter half

of 1997 (Long 2002:441). He also cites the Presidencies as another factor, in

particular that there was benign neglect by the presidency of pro-ban Holland in the

first half of 1997 that meant consensus was never formed on the easier option of EU

supporting the CD option over Ottawa (ibid.:442). Finally he argues that the openness

of the EU also helped; in particular that pro-ban states leaked ‘intelligence’ to the

ICBL enabling the international campaign to be able to in turn feed this information to

their national chapters to more accurately lobby in favour of Ottawa to their home

governments (ibid.:443). Research done for this thesis does not contradict these

arguments, but Long does misunderstand the Finnish situation when he writes that

without these factors “it is hard to see why the Greeks end up signing the Ottawa

Convention and the Finns and the Greeks both agree to EU-sponsored constraints on

their defence policy with serious implications for their national interest.” (ibid.:440)

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The EU joint action did not actually cause Finland to accept constraints on its national

interests, because the FDF’s red lines were not crossed. Finland could support the

humanitarian ideals of the Ottawa process, and neither did it want the right to transfer

or sell mines. What it wanted was to be able to continue to stockpile mines and use

them if attacked, and the joint action does not limit this. Long also does not consider

the debate within Finland. At the highest levels of the government the issue was very

much under debate: the government’s foreign and security affairs committee, a unique

committee in that it is chaired by the president, was split on the issue according to

Pekka Haavisto who served as Minister of Environment and International

Development from 1995 to 1999 and was on the committee at the time (Haavisto

interview 2001). The President took the decision against the advice of Haavisto and

Tarja Halonen56, the minister for foreign affairs at the time, but with the support of the

then minister of defence, Anneli Taina, and also according to Haavisto officials from

the Ministry for Foreign Affairs who had advised the president without the knowledge

of the foreign minister57. Haavisto believes that the decision by President Ahtisaari

not to sign the Ottawa convention was the greatest mistake of Ahtisaari’s presidency

and was the result of the President getting poor advice on what the international

reaction would be to Finland not signing (ibid). Järvenpää from the Ministry of

Defence also believes that Finland’s eventual agreement58 to join the treaty was “for

reasons of not wanting to stick out like a sore thumb from the EU crowd; we finally

succumbed to the pressure” (Järvenpää interview 2008).

It is very hard to show to what extent this kind of international pressure has an effect.

The ICBL interviewed Counsellor Timo Kantola of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs

in 2000 on the decision not to sign Ottawa. He said “the step to take was difficult. We

are not usually outsiders in international politics and disarmament” (ICBL 2000).

Pilvi-Sisko Vierros of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs says she cannot remember any

particular incident when she felt Finland was pressured by other EU member states on

56 Halonen made her views known saying “anti personnel mines are not acceptable weapons. Myview… is that it would be better to start planning alternatives.” (Halonen 2006)57 The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has a reputation for traditionally being “the President’s Ministry”,with the Minister for Foreign Affairs having a somewhat subservient role. This resulted from the boththe constitutional power of the Presidency, and extra-constitutional influence developed by PresidentKekkonen, who had the final say over all security and foreign policy decisions (Nousiainen 2004)58 The current government has declared that Finland will sign the Ottawa convention in 2012 and ratify– having destroyed its landmines – in 2016 (Prime Minister’s Office 2009:104).

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the issue, but she does admit in “in some cases where we have needed to react to cases

where the Union has wanted to use very strong language in some statements… we

have to find some formulation that is acceptable to all” [i.e. to Finland] (Vierros

interview 2001). One such occasion must have been during the first Finnish

presidency in 1999, where the Finnish Ambassador to the United Nations addressed

the General Assembly, welcoming the speed with which the Ottawa convention had

come into force, and saying that “the EU calls upon all States to combine their efforts

in order to achieve the total elimination of anti-personnel mines worldwide” (Reimaa

1999). Despite praising the treaty’s significance and aims, the speech stops just short

of asking non-signatories to join, a step that the Ambassador’s own country was

unwilling to take. Clearly Finnish civil servants were made aware of the country’s

position out of the EU mainstream. Jukka Salovaara, now State Under-Secretary for

EU Affairs at the Prime Minister’s Office, remembers that at the time the treaty was

under discussion he was regularly asked by colleagues from other member states:

“why are you so fond of landmines?” He said that once Finland’s position had been

explained, these representatives of other EU states were more understanding– but still

APLs had become a symbolic issue within Finland and a difficult one to explain

internationally for Finnish diplomats (Salovaara interview 2008).

Within the intergovernmental processes of the EU it is unsurprising that a lowest

common denominator position was negotiated to allow all members to support a

position, but other EU institutions are less polite. Committees of the European

Parliament have criticised Finland when giving opinions on regulation against APLs:

“The European Union must aim to promote adherence to the Ottawa Convention. It is

regrettable that Finland still refuses to sign” (Morgantini 2000:4-5; Bonino 2000:42)

Lodenius notes that Vierros’s predecessor in dealing with the issue, Pasi Patokallio,

always said in public that Finland was not pressured, but in private the Finnish

officials “admitted” that they felt strong pressure from fellow EU states (Lodenius

interview 2001). Vierros said she felt other countries understood Finland’s position,

but in print the foreign minister would only go as far as saying: “the Ministry for

Foreign Affairs has tried to explain” the realities of the situation (Halonen

2006[1997]). Yet Lodenius notes that the prime minister at the time, Paavo Lipponen,

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had commented angrily about other countries not understanding Finland’s unique

position. The American columnist Charles Krauthammer (2004) has spoken precisely

about this:

Realists do not live just in America. I found one in Finland. During the 1997

negotiations in Oslo over the land mine treaty, one of the rare holdouts,

interestingly enough, was Finland. The Finnish prime minister stoutly

opposed the land mine ban. And for that he was scolded by his Scandinavian

neighbors. To which he responded tartly that this was a ‘very convenient’

pose for the ‘other Nordic countries’--after all, Finland is their land mine.

Lipponen has a reputation for at times being blunt, but clearly the prime minister was

feeling the pressure.

4.6 The value of international law and precedent

The externals pressures on Finland only had effect because there is a constituency

within the country who agreed with the humanitarian reasoning behind the landmine

treaty, and believed that adding to the global good was more important than any

reduction to Finnish defence that banning landmines might have. There has never

been any question about whether Finland’s landmines present a danger from a

humanitarian point of view. Finland has no landmines in place where they could

accidentally injure civilians, nor does it sell or otherwise transfer landmines to other

states or non-state parties who could potentially use them in a way that threatens

innocents. The mines are stockpiled in secure military locations and would only be

used in a time of conflict. Finland believed in signing the CCW treaty of 1980 it had

committed itself to a legally binding document to not use APLs against civilians.

Therefore it was not Finnish mines per se that were in question, rather for those who

thought Finland should join the treaty it was idea that it was hypocritical for Finland

to tell others to end their dangerous use of mines whilst it maintained its own stocks.

The problem for the pro-Ottawa lobby was the hypocrisy, or at the very least, the fine

nuance, of Finland’s international position rather than the mines themselves. This

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international position pushed Finland away from the countries and groups of which

many believed it was naturally a part, but ultimately the realist discourse of national

security first was resilient enough to withstand the pressure from those who felt that

how Finland acted and was seen internationally should take precedent. Richard Price

describes two situations when the argument went the other way:

At a crucial phase of the campaign in 1997, Japan and Australia felt obliged

to join the momentum and support the landmine ban not so much because

either felt that all AP landmine use was an illegal act of the state, as would be

required of a criterion of opinio juris. Rather, both these countries adopted

pro-ban policies – in spite of opposition from their defence ministries and

key allies like the US – because their leaders evidently felt it intolerable to be

left outside the club of responsible international citizens once they judged

that the balance had tipped such that resistance signalled outlier status. That

is, key states were socialised into an emerging norm not out of domestically

driven assessments of how well the norm served their own national interests

(as per neoliberal theories of international relations or consent-based theories

of law), but rather by communitarian pressures of emulation and identity.

(Price 2004:110)

Without a doubt, trying to avoid this “outlier” status has been important for many in

Finland on this debate, hence the Ministry for Foreign Affairs putting much effort into

explaining the Finnish position and taking a consistently more pro-Ottawa line than

other section of the Finnish state – notably those that deal with defence (see below).

But the other factors that Price alludes to should not be discounted: the neo-liberal

theories, that suggest there is an understanding within a country that conforming to

international law and norms may match with a state’s national interests, should not be

dismissed out of hand for a purely constructivist explanation. In the case of Finland,

its reliance on neutrality throughout the Cold War was premised on the need and

expectation that international law would be respected by other states. In this sense

supporting the international community in certain actions such as banning landmines

can be rationalised even if this involves a detrimental impact on the country’s

defences, as long as the quid pro quo of other countries supporting international laws

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that protect Finland, is seen as more important. This said, it is methodologically hard

to demonstrate whether a rational decision-making process, that the neo-liberal

explanation supposes, becomes internalised and turned into a factor of identity that

the constructivist explanation considers.

As one military officer noted when interviewed, “we do not really know what we lose

when we do not take part in such international agreements” (Raitasalo interview

2008). Liisa Jaakonsaari, MEP and former long-time chair of the parliamentary

foreign affairs committee whilst a Finnish MP, said that the damage to Finland’s

reputation from not joining Ottawa turned out to be minor and was overestimated in

advance. She said it was far clearer that Finland’s reputation had been harmed by

cutting the aid budget so that Finland has fallen out of the top Nordic group of donor

states. Jaakonsaari believes that this is damaging Finland’s bid to join the UN Security

Council in 2013-14 (Jaakonsaari interview 2008).

4.7 The debate post-Ottawa

The progression through the Finnish political process from rejection towards acceding

to the Ottawa treaty has been lengthy and convoluted, representing differing attempts

to balance the importance of internal and external interests, and has generally resulted

in the date of accession being pushed further into the future whilst at the same time

different governments have, nevertheless, renewed their commitment to joining the

treaty.

After the Ottawa treaty had come into effect, Finland stated its aim to join as soon as

it could, but estimating that they needed a transition period of about a decade. In

December 1999, Finland reiterated its goal of being able to join the Ottawa treaty by

2006 and to get rid of all its APLs by 2010 (ICBL 2000). The then Minister of

Defence, Jan-Erik Enestam, first suggested a move away from this timetable in

January 2001, saying that Finland could not afford to replaces its APL systems by

2010 and that 2006 should become a date where Finland makes a commitment to join

Ottawa at some defined future point, rather than actually signing (“Chronology…”

2001), but this was rejected by both Foreign Minister Tuomioja and President

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Halonen (ICBL 2001). The government white paper on security of that year stuck

with those dates as the goal, with the parliamentary defence committee agreeing with

the government’s opinion, stating that: “at the present, Finland is not equipped either

economically or technically to commit itself to the terms of the convention by

destroying its anti-personnel landmines… Finland is continuing its preparatory work

with the aim of being able to join the convention in 2006 and destroy its landmines by

the end of 2010 without compromising the credibility of defence capability” (Defence

Committee 2001:12). Pressure was maintained on Finland by NGOs and other

governments – for example in 2002 Canada sent its anti-landmine envoy, General

Maurice Baril, to argue the military case against APL (HSi 15.4.2002).

The movement away from the 2006/2010 dates gained more momentum in 2003 with

the change of government. Minister of defence, and soon to become prime minister,

Matti Vanhanen, made positive comments to the media about keeping landmines

(ICBL 2003), saying the dates that had been stated by the Finnish government were

only commitments and they were not binding. The Ministry of Defence working

group produced an interim report on the landmine issue in 2004; this outlined the

costs of joining Ottawa – both financially or militarily. The English summary states

that “if Finland decided to accede to the Ottawa Convention as outlined in the

Government Report 2001 there would have to be readiness either to partially weaken

defence or to make considerable financial investments” (Ministry of Defence 2004:3)

and they estimated the cost of replacements systems to be between EUR184 million

and EUR 597.5 million59 (ibid:2).

What followed was a debate between the ministries and parliamentary committees for

defence versus those responsible for foreign affairs, with the latter claiming the

systems were replaceable for around EUR 200 million and by the 2010, with the

former favouring keeping the APLs until they are no long usable – around 2020 – if

the much larger funding amount was not provided (HSi 4.8.2004; STT 23.7.2004). In 59 The Ministry of Defence claim that without either mines or weapon systems to replace them “theenemy’s speed to advance may even become threefold and increase the number of casualties in [our]own troops” (Ministry of Defence 2004:2). The suggested replacement systems include short-rangeweapons and Claymore mines with related sensors; independent sensor systems; modern anti-tank minesystems; intelligent charges with an integrated sensor system, and smart ammunition for artillery orlaunchers (ibid). The wide range in suggested replacement costs will depend on the different optionsavailable from different sources for these numerous systems.

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the autumn of 2004 in conjunction with the publication of the 2004 security white

paper, a compromise was reached: Finland would join the Ottawa convention in 2012

and will have destroyed all its APLs by 2016 ready to ratify the treaty (HSi 2.9.04).

The deal is based on a costing of EUR 300 million, 200 million of which is to be

provided to the Defences forces as extra funding, whilst the other 100 million will be

found within the Ministry of Defence’s existing budget (HSi 13.9.04). This timetable

was reaffirmed by the 2009 security and defence white paper (Prime Minister’s Office

2009:104).[TA2]

4.8 Conclusion

This chapter provides evidence in support of all three hypotheses proposed in chapter

one above. Firstly, it demonstrates this work’s third hypothesis: that there is clearly

visible within Finnish security policy thinking both a Hobbesian worldview – that

argued Finland must always be ready to defend itself and not accept limitation on how

that defence could be staged – and a Kantian worldview based on international laws

and trust. These world views lead to different policy conclusions by different actors.

The evidence suggests that the former was more influential when Finland was part of

the early Ottawa process, but ultimately it was the Kantian view, particularly as

represented by the EU common position but also with domestic support within

Finland, that seems to have won out with an agreement to eventually accede to the

treaty. The FDF by changing its position from mines being absolutely necessary for

Finland’s defence, to that of there being military alternatives to APLs but they were

too expensive to procure, actually opened the door for the change in policy. This

argumentation turned the issue from being one of pure security policy into one of

budgetary policy.

The first hypothesis is simply that internal politics matter in security policy, not just

the international environment. The Finnish debate on Ottawa shows this, with the

outcome being a result of both the relative power of different actors within the state

(such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Defence), but also importantly showing

the political power of society which in this case was predominantly conservative and

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in support of maintaining APLs. This was reflected in the politics of the debate.

Lodenius believes that the FDF using a budgetary argument to keep mines actually

deferred the issue even further than just calling it a security issue because MPs did a

political calculation that it was easier to “ride out” international pressure on Finland,

than to pay the domestic political cost of being seen to be ‘soft’ on defence by their

electorates or having to take the money for replacement systems from elsewhere in

the national budget. She notes that MPs predominantly operate in the domestic

political realm so do not feel the pressure that government ministers and Ministry for

Foreign Affairs officials have done over the issue from abroad. She added that the

budgetary equation has made it hard for even the leftwing parties; SDP, Left Alliance

and Greens to fully support banning APLs. (Lodenius interview 2001) Vierros also

agreed that budgetary opportunity-costs had become the central political issue over

signing (Vierros interview 2001). Why the Finnish public seemed to view the

landmine debate through a predominantly Hobbesian, realist prism is a central theme

of the next case on the conscription system.

Centrally the debate over the landmines in Finland demonstrates Clark’s point about

the need to move beyond the ‘great divide’ between the domestic and the international

to understand international politics, the second hypothesis of this study. The campaign

in support of the Ottawa Treaty was a prime case of transnational politics. Pauli

Järvenpää of the Ministry of Defence said that the continual pressure on various

governments to accept the treaty came from “a huge movement against landmines

involving many NGOs and they got much space in the Finnish media… and many

politicians eventually supported them” (Järvenpää interview 2008). But the NGOs,

although Finnish, were not operating in a domestic context, they were rather the

Finnish end of political process operating across borders. Jukka Salovaara said that

Finland cares about the country’s “image and what the press says, and being in the

correct reference group” and that a “perception of your image has an impact on

policy” (Salovaara interview 2008). In particular the importance of EU membership

becomes apparent when looking at the Ottawa debate in Finland, it has been being in

an outlier status within the EU on this issue that has kept the issue current in Finnish

politics. Also studying Ottawa shows how the political process was not only one-way;

Finland’s political debate over APLs did not remain in Finland, but rather was re-

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injected into the international environment. From there it would impact on, for

example, the American discourse of why it should not be bound by such international

treaties, or EU efforts at forming its common foreign and security policy.

The future: different weapons same problems

Finland is currently undergoing a similar process in the debate over cluster munitions

which international activists aim to have banned through the “Oslo Process” that

culminated the Convention on cluster munitions signed by some states 2008. Finland

decided in October 2008 that it would not become a signatory to the conventions, but

would reassess the situation annually as decisions are made nationally over costs of

procurement of alternative weapons systems (Government Communications Unit

2008). Finland did though state that, as with Ottawa, it supported the humanitarian

impetus behind the convention (ibid). The debate has been shaped along very similar

lines to the Ottawa debate a decade previously. Some in the military argue that whilst

a Russian invasion remains the central threat image upon which Finnish security is

built, cluster munitions remain a vital weapon systems, and this will only change

when Finnish security is based on an alternative threat image (Raitasalo interview

2008); and the military establishment again argued that banning cluster weapons

would greatly reduce Finland’s ability to defend itself and alternative systems would

require a significant increase in the military’s budget (HSi 23.5.07; HSi 3.11.2008).

And once again, whilst the EU has no unified position on cluster munitions, the Oslo

treaty has been vocally supported from with the Union, including from the high

representative, Javier Solana (Council 2008) with many EU states having already

signed. The European Parliament in 2007 called on all member states to sign the

treaty (EP 2007:1), and in the debate at the EP just before the Oslo treaty was signed,

MEP Satu Hasi of the Finnish Greens criticised Finland for repeating the same the

mistakes it had made over Ottawa:

I greatly regret that my own country, Finland, intends to remain outside the

Convention. The justification for this is that cluster munitions have been

acquired to take the place of another type of inhumane weapon, the anti-

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personnel mine. This, however, is like using Beelzebub to cast out the Devil.

(Hassi 2008)

Finland has not yet reached the level of isolation within the EU that it founds itself in

over the Ottawa convention. Currently from the EU, along with Finland, Poland,

Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus have refused to sign the Oslo treaty

suggesting that Finland is no longer alone in the EU in having policy makers who see

the world in Hobbesian terms.

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5. Conscription: creating and maintaining emancipatory nationalism

General conscription lays the groundwork for the Finnish citizens’ strong will

to defend the nation and for their commitment to national defence. It also

promotes citizens’ social equality and guarantees the transparency of the

Defence Forces’ activities in the society. (Ministry of Defence 2006:17)

This chapter will investigate what the changes in the Finnish conscription system

since the end of the Cold War can reveal about the position of the Finnish state as a

security provider in a globalizing world. As security provision is seen as a central role

of the state, and that conscription is clearly one of the most obvious linkages between

the state and society (the citizens) with respect to the rights and obligations that they

expect from each other, analyzing the Finnish conscription system should reveal much

on the Finnish approach to security.

Representing this fundamental link between state and society, investigation the

position of conscription in both modern Finnish defence policy and in wider societal

structures, provides a central way to test this work’s first thesis: that security policy is

a response to the international environment mediated through historical experience,

and therefore is an expression of state/society relations. Secondly, the worldviews

used to justify the continuance of conscription will be instructive in evaluating thesis

three, that different security actors use different normative assumptions to justify their

positions and security policy represents the balance of influence between the

worldviews of those actor. Finally, whilst there are less obvious transnational political

influences on the conscription system (thesis two), this chapter investigates some: in

particular the impact of the professionalization of militaries of many of Finland’s

neighbours, and the increasing need for professional soldiers created by Finland’s

activism with the EU’s ESDP structures.

5.1 Introduction

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The role of conscription in creating modern Finland cannot be understated. Finland

qualifies for what Mann (1997:476) calls the “modest nation-state”: the most

successful real-world examples of nation-states where the state truly serves the

interests of its citizens – the society – and in return, society sees the state as its

legitimate representative in the international environment. In comparison to the other

forms of state-society relationship seen around that world, and as outlined in chapter

1, the lack of conflict and compulsion between the Finnish state and society is

noticeable. Superficially this could be said to do with a very ethnically, nationally,

linguistically and religiously homogenous society, but other similar societies have

managed through history to split on class or political grounds and come into conflict

over the interests of which parts of society the state defends. Unlike this, Finland is

now a country typified by consensus-making politically and state actors with

significant legitimacy in the eyes of society. Conscription was an institution that was

crucial in the creation of this balance.

It is important to stress that independent Finland was born in the fratricidal bloodshed

of the Civil War of 1918 and that the following, inter-war period was a time of

significant political tension with socialists and social democrats treated with

considerable suspicion by those in power on the right. Additionally, the threat of far-

right, anti-democratic activism was never far away. The Second World War

experience for Finland, or more specifically the experience of the 1939-40 Winter

War, that mobilised the nation through conscription, is still seen as the central event

that brought the country back together again after the trauma of the Civil War60. As

Laitinen (2006:52) writes: “During the Winter War it was, above all, the nation that

responded to the requirements of the state. The two entities fused into one and fought

together, and more importantly, even with the defeat of the Continuation War, Finland

survived as a nation-state without being occupied militarily.” Indeed Laitinen

(interview 2008) adds that in historical studies of that period, it is possible to say that

the nation saved the state, and that this was unexpected by the state. The discourse

60 Even in the run-up to the war, security was used as a way to bring together parts of the nation thatwere in conflict. In the 1930s Finland saw ‘the language wars’ take place, particularly within inacademia, over the relative place of Swedish versus Finnish. Mannerheim was active in trying toresolve the dispute and in particular appealed to the veterans of 1918 who, before coming into conflictover language, had fought together on the White side of the Civil War. Preparing Finland’s defencewas the motivating factor that brought Mannerheim into this mediation role (Jägerskiöld 1986:101-2)

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that has been produced since the Second World War based on the heroic stories of the

conscript army is certainly nationalist, but not particularly in the exclusive, even

racist, sense that tends to be often associated with that word; although there is

empirical polling data that suggests that at least amongst Finnish teenagers there is a

correlation where “the strongest attitudes in support of national defence coincide with

stands against refugees and immigrants” (Suutarinen et al 2000)61. Rather, Laitinen

argues that from the beginning “Finnish nationalism had… an emancipatory tone. It

gradually transcended all classes and social stratifications, offering unity in the

context of multiple identities with simultaneous efforts enforcing modernity and the

general development of the nation” (Laitinen 2006:50). Conscription has become a

central part of this national idea – first as the emancipator of the nation-state and in

the post-Second World War period to the current day, as the guarantor of Finland’s

continued independence. Laitinen continues: “the discourse of glorious conscription

in Finland has been a success story to the extent that the elite and the Finnish defence

forces have become almost entrapped by it. The theme has worked so well that

conscription has turned into something almost sacrosanct and it has been difficult to

suggest any alternative path in terms of military manpower recruitment” (ibid:51).

Further, he believes that conscription itself plays a role in maintaining that discourse

as a tool “in the constant formation of identity for the Finnish nation” (ibid:54).

Interviews conducted for this thesis with defence policy makers at the Ministry of

Defence and in the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF) support this view.

This chapter will argue that it is possible to see how in the post-Cold War period

globalisation has unsettled the balance between the Finnish nation and state, but it will

also argue that these changes have affected Finland less than many other European

countries because of the strength of the emancipatory narrative built around

conscription, and because of the geographical immediacy of the distinction between 61 The research was done by the University of Jyväskylä on over 1000 15-16 year olds across Finland.They found that slightly more disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement that “Finland shouldmake it easier for refugees to enter the country” than agreed or strongly agreed with it. But when theresearchers subdivided these results by the results of an earlier question that looked at attitudes to thearmed forces, of the group that could be termed “strong supporters of the armed forces” two thirdsdisagreed that it should be easier for refugees to enter Finland. The connection between loyalty to thecountry, and seeing that as an ethnic distinction seemed clear. The researchers comment that aconsiderable number of young Finns have suspicious attitudes to other ethnic groups and thatcitizenship seems to be fundamentally associated with nationality – meaning ethnic group. Theyconclude that “the prevailing construction of Finnish national identity that is based on the myth of thethreatened nation serves as a driving force for suspicious ethnic attitudes” (Suutarinen et al 2000).

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the modern and the post-modern worlds. The first part of the chapter looks at the

historical development of the Finnish conscription system, and of its reverse –

changing attitudes to conscientious objectors. Then it continues by comparing the

experience of other states with conscription, particularly focusing on the other Nordic

states. Then the chapter concludes by analysing the recent past, present and future of

the system, considering what it demonstrates about Finnish security thinking more

widely.

5.2 A history of Finnish conscription

If the first hypothesis considered by this work is true – that a country’s security policy

is not just a response to the international environment, but rather a response mediated

through how it remembers history – it is important to consider the history of

conscription in Finland. Modern conscription began in Finland in 1878, with the

military service law. Kirby (2006:124) writes: “this established a small conscript

army, to be commanded by Finnish officers, and to be used for local defence.” Yet

despite this formation of Finnish forces, Russian imperial forces maintained control of

the Finnish coastline, as this was vital in the defence of St Petersburg. During the

period of Russification at the start of the 20th century, there was an effort to force the

integration of the Finnish forces into the wider Russian army. Despite the actual

numbers of those called up being tiny (ibid:140), this met with “massive passive

resistance” (Hackman 1987:284), although not by all parts of the Finnish state62, and

neither was all the resistance passive: the “Cossack Riot” of 1902 in Helsinki was

against the draft and forced conscription and was one of the factors that led to the

assassination of the governor-general, Bobrikov, in 1904 (Jussila et al 1999:77; Kirby

2006:143). The general strike of 1905 led to the nullifying of the Russian conscription

law (Jussila et al:80).

Conscription returned under different and difficult terms in 1918 during the Finnish

civil war. The Red forces were always reticent about compelling people into their

militias, and when during the war it was tried by the Viipuri Red Guard they were told 62 See for the example the August 12 1901 letter of Archbishop Johansson to his clergy telling hispriests that they must read out military declarations in their churches. (reprinted in Kirby 1975:90-1)

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by Helsinki that it was not only illegal but, worse, also “counter-revolutionary”

(Upton 1980:397). The Red Guards gained most of their manpower from union

branches in workplaces or village workers’ organisations joining up en masse,

although as the war went on and more forces were needed, withdrawing public relief

from those able-bodied men who did not volunteer had the virtually the same effect as

conscripting them (ibid:396-7). In White Finland the situation was quite different.

Volunteer White Guard units did spring up across the country, but as Mannerheim

took control of the progression of the war he decided to create a ‘real’ army that he

could manoeuvre to where he felt they were needed rather than relying on what were,

in effect, local militias – a problem that has resonance in the modern debates about

whether Finnish soldiers should ever be ordered to serve outside of Finland. The call

for volunteers to join this new army was unsuccessful in raising nearly enough men

and additionally there was extensive public support for conscription (ibid:322). So by

February 1918, despite some reticence, the White government introduced

conscription. Upton (1988:323) attributes the reticence to a moral concern about

forcing men to take up arms against their own countrymen and a related practical

worry: that conscripted men would include some with socialist sympathies who once

armed might be a danger to White Finland. The latter concern led to strict discipline

being used (particularly in comparison to the almost anarchic democracy of the Red

forces), and there were executions of soldiers refusing their orders and of civilians

who refused to be conscripted, or tried to flee conscription (ibid:324-5). Yet overall

the process was deemed a success, with a Swedish volunteer Lieutenant General

Count W. Douglas writing at the time “the conscripted soldiers did their duty towards

the fatherland willingly and faithfully”(ibid:325). Whether this was so, the fact that

the victorious side of the civil war used conscription in a far more systematic way

than the losers can be seen as a lesson that was learnt by the infant republic.

During the 1920s and 1930s the military to a certain degree remained outside the

political struggles of the young republic, although it was clear that the sympathies of

the officer class were to the right. For example in connection to the far-right Lapua

movement, during the Mäntsälä incident of 1932 where the Lapua men seemed ready

to stage a coup, the army remained loyal to the constitutional government but

nevertheless demonstrated some ambivalence in this (Kirby 2006:179). However the

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military did not become an institution of oppression of those on the political left and

after various social changes through the proceeding two decades, at the outbreak of

the Winter War, and particularly with the support of leading Social Democrats, all

parts of Finnish society heeded the call and served. As noted earlier, the unity of

Finnish society, expressed through support for conscription, ensured the continued

existence of the Finnish state as a sovereign entity in comparison to, for example, the

Baltic States.

The Paris Peace Treaty, signed in February 1947, set limits on the Finnish defence

forces, including an army of no more than 34,000 men (U.S. Dept. of State 1946:111)

but this was interpreted by Finland to mean peacetime forces (Griffiths 1993:208).

Conscription throughout the Cold War was aimed at producing massive reserve forces

that could be mobilised for the policy of territorial defence. Whilst Finland clearly

feared the possibility of the USSR attacking again as it had in 1939, it was also

obliged by its treaties with the Soviet Union to prevent its territory ever being used

again in an attack on Russia. Hence the huge reserve forces were aimed at creating a

credible deterrence to any invasion force, at the lowest cost to Finland. A conscript

army would use simple and inexpensive weapons, and make up for the lack of

advance weaponry by sheer force of numbers. Some military historians ask how

genuine that deterrence value ever was, with some even suggesting that it was more

aimed as a signal to NATO and the west – showing that Finland really would defend

itself against Soviet pressure and therefore complicating Soviet strategic planning by

making them question to what extent might NATO support Finland in a conflict

(Nokkala interview 2008). Finnish defence policy did not fundamentally alter over the

subsequent decades looking very similar at the end of the Cold War and into the

1990s, although in the beginning of the 1980s there were significant reorganisation

within the FDF including increasing in some cases the length of conscription,

particularly in response to demographic changes meaning fewer young men

(Kronlund 2007:#10). It is really only in the 21st century that numbers of reserves

have started to come down as more of the limited defence budget was spent on

purchasing modern weapons systems to allow for more international cooperation in

crisis management.

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0 200 400 600 8001988-89

1994-95

1998-99

2002-03

2006

Finnish Reserve Military Forces

Reserve forces(1000s)

Source: IISS

Military Balance63

As Hopkinson (2004:40) points out that even in the early part of this century, Finnish

claims to having “sufficient and up-to date military equipment” do not ring

particularly true “with T-55 (or even T-72) MBTs [main battle tanks] in the

inventory”64. Rather, he suggests that to a certain extent that even in the 2000s Finnish

policy still puts massive reserves generated by conscription ahead of modern

equipment.

Conscription remains fundamental to Finnish defence policy. The minister of defence

at the time, Seppo Kääriäinen, made this point in a 2006 speech: “Finland’s

government stated in its 2004 report on security and defence policy that the

cornerstones of Finland’s national defence – universal conscription, the defence of the

territory of the whole country and non-membership in military alliances – will remain

unchanged for the time being. Finland is one of the few European countries that 63 The IISS Military Balance figures are for reserves forces, which is a lower figure than wartimeforces. Wartime forces additionally include current peacetime forces (approximately 16 500 in 2007)and paramilitary forces (the Border Guard has a wartime personnel of 22,000). Including these figuresstill indicates a discrepancy between the IISS figures and the Finnish government’s 2007 statedposition that the FDF’s wartime strength is 420,000 (Defence Command 2007:11), suggesting that anelement of deterrence is still involved in the decision on whether to publish the lowest or highestcredible estimation of forces. Nevertheless the IISS figures give a good indicator of the significance ofthe decline in reserve forces.64 The T-55, a design originating in the 1940s, appears only to exist now in the Finnish inventory invery specialised variants such as a minesweeper (Armoured Brigade 2003), the T-55 MBTs havingbeen sold to Vietnam and replaced with German-made Leopard 2A4s in 2003 (HSi 27.1.2005). The T-72, a design from the 1970s, is being phased out as well. Conscript training with T-72s was scheduledto end in 2005 but reservists will continue to train with them until they are fully phased out (MoD2002).

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continue to rely on the general conscription. Finland is a big country with a small

population and limited natural resources. Professional defence forces would be

particularly unsuitable for Finland”(Kääriäinen 2006). Conscription is essentially

uncontested among the major political parties currently, with only the Greens making

some suggestions that not every young man in each age cohort need be conscripted65.

The Defence White Paper of 2004 envisaged bringing wartime force numbers down to

350 000 by 2009 from the 420 000 at that time (by way of context 350 000 is a little

less than double the entire British regular armed forces as of 200666) but of that figure,

250 000 of them will be what are termed “regional forces” with only 100 000 in the

“operational forces” (Prime Minister’s Office 2004:9,116). This in effect will create a

two-tier military with the operational forces, designed to “create the centre of gravity

for defence” (ibid:105), that will comprise of the “most effective formations and units

of three services” (ibid.) and will include the youngest, best and most recently trained

reservists. This accepts that the bulk of the wartime forces, the regional forces, will be

of a lower capacity resembling more a militia concept. The government put off

development of the Regional Forces in 2004, saying that they would only be

developed from 2009 onwards (ibid:111). This fits with Prof. Arto Nokkala’s

observation that the FDF have long had a policy that if the budget gives them an

opportunity either to train personnel or procure materiel, they will always do the latter

first (Nokkala interview 2008). Budgetary priority was given to the equipping of the

three readiness brigades that need to be operational by 2008.

Senior military voices have suggested that they are not happy even with the target

figure of wartime forces at 350,000 for the 2010. Commander of the Finnish Defence

Forces, Admiral Juhani Kaskeala said in a speech opening the FDF’s new ground

forces command in Mikkeli that “today the number of our troop exceeds that of the

combined mobilisation figures for all the Nordic countries and the Leningrad military

district. I am afraid that such large numbers will rather begin to subtract than add to

the credibility of our national defence when one compares the resources that we and

65 Green Party leader, Tarja Cronberg, suggested this before the 2007 general election (HSi 21.2.2007).When the party chairman, Osmo Soinivaara, had suggested similar in 2005, Minister of DefenceKääriäinen acerbically responded by enquiring “what part of Finland would the Greens like to leaveundefended?” (Pennanen 2005).66 See UK Defence Statistics 2006, Chp.2 Table 2.7

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others have available for equipping and maintaining the troops” (STT 3.1.2008). The

admiral has also suggested that the numbers of young men in each cohort who are

conscripted will also fall from the current rate of more than 80 percent (Limnell

interview 2008). The figure of 250,000 is now suggested by the FDF for wartime

forces, although this figure was immediately was immediately criticised by reservist

groups as signalling the end of general conscription in Finland YLE 22.4.2008). In

Kaskeala’s Mikkeli speech he hinted at seeing limited military utility in the regional

forces, when saying that “insufficiently equipped and trained forces do not constitute

an effective preventative defence” and that Finnish society would no longer be suited

to guerrilla warfare as it would leave urban centres too vulnerable (YLE 3.1.2008).

Kaskeala suggested the alternative was to strengthen the mobility and firepower of the

operational forces. This can be viewed as the FDF taking a position in preparation for

the next defence white paper that was subsequently published in early 2009.

Why the military high command can be seen as being further ahead of the political

elites in countenancing major changes to the conscription system will be considered

below, but their public lobbying had no effect on the government. Minister of

Defence Jyrki Häkämies said in April 2008 that there would be no radical cuts to the

defence forces during the current government’s term, and this was echoed by the

President (YLE 28.4.2008). It is interesting that, as was the case with the anti-

landmine campaign, it was the reservist organisations that were used to attack those

who wished to alter the status quo, in this case Admiral Kaskeala. Arto Nokkala

argues that the Finns who are active in the reservist organisations represent a

particularly patriotic “subculture” that is not actually that large (Nokkala interview

2008). Therefore, although the vast majority of Finnish men are reservists, the

reservist organisations – Reserviupseeriliitto (RUL)(the Finnish Reserve Officers’

Federation) and Reserviläisliitto (RES) (the Finnish Reservists’ Federation) – despite

being overtly non-partisan, are clearly not non-political67 and can only be said to

represent a limited constituency.

67 For example RES states that they are currently focusing on: “sufficient refresher training (FDF); newtraining systems; local defence system” (RES (2008) “The Finnish Reservists’ Union” Power Pointpresentation)

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As conscription has consistently remained as a central tool of Finnish defence policy

for more than half a century, and always with high public support, looking at the

reverse side – those who do not wish to serve in the military – is a useful tool setting

the historical context to how attitudes to conscription have and are changing.

5.2.1 Refusing military service

Post-independence and the civil war, a temporary law on military service came into

power in 1919. Excluded were priest and “politically unreliable persons” – the losers

of the civil war – but the latter group had to do work service for the army. Only in

1922 did the Military Service Act recognise conscientious objection (CO) – in very

limited religious cases. During the twenties the peace movement demanded a non-

military alternative to conscription and some went to prison for refusing to do work

service for the army. Limited numbers of objectors continued to refuse even during

the Second World War and a number – most famously Arndt Pekurinen, a member of

the anti-militarist league – were shot without trial as a result. Up to 300 COs were in

prison, camps or doing work service during the Second World War (Hackman

1987:284; Silvonen 2004:207).

After the war the number of COs increased, including many Jehovah’s Witnesses. In

1959 this led to a new law on non-military service. It specified that this was to be 180

days longer than military service would take place in a special “work camp” at Karvia

in western Finland. It gave the military the right to decide who did or did not have the

correct amount of conviction to be excused from military service. The numbers of

politically (as opposed to religiously) inspired COs rose in the 1960s in line with new

social freedoms and youth political activism. Many objectors were not granted official

CO status and went to prison instead. The increased imprisonment of young men for

refusing to serve took place at the same time as “conditions at Karvia became

intolerable” (Brunn 1987:298) and led to debate on the issue, with press reports

comparing it to a concentration camp (Hackman 1987:285). An essay on the situation

of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the conscription system was written by Christer

Kihlman and included in an anthology on the lack of freedoms in Finland in 1967.

After reading it, President Kekkonen visited the Karvia camp and as a result

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appointed K.J. Lång, the head of the prison administration, to report on the camp. The

Lång report led to the closing of Karvia in 1969 (Brunn 1987:299). A further

relaxation of policy on COs followed: in 1972 the examination board that probed the

convictions of civilian service applicants was moved from the Ministry of Defence to

Ministry of Justice, and in 1973 civilian service system as a whole was moved from

the MoD to Ministry of Labour, normalising the situation in comparison to general

civilian work. (Hackman 1987:285)

At the end of the 1970s the Ministry of Defence took action as it watched the numbers

of young men taking the civilian service as an alternative to military service rise. The

Liinamaa Committee was set up in 1979 and proposed bringing civilian service

directly into the national defence effort by making COs take roles in such

organizations as the fire and rescue services (ibid:285-6). In 1980 another working

group was formed – the Lång Working Group – by the ministry of labour that pushed

in the opposite direction. The Lång report argued that whilst civilian service was a

way of fulfilling an obligation to the state, the activities carried out should not be

connected at all to the military defence of the country. Rather it suggested that the

service to society could be carried out working for church, peace, humanitarian or

other similar groups (ibid:286-7).

The beginning of the 1980s seemed to favour the Liinamaa Committee’s position,

more and more applications for CO status were refused by the examination board and

this led to increasing numbers of men imprisoned when still refusing military

conscription. Amnesty International began to adopt them as prisoners of conscience in

1984 causing much debate in Finland (ibid:289). The new law in 1985 fundamentally

supported the Defence Ministry’s (and military headquarters’) position. Those doing

civilian service would all get some training that was part of the total defence system,

although the examination board system was ended and a man’s word became enough

to grant him CO status(ibid:289-90); as the government puts it: “the application is

non-contentious - neither the grounds for the application nor the personal conviction

are interpreted in any way” (United Nations 1999:7) The 1985 law also released

Jehovah’s Witnesses from all conscription, either military or non-military, once they

proved active participation in that faith, although this raised questions as to why they

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were exempted whilst other ‘total objectors’ continue (to the present day) to be

imprisoned for refusing military or civilian service (Quaker 2005:27). The other

groups that are excluded from conscription are residents of the Åland Islands (due to

Åland’s specific demilitarised status), and all Finnish women, although females can

now volunteer for military service.

The United Nations committee on human rights considers the non-military service

provision in Finland to be “punitive” (UNHRC 2004:#14) because the military service

for the majority of conscripts is less than half the length of the civilian service option.

This has been the case since the minimum conscription period was lowered in 1998

(Amnesty 1999a), and also was the case from 1987 and 1991 (Quaker 2005:28). The

law of 1991 lowered civilian service to 395 days (Non-Military Service Act) but since

the late 1990s, the minimum period of military service decreased proportionally more.

As a result Amnesty International has adopted total-objectors who have been sent to

prison for refusing civilian service as prisoners of conscience once again, on the basis

that the length of time means it is a punishment for not serving in the military, rather

than an alternative to it (Amnesty 1999b). In the most recent Amnesty International

report (2007) there were 11 gaoled ‘total objectors’ that AI take to be prisoners of

conscience. Another point of criticism is that it is unclear what would be the position

of COs in wartime, as the current law refers only to peacetime (Silvonen 2004:207;

Brett 2005:98-9); the United Nations requested the Finnish government to “fully

acknowledge the right to conscientious objection and, accordingly, guarantee it both

in wartime and in peacetime” (UNHRC 2004:#14).

Overall the position of conscientious objectors demonstrates the near-hegemony of

the military’s perspective within Finland on matters of defence and security, and how

despite various ebbs and flows across decades this continues to a great extent still,

suggesting a robustness to the military’s influence on society. In a situation very

similar to its position on the Ottawa Treaty, Finland finds itself far outside the group

of states it would normally identify with (advanced, socially liberal, welfare states)

because of its defence policy. With Ottawa, Finland found itself in a group alongside

countries like the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and North Korea who all also

insisted on keeping anti-personnel mines. Because of the importance placed on

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maintaining conscription, Finland also finds itself on Amnesty International’s list of

the few European countries that hold political prisoners.

5.3 Conscription in other countries

“At this particular point of history, most armed forces in the Western world are

undergoing a process of profound, long-term transformation. Most countries are

abandoning the concept of territorial defence and are emphasizing capabilities to

conduct international peace-support operations in places far away from their borders.

Not Finland. Most countries are also discarding the great Napoleonic idea of raising

mass armies by conscription and, instead, they are creating small all-professional

armed forces. Not Finland.”

Minister of Defence Jyrki Häkämies, CSIS Washington D.C. 6 Sept. 2007

The post-Cold War era has seen a great reduction in the number of armies in Europe

and elsewhere in the first world using conscripts for part or all of their forces. A rough

correlation can be drawn between a propensity to use conscription and Cooper’s

(2000) tripartite division of states in to post-modern, modern and pre-modern. The

post-modern states are least likely to use conscription. This is clearly visible across

Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union. Many, although not all, European states

have transitioned from conscript militaries to all volunteer forces. This includes both

western European states that have long been NATO and EU members, but also their

central and eastern counterparts who have only more recently gained membership in

those organisations. The modern states – those with functional, strong governments

but which are not globally integrated to the extent of the post-modern states – are

more likely to have conscript forces, although there are exceptions; notably the all

volunteer Indian defence forces, although this is perhaps more linked to the colonial

legacy of British scepticism towards the draft. In the pre-modern world, where the

monopoly on the use of violence is not in the government’s hands, enforced service in

military or militia forces is not unusual, although this may well be in the form of

abduction, particularly of children, rather than systematic conscription. Richards

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(2002:255) writes “abduction seems shocking to modern citizens of well-founded

states, especially when it involves children. But to populations with histories of

enslavement and colonial forced labour, or enforced membership of adult sodalities

with responsibility for security in ‘stateless’ societies, ‘abduction’ may seem little

different to, and no more (or less) morally objectionable, than other forms of

conscription.”

As noted above, this correlation is by no means exact and counter-examples can be

found, Finland being one, but the Finnish defence forces maintaining conscription

makes them counter to the European trend and therefore worthy of study in an attempt

to understand this. Williams (2005:38) writes “Every European country that decided

to adopt an AVF [all volunteer force] after the Cold War ended did so in the context

of its own political environment and for its own unique reasons. Nevertheless, it is

possible to identify some common themes”. Williams notes that for the western

NATO members ending conscription was part of the perceived peace dividend after

the Cold War, and also a response to new security threats that require deployable,

highly trained troops for international cooperation. These countries included the

Netherlands and Belgium soon after the end of the Soviet Union, followed by France,

Spain and Italy as the 1990s moved on. For the central and eastern European

countries, who have either ended conscription or are in the process of doing so,

accession to NATO both allowed professionalization (they no longer needed to rely

only upon their own population solely for defence) and required it (NATO

membership meant supporting the US’s ‘transformation’ philosophy of producing

deployable, high quality troops for joint crisis management missions). Finally even

amongst the three Baltic states, who joined NATO most recently and who have

security concerns vis-à-vis Russia, Latvia is phasing out conscription and Estonia is

considering it (Williams 2005:37-9).

5.3.1 Alternative military models

The examples of some other countries are helpful to give context to the Finnish

relationship with conscription. Great Britain and the Anglophone countries, formerly

of the British Empire, have a history of favouring volunteer forces. Mjøset and Van

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Holde (2002:26) note, with the exception of impressment into the Napoleonic-era

Royal Navy, forced military service has not been the norm for the UK. Even during

the First World War which involved the mass mobilisation of men to fight, it was not

until 1916 that a draft was instituted, as until then “heroic appeals to volunteerism”

had been enough (ibid:60). Britain did conscript during the Second World War but

was one of the first NATO states to abandon it in 1962. Likewise Canada has not had

peacetime conscription and there were worries even about instituting the draft during

the Second World War due to tensions that had formed during the First World War

between Anglophone and Francophone Canadians over conscription. In the United

States there was conscription during the First and Second World Wars. Post-war a

non-complete draft was maintained, with increased numbers of conscripts being

brought into the military during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The political

divisions over Vietnam were responsible for ending the draft in 1973 and the US

military has been all-volunteer since then, despite some calls to have it re-instituted

because of the ongoing conflict in Iraq68.

France ended conscription in 2001, nearly a century after introducing the first modern

system of national service (BBC News 29.11.2001). This decision has been described

by American authors as “almost cavalier” (Jehn and Selden 2002: 99), although this is

to focus excessively on the process – driven by the president, with a minimum of

debate amongst other interested parties – and not enough on the reasons. The end of

the Cold War meant for France, for “the first time since 1871 that military planning

and definition of force structure were not shaped by some major threat against the

national territory. Henceforth, the traditional notion of war between nation-states

would give precedence to crisis management”(Irondelle 2003:162) and this is

noticeably different from continuing Finnish strategic thinking. The Gulf War showed

the limitations of the French forces in operating in these kinds of international actions,

particularly as President Mitterrand directly ordered that conscripts would not be

used. When Jacques Chirac became president in 1995 the change began. Irondelle 68 The calls have come particularly from the left of the Democratic Party, on the basis of making thewhole country share in the sacrifices that they see as being born predominantly the poor and minorities.Congressman Charlie Rangel, a black representative from New York, has been at the forefront ofintroducing legislation on reinstating conscription, arguing that only when rich Americans see theirchildren going to war will the war be stopped (Congressman Charles Rangel… 2005). One of thereasons often given in Finland for continuing the draft at high levels is exactly this argument overequally sharing the burden of defence across the whole nation.

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writes: “closer scrutiny of the decision-making process reveals that Chirac imposed

his resolution for full professionalization upon reluctant militaries that unanimously

favoured the continuation of the ‘mixed model’, based on the preservation of

conscription. Chirac and his advisers were convinced that France’s ‘rank’ in the world

and its position of international power depended on its ability to deploy modernized

conventional armed forces overseas for military interventions. They were notably

inspired by the British model and the performance of Britain’s forces during the Gulf

War”(ibid:164-5). Chirac controlled the process, appointing supporters to key

positions in the ministry of defence and setting the calendar of the various

bureaucratic steps that were followed. Irondelle concludes that: “the end of

conscription in France originated in a collision between the internal dynamics of the

recruitment system (the declining usefulness of the mass army) with an exogenous

shock (the end of the Cold War combined with the Gulf War), that raised questions

about existing practices that heretofore had been sacrosanct” (ibid:171).

It will be investigated below to what extent the Finnish system is facing similar issues

internally as questions are raised about usefulness of conscripting full cohorts of

young men: the economic and social costs opposed to the military usefulness. But it is

clear that Finland has not faced an exogenous shock in the same way. Finland’s active

participation in crisis management operations since the 1990s has always been at its

own discretion, allowing it to choose missions where it could play to its strengths. The

basic military doctrine of territorial defence has not been tested since the Second

World War69, and therefore the Finnish Defence Forces have not had to deal

institutionally with failures as the French military did.

The Economist declared in 1996 headline that “Conscription: It’s had its day”

(10.2.1996), but actually a number of European states, including NATO members,

maintain conscription systems. Germany is one such state and therefore is worthy of

note. Like France, it is also worried about its position in the world, but in a very

different way. Sarotte (2001:12) notes that the Bundeswehr, the German military, has

a “founding charter as a non-interventionist, conscription-based territorial defence

force. In trying to implement reform, however, Germans remain painfully cognisant 69 The importance of this point was stressed in an interview with Dr. Juha Martelius, Director ofResearch, Ministry of Defence, Helsinki, March 2008.

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of historical concerns about the danger of creating a fully professional, interventionist

military.” There is widely held belief in Germany that a professional army presents a

threat to democracy and that conscription, along with widely dispersed small bases

that play a role in local economic and social life, anchor the defence forces in the

wider civil society (ibid). By the turn of the millennium it was an accepted view

amongst defence policy makers in the UK, France and United States, that conscript

armies were of no use to the new NATO. This was typified by the then secretary

general of NATO, George Robertson, who said he saw “no future for conscript

armies” (Austria Presse Agentur 2002). Sarotte argues that policy makers and analysts

in Paris, London and Washington often believe that this assumption is also held by

their counterparts in Berlin and that it is only political reasons that stop them from

saying so in public. But actually the reverse is true: at elite levels in Germany there is

the same belief in the dangers of a professional military (Sarotte 2001:12). This view

stems in part from a German fear of their own history; as Der Speigel put it, volunteer

armies attract “Rambos, rightists and idiots” (ibid:24). There have been recent

suggestions that there is some willingness to consider changing the system; in 2007 it

was revealed that the Social Democratic Party was planning to table a motion at its

party conference to end conscription except in times of crisis and recruit volunteers to

serve as professional soldiers (Williams 2007). The German situation is not wholly

the product of historical experience and how this creates modern identity.

Conscription also has a very practical effect of producing a pool of very cheap labour

for the government due to the high numbers of those conscripted who opt to do the

alternative civilian service in places such as hospitals and residential homes. Jehn and

Selden (2002:97) point out a government-appointed commission in 2000 suggested

cutting the number of conscript troops from 130,000 to 30,000. The government

settled on cutting 80,000. With over half of those conscripted choosing civilian

service, this latter number allowed the government to maintain full conscription, staff

the military and continue to staff the sectors of the welfare state that had become

dependent on this almost free labour. A final factor is that German politicians enjoy

the fact that a conscript army stops allies from pressuring them to use the Bundeswehr

more actively in international crisis-management operations, because conscription

means that there is little public support for such missions, society still seeing the army

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in a traditional way70. The current fighting in Afghanistan that has involved Germany

has brought many of these tensions to a fore, with huge pressure from allies to do

more and public and politicians at home shocked by Germans troops being involved

in heavy fighting with all that entails (see Behr 2009:6-8).

The post-Cold War situation allowed other countries to be, like Germany, more

selective with their drafts – not bringing whole cohorts of young men into the military

for national service. But this process began to raise questions of fairness for those

conscripted versus those who were not. When military service is a universal

requirement of citizenship in a democracy it tends to have legitimacy. When only

some are drafted this legitimacy ebbs, this clearly concerns some in Finland when

discussing the future of the system and the near obsession with the idea of “the will to

defend” (see below). Spain had this experience in the 1990s: as the numbers of men

going into the army as conscripts fell, the applications for conscientious objector

status rose. Cindy Williams (2004:A25) wrote: “eventually so few eligible youth were

called up that the draft began to seem unfair. Once that happened, young people

quickly lost confidence in conscription as an institution of national life. By the time

Spain ended compulsory service, some 75 percent of draft-eligible young men

claimed conscientious objector status.” During the 1990s in Eastern Europe, avoiding

conscription became increasingly normal. The Economist reported in 2000 that in the

year previously, 40 percent of Hungarian young men got out of military service on

medical grounds, and 95 percent of those from the wealthy Buda part of Budapest

managed to avoid doing their service (The Economist 10.8.2000). Russian and Italian

friends of the writer described the normalcy and social acceptability of educated,

middle class young men in those countries avoiding their national service in the late

1990s in their respective countries. Clearly societal support for conscription is a

changeable phenomenon – in Germany it seems that the trauma of that nation’s past

crimes is enough to maintain a limited draft, unlike in Spain. Hence, in understanding

why support for conscription at all levels of the society state remain so strong in

Finland it would seem important to not only look at the current geopolitical situation,

but also to look at the past, and how the past is remembered.

70 This point was made to the writer by Col. Dr. Thomas Will, of the Future Studies Unit of theBundeswehr Transformation Centre, Helsinki, Dec. 2008.

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5.3.2 The Nordic ‘brothers-in-arms’?

The other countries of the Nordic region have always been an important reference

group for Finland, particularly in security policy. With regard to conscription,

Denmark, Norway and Sweden (Iceland has no military forces) exhibit many

similarities to Finland particularly at first glance, but important and telling differences

when studied more closely. These differences have significantly increased in very

recent history. Despite Sweden being, like Finland, militarily non-allied and with a

history of neutrality in the Cold War, Finnish conscription practices were for much of

the post-Cold War period closer to the NATO-member Norway that Arter (1999:2)

calls Finland’s fellow “twentieth century successor state[…]”, than they are to

Scandinavia’s “former imperial states”, Denmark and Sweden, although now even

Norway’s system has changed considerably.

Sørensen (2000) argues that the development of the conscription systems of the

Scandinavian states in recent history demonstrates conscription’s purpose to those

nation-states. Pointing out the many technical, military arguments often used to

criticise conscription he offers an alternative “DDD-model” (ibid:325). This refers to

the triangle of alternatives: democracy; deterrence and deployment. He suggests that

the democracy alternative is based on the belief that conscription underlies solid civil-

military relations and civilian control, at the same time as strengthening national

bonds between citizens, and between the citizen and the state. As noted above, this is

a central idea within post-war German conscription and is essentially a non-military

purpose for conscription. The deterrence model is that conscription is a signal to any

potential enemy of the complete nation-state’s willingness to fight. This a military

purpose for conscription, and was clearly the aim of the Finnish system particularly in

the early part of the Cold War when defence budgets were limited, but the system

could still produce massive reserve forces and there were still large stocks of war-era

materiel that could be used (Heikka 2005:105; Ries interview 2001). The deployment

model is the willingness to use conscripts either abroad, or to use conscription as a

way of finding volunteers to go abroad to use for both military and civil-military

hybrid roles in multi-national peacekeeping, peace support and crisis management

operations.

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Denmark: Using figures that show only a small percentage of an age cohort is

actually conscripted (23 percent in 1998), that conscripts are concentrated in the army,

and that there is a significant rejection rate for even those who volunteer to be

conscripted; Sørensen shows that Danish conscription aims at finding small numbers

of well trained soldiers. Therefore it does not serve a democratic function of keeping

the military close to the people. Neither does it serve as a deterrent: conscripts make

up only a small percentage of the full military, there are vacancies that are not filled

by conscripts and it clearly does not signal Danish society’s willingness to fight as

most are not asked. Instead, conscription is a way for the Danes to organise a

deployable army for international operations: 80 percent of the personnel of the

Danish International Brigade are former conscripts (ibid:327). International military

operations have become central to Danish foreign and security in the post-Cold War

era. Rasmussen (2005:72) writes: “In the 1990s, Danish armed forces participated in

an unprecedented number of military operations, primarily in the Balkans, where the

Danish Army deployed troops for UN (UNPROFOR) and NATO peace support

operations (SFOR and KFOR). F-16’s from the Danish Air Force took part in the

bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. These missions came to define the

culture of the Danish armed forces.” The Danish army is also amongst the ‘activist’

forces that have been fighting the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan as part of the UN-

mandated and NATO-run ISAF mission. Conscription has become a way of providing

manpower to these types of missions, but the selective nature of the Danish draft has

historical roots. Joenniemi (2005:21) describes it as always having been “less than

general and compulsory” and noting that even during the heights of the Cold War,

only around a quarter of each age cohort of young men actually served in the military

(ibid:24). He further notes that in a very different manner to Finland, during the 1990s

and since 2000, the reason for serving has been constructed more on the basis of

“Scandinavian cosmopolitanism” rather than nationalism: the military was

increasingly seen as a way of “counteracting various evils of the globalized world”

and appeals to join the armed forces are made to civilians in order to help protect

other civilians beyond Denmark’s borders (ibid:25). Joenniemi notes that changing

the conscription system has been easy in Denmark, and polling indicates that the only

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issue that worries some Danes is the economic effects of garrisons closing due to

these changes (ibid:28).

Norway: Norway fitted into Sørensen’s DDD-model under ‘democracy’, and in this

sense arguably it paralleled the current Finnish situation more closely. He notes in

2000, that 84 percent of each cohort of young men was called up and of that group, 76

percent did serve. Unlike Denmark very few were rejected at, or after the beginning of

their service and they were spread into the three armed forces, even if particularly the

navy and air force would have benefited more from more highly trained professional

specialists; overall this suggested deterrence was not the main reason for conscription

(Sørensen 2000:329). He also notes that Norway is more restrictive than Denmark in

allowing conscripts to be used for international missions, again suggesting that

international deployment is not the main purpose (ibid). Græger and Leira (2005:48)

strongly support this conclusion noting that the Norwegian army has been constructed

as: “the ‘people’s army’ – defence based on the sons of the nation fighting on their

home turf.” Indeed, as Friis (2006:107) writes of the Cold War: “in the case of war,

Norway expected allied reinforcement, but not to send troops abroad to aid allies”.

Attitudes changed post-Cold War and Norway has, as NATO member, played an

active international role, particularly post-9/11. In Afghanistan in the October 2002

Norwegian air force F16s fired “the first official Norwegian live round at an enemy

since 1945” (Græger and Leira:46). But until recently Norway continued to conscript

a large proportion of its young men, diverting resources from the professional forces

that are required by foreign interventions such as in Afghanistan where the conscripts

are not allowed to serve on such missions71, suggesting a relevance of conscription to

the country beyond as a method of recruiting, as is the Danish case. Indeed, rather

than seeing international operations as central to their security policy as Denmark

does, for Norway: “since it no longer is obvious and universally accepted what and

who that represent a security threat, the government has chosen to downplay the

military and security related aspects of the international missions that Norway has

participated in” and rather they stress the humanitarian value of participation (Friis

71 The Norwegian law of conscription obliges conscripts to serve abroad but only on collective defencemissions under NATO’s Article V (Græger and Leira 2005:55)

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2006:110)72. Instead Græger and Leira argue that in Norway “conscription still fills

the function of anchoring the military in the people” even though when they wrote in

2005 the numbers conscripted had decreased to about half of those eligible and that to

avoid accusations of unfairness the government now pays those who serve (Græger

and Leira 2005:59), and indeed this number has dropped even further since then and

is now, in 2008, approaching the Danish levels (Egelid interview 2008). Græger and

Leira argue that an important reason for the continuance of conscription is regional

policy, noting that: “the military were integrated into the welfare state through

practices of placing bases not just in strategic areas, but also in areas that needed the

employment offered by auxiliary services” (ibid:49). This policy and problem has

clear parallels in the Finnish experience. They argue that despite attempts by some to

change the narrative on the Norwegian security – arguing for more

internationalisation – “the regional discourse has generally been hegemonic in

Norwegian politics” (ibid:54). The director general of defence planning at the

Norwegian ministry of defence confirmed in 2007 that he believes conscription will

continue in Norway but will not be the only way of staffing the military as it is too

inefficient for this73.

Sweden: Sørensen place Sweden under deterrence in his DDD model, arguing that

the conscription system is fundamentally designed to serve a military purpose, but a

different military purpose to that of Danish internationalism (Sørensen 2000:328). His

argument is somewhat counter-intuitive: that the lack of importance that Sweden

gives to conscription shows it is a minor part of a wider military system. Unlike

Denmark, Swedish conscripts are spread between all three armed forces and this

signals the nation’s will to defend itself but, unlike Norway, much less of the military

is staffed by conscripts. Secondly, less of the defence budget than in Norway is spent

on conscription but more on weapons, technology and associated costs. Sørensen

72 Norwegian and Finnish ISAF troops were involved in fighting in defence of their base at Maymanain Northern Afghanistan in February 2006. The press in Finland and Norway both originally reportedthe incident as predominantly a “protest”. Only limited later journalism started to reveal the fiercenessof the fighting and the precarious situation the soldiers found themselves in, thinking their base wouldbe over-run. The media in both countries seemed unprepared to consider that their soldier may havekilled a considerable numbers amongst those who were involved in the attack (author’s discussionswith serving Finnish and Norwegian officers. See also HSi 8.2.2006 for an example of the earlyFinnish coverage of the events, and Lindholm 2006:24-33 for a later investigative work revealing thefull extent of the battle).73 Rear Admiral Jørgen Berggrav, comments at the Suomenlinna Seminar 10, Helsinki 30 May, 2007.

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argues that this indicates that “Sweden has accepted the idea control of technology by

the military organization is more essential than its conscript control” (ibid:329). He

also notes that in the 1990s, as threats receded, Sweden decreased conscription to

decrease costs, in a way that neither Norway, Denmark nor Finland did – suggesting

again the primacy of the military utility aspect of conscription. Other writers suggest a

much deeper connection between Swedish society and conscription, both in terms of

how society relates to the state, and in how it defines itself. Anna Leander (2005)

argues that conscription is seen very differently by various sections of the Swedish

state and society and therefore an ‘enduring vagueness’ as to what conscription is

really for has been central to continued support for Värnplikt (Defence Duty) from all

parts of the nations. Leander writes: “explicitly stating why värnplikt is virtuous

would alienate one of [the two narratives] and undermine the broad consensus around

the institution” (ibid:5). Leander argues that these two narratives can be generally

grouped under what the former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger

described to Ola Tunander as “political Sweden” and “military Sweden” (Tunader

2004:269) By political Sweden he meant the Social Democratic hegemony, and by

military Sweden he meant not only the defence forces but also the more rightwing of

the parliamentary parties. Military Sweden saw conscription as a way of installing

national sentiment across all sectors of society and of linking wider society with the

armed forces, ensuring that civilian political leaders would not use the military lightly

(Leander 2005:12-14). Historically, Political Sweden came to support conscription

early in the 20th century as a way of demanding universal suffrage: “a man, a gun, a

vote” as the Social Democratic youth newspaper put it in 1901 (ibid:15). Later for the

political left, värnplikt became linked to the Folkhemmet (the people’s home) or the

welfare state. Conscription was seen as a responsibility owed to the state by its

citizens, in return for which certain rights, in the form of welfare were granted – as

Brian Mabee suggests (Mabee 2003:144) – a balancing of citizen rights and

responsibilities. Leander though notes that this is less true now as Europe has

witnessed a “demilitarization of everyday life” (Leander 2004:579) as those

citizenship rights have become expected as the norm.

Both political constructs, from the left and the right, managed to see conscription as

virtuous, but this in-built vagueness about the utility of conscription in Sweden has

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allowed the system to undergo changes more easily than in other states. Indeed the

1994 defence reforms were to the extent that as one commentator put it: “if by

värnplikt we understand that a large majority of the male population receives a longer

military education, then värnplikt has de facto been abolished” (Leander 2005:35

quoting a Lieutenant-Colonel Petersson of the Swedish Army). Yet despite the fact

that fewer men were called up for military duty, and that those who have been have

served for shorter periods of time, Sweden has not abandoned conscription. The

vagueness in defining conscription has allowed Sweden to reinterpret the system in a

way that makes it more able to connect with its “post-modern citizens” (Leander

2004:589). Leander writing in the mid-2000s identifies trends much closer to the

Danish debate than Sørensen writing five years earlier observed. She notes that there

is no debate on whether conscripts should be used on international missions, but only

on how this could happen. Indeed the Swedish Government now state that “the Armed

Forces’ national and international tasks constitute two sides of the same coin”

(Swedish Government 2004:10). Kronsell and Sveaberg (2006:146) echo this, noting

that although the number of young men conscripted from each age cohort is down to

only around a third, the military is now taking female volunteers – seeing that they

have particularly useful a role to play in international operations, even if that role

“tends to reinforce gendered norms, as it focuses on women as bearers of difference”

(ibid:153).

5.4 Understanding Finnish conscription

A decade ago in an article on Finland, the Economist talked about “the seriousness

with which the country (like several other neutrals) sets about defending itself.

Conscription, fast disappearing elsewhere in Europe, is fiercely supported” (The

Economist 9.10.1997). This assumption, that conscription shows military seriousness,

remains the foundation of conscription in Finland today. This is outlined in the FDF’s

Conscript 2008 brochure (Army Command Finland 2008:10; emphasis in the

original):

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You are the best person to defence[sic] our country. Finland needs also

your effort, because you are the best person to defend our country, our

independence and our territorial integrity. Military national defence based on

general conscription and your own input guarantees that your rights and the

rights of everyone living in our country are not violated, and that no-one can

threaten our life here in Finland.

Levels of support for conscription have also changed little this decade: annual polling

for the Advisory Board for Defence Information (ABDI)/ Maanpuolustustiedotuksen

suunnittelukunta (MTS) in the autumn of 2007 showed that 73 percent of the

population support continuing the conscription system as it is, 17 percent feel that the

numbers conscripted should be selectively reduced and only nine percent believe

Finland should have a professional army (ABDI 2007:9). The graph below shows that

this support has remained relatively constant at high levels throughout this decade:

“General conscription: "Finland employs a defence system based on general conscription for men, in

which the largest possible number of men from each annual intake receive military training and which

produces a large reserve. Should the present system be retained or should it migrate to a selective

national service, in which only a part of the intake would receive military training and which would

result in smaller reserves, or, should it entirely change over to a fully professional military with fewer

personnel?”

(source: ABDI 2007:fig.32)

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5.4.1 Identity/history

As argued in the historical section above, conscription in Finland became associated

with a positive sense of nationalism and sovereignty. It was a way of ensuring the

continuance of the nation-state that, particularly in the post-Second World War

period, was synonymous with increasing economic growth, an enlarging welfare state

and – progressively through that period – more equality between the sexes74. Whilst

never as rich as neighbouring Sweden and Norway, by the end of the Cold War,

Finland had one of the highest standards of living in the world. Memories of the

losses of the Second World War did not disappear, although narratives were formed

that reflected the realities of the Cold War geopolitical situation. Browning(1999:9)

argues that President Paasikivi was important in this process, using the language of

“rationalism” to reconsider the Finnish war experience to be more accommodating to

living next to a superpower. Nokkala argues that this led to “silences” throughout the

Cold War period about German involvement in Finland’s war; for example the role of

the Luftwaffe and German re-supplies of anti-tank weapons in helping gain Finland’s

“defensive victory” at the crucial Battle of Tali-Ihantala in the summer of 1944

(Nokkala interview 2008). Journalist Ilkka Malmberg (2008) writes that: “in 1989,

Finland was that sort of country. The history textbooks would tell you in great detail

about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, but not a word about Tali-Ihantala. The

events of 1944 were covered in a sentence or a footnote”. Dr. Juha Martelius recalls in

1991 attending a ceremony in Eastern Finland for a visiting elderly German former-

Luftwaffe pilot who had been awarded in 1944 the highest Finnish medal for valour

for his actions in support of Finnish troops. Later in Germany he lost the medal as he

fled from the advancing Soviets. The ceremony to re-award the medal was done in

virtual secrecy with no press coverage, even though almost 50 years had elapsed

(Martelius interview 2008). This selective remembrance of history that continues to 74 Whilst Finland during the Cold War period increasingly resembled an often idealised Nordic socialdemocracy, its progressiveness was not in all areas. Homosexuality became legal in Sweden in 1944,but in Finland it was only decriminalised in 1971 and until 1981 it was listed by the state as an illness(SETA 2007:2), and this accounted for many gay Finns moving to Sweden. Finland’s citizen-militarytradition has certain gendered assumptions – the author’s place of work in Finland relies on “sivarit”,young men completing their alternative civilian service having claimed conscientious objector status,for various clerical and technical support roles. A number of these colleagues have independentlyrecounted to the writer that when they told their family that they had decided to do civil not militaryservice, a relative – normally their father or grandfather, responded by saying “Why? Are you gay?”

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some degree even to the current day ensures that Finland’s Winter War experience of

being left to stand alone in the face of Soviet attacks is far more significant in the

popular security debate than the experience of fighting allied, because that alliance

was with the subsequently demonized, losing side of the Second World War – the

Nazis. The result is the oft cited maxim that Finland can only rely on itself for her

defence, no matter how historically incorrect this is in terms of the Civil War, Second

World War and even to some degree during the Cold War, as Ries (2000:5.1)

shows75. The idea of self reliance is central to the justification of conscription.

Conscription is not just a reflection of the Finnish security narrative, it tries to be an

active part of its continual dissemination. Colonel Kari-Pekka Rannikko of the

Defence Policy Department of Ministry of Defence put this very clearly by saying

that whilst conscription is not integrated with the rest of the education system, it is

very clearly part of the Finnish education system (Rannikko interview 2008). In a

2008 Defence Command Personnel Division Power Point presentation the slide

entitled “Building up the military capability” shows a pictorial representation of a

pyramid system for doing this with “the Finnish education system” as the base layer

of the pyramid76. This was echoed by Captain Jarno Limnell who argued that his

research shows that it is not only conscription, but also the officer training and even

the comprehensive school system and popular culture, that all contribute towards

constructing a threat image of Russia. Limnell believes this separates Finland from

the security thinking of western European countries (Limnell interview 2008).

There has been quantitative research that suggests that conscription does not shape

societal attitudes to security, but rather only reflects pre-existing attitudes. Ronald

Krebs (2004) demonstrates that the idea of a conscript army as a “school for the

nation” is questionable at best. He notes that historically leaders in different countries

and different eras have believed in using a “policy of universal military service at

least in part to help build cohesive national communities out of their countries’

multinational jumbles” (Krebs 2004:85). He identifies three loose theories on how

75 Both the inaccuracy and prevalence of this idea was also stressed by Olli Kivinen of HelsinginSanomat, one of Finland’s pre-eminent commentators on security policy. Olli Kivinen, interview,Helsinki, November 2002.76 Defence Command Conscription in the 21st Century: the future of the general conscription system3 March 2008 (Power Point presentation, author’s collection)

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conscription can shape nation-states; firstly, socialization – young men learn wider

social values that are embedded in the military culture. Secondly, the contact

hypothesis – that conscription brings together men from disparate backgrounds and

welds them into a national whole. Finally, elite transformation – conscription gives a

foundation in the national idea for future elite class members. Krebs argues that all

three theories suggest that “under certain conditions, military service leads individuals

to reconsider their identity, their attachments, and the definition of their political

community” (ibid:87). Krebs argues that additionally to there being little evidence for

this empirically (one of numerous examples he cites is that Israeli Druze who have

served in the IDF have the same political views as those who chose not to [ibid:98]),

all three concepts are also theoretically weak as they all “implicitly conceive of

identity as property of individuals, when it is more usefully conceptualised as a

property of social relationships. Identity is not subjective and universal, but rather

inter-subjective and hence contextual. This fundamental insight limits the scope and

permanence of the military’s potential impact” (ibid:88). Further Krebs also argues

that the theories remove the politics from the idea of nation building: “nations are

collective, not aggregate entities, and the stakes of inclusion and exclusion are high.

They are the products of political contestation and negotiation, not the sum of

individuals’ mental images of their political communities” (ibid:88-9). Conscription

will have an impact on the identity of individuals but it cannot completely remake it.

He quotes Karstens (1978) as saying that military sociologists have consistently found

that “much of what appears to be the product of the training environment is, more

accurately, a function of what the trainee himself brought into that environment”

(ibid:97). Therefore of Limnell’s observation noted above, that the comprehensive

school system and popular culture help construct the Finnish threat image of Russia as

well as conscription and officer training, should come as no surprise. Indeed, because

young Finnish men go to school and experience popular culture long before and for

much longer periods of time than they experience conscription, it seems more likely,

as Krebs suggests, that the former factors play a more important role in producing

threat images than conscription itself.

Further evidence for both the idea that Finnish national identities are formed prior to

military service, and for the idea that conscripts are active agents (in understanding

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conscription with pre-formed worldviews rather than passive receivers of the

military’s version of national identity), is suggested by Finnish women actually being

more in favour than men of keeping the current conscription system that, of course,

they do not take part in77. Only 68 percent of men as opposed to 79 percent of women

support the status quo (ABDI 2007:fig.31), so despite the continual invocation of

conscription being central to maintaining the “will to defend” for Finns, it seems that

those who do not actually need to serve, support the idea more fully78.

On the Defence Forces Flag Day in June 2007, President Tarja Halonen said: “general

conscription and women’s voluntary military service have proved to be factors that

bring the nation together” (Halonen 2007). This premise is highly questionable and

facts indicate the reverse – women do not have to do military service and the military

remains segregated on linguistic grounds79 with Swedish-speaking Finns having the

opportunity to serve in Swedish-speaking Uusimää (Nylands) Brigade, the coastal

infantry of the Finnish Navy. This is not to claim that Finland is not a coherent nation-

state, as noted earlier it clearly is, but rather that it is hard to prove that conscription is

central to continuance of that national coherence beyond the undoubtedly important

fact that the majority of Finns believe that it is. Mass conscription fits with this central

aspect of Finnish national identity; it is an indicator of nationalism and patriotism yet

also indicative of the value of equality, in that all have to serve, so is supportive to the

social democratic values of Finnish society as a Nordic, welfare state. As the

“enduring vagueness” of the Swedish värnplikt system allows it to be supported by

both left and right, so too with Finnish conscription. The patriotic demand that all

citizens serve appeals to the right, whilst at the same time the fact that it is a “citizen

military” where there is no separate military class80, along with the egalitarianism of

77 Women can volunteer for military service, and about 500 do so annually out of 27000 conscripts(Defence Command 2007:11)78 Revealingly the same survey question shows that Finnish men only favour a fully professional armyby one percent more than women (9% to 8%), so it cannot be argued that the difference between menand women’s attitudes on the current system is because a group of men would prefer the option ofprofessional soldiering to conscription. The biggest difference is in many more men choosing theoption “selectively reduce” the conscription system (22% to 12%).79 Interestingly there is little evidence of racism with the FDF as increasing numbers of ‘new Finns’ dotheir military service. As one Somali Finn put it: “We went to the same schools and now we put on thesame military uniform to learn how to defend the same country. With that skin colour doesn’t anylonger matter” (Svenskfinland 25 March 08).80 By way of example Martelius notes that outside of ‘office hours’ officers and enlisted men will oftenuse each other’s first names (Martelius interview, March 2008).

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all serving, appeals to the left.

Support for conscription being consistently so high among Finns, means that it has

become politically difficult to suggest alternatives. In 2005 the Ministry of Defence

produced an extensive study on the real costs of conscription to Finland, looking at

the positives and negatives of the system, but Juha Martelius of the MoD notes that

the political climate was not conducive with them doing a comparative study of what

a professional army might cost Finland, as the political leadership sees conscription as

a basic tenet of security policy (Martelius interview 2008). In the same way, Kari-

Pekka Rannikko said that within the military there is an acceptance that it does not

need 82 percent of Finnish young men conscripted to be able to provide Finland with

a credible defence, but the military follows the will of the civilian leadership and

therefore will structure the country’s defence system on the basis of full conscription

as long the political leadership believes in the status quo (Rannikko interview 2008).

Ultimately conscription is no longer the optimal tool for providing Finland security,

but rather it has become part of the values to be secured by the state. This may appear

counter-intuitive but is actually evidence supporting the hypotheses of this study.

Conscription is not just a military tool for securing Finland in its international

environment, it is many ways the product of the domestic social bargain and reflects

the balance of power within the society between state and society and it demonstrates

how the influential actors, in this case elected politicians who follow the demands of

public opinion, in security policy see the world. But politicians reflecting society’s

views are not the only actors with influence and increasing international operations

involving Finnish troops is complicating the picture.

5.4.2 The internationalisation of security tasks

Finland is a very active participant in international security operations and this has

implications for conscription, whilst conscription has important implications for how

and when Finland involves itself internationally. Its operations abroad can be defined

as classic peacekeeping during the Cold War and more complicated international

operations since.

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Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and within a year began participating in

peacekeeping operations: UNEF in the aftermath of the Suez crisis in 1956 being the

first. The country became a regular contributor to peacekeeping operations throughout

the Cold War as a way of demonstrating its commitment to the international law and

respect for the UN, much like its fellow Nordic states, and Finland still has soldiers

serving in numerous UN operations around the world today. Many of these are just a

handful of officers in various observer mission, but 210 Finns served for a year in the

Finnish-Irish Battalion in south Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war of

2006 (HSi 30.10.07). But a major change in the post-Cold War era has been

participation in international operations that go beyond peacekeeping and that have

not been UN missions. These have been NATO-led operations: IFOR/SFOR in

Bosnia, KFOR in Kosovo and ISAF in Afghanistan. More recently Finland has been

contributing troops to EU led operations such as EUFOR-Althea (Bosnia), Artemis

and EUFOR RD-Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo), Amis I/II (EU support for

African Union operations in Sudan), and currently EUFOR Tchad/RCA (Chad).

Indeed on a per capita basis, Finland remains in the top five troop contributing nations

to international crisis management and peacekeeping operations with currently around

1000 Finnish troops serving internationally (Salonius-Pasternak 2006:61). About 50

percent of these troops are currently in NATO led operations, another 30 percent on

UN assignments and the remaining 20 percent with EU deployments (ibid:62). Most

recently Finland has contributed troops to the NATO-led ISAF mission in

Afghanistan. The contribution has been mainly numbered about 100 soldiers, but this

number was doubled in the summer of 2009 in connections with the Afghan

presidential elections. Unlike other crisis management the Finns have been forced to

fight on a number of occasions and have sustained casualties, although no fatalities at

the time of writing. The dangers faced by the Finnish contingent and the level of

fighting they have been involved in has become a major issue of political debate

through 2009 (see Vuorisalo 2009:13-14)

This increasing international activity had led already by the end of the 1990s to a

substantial investment in a smaller modern force. Tomas Ries noted in 2001 that

already the majority of the budget was going into the core force of three brigades

“probably about 20 000 to 25 000 men” (Ries interview 2001), and the importance of

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the idea of the readiness brigades has only increased through the current decade as the

discussions to become involved in the EU battle groups and the NATO response force

progressed. After the acceptance of the EU’s security strategy of 2003 (see next

chapter), the 2004 White Paper stated “Finland is preparing to participate in the rapid

response forces being developed by the Union and will actively contribute to the

shaping of permanent structured cooperation which is aimed promoting the Union’s

military capability” (Prime Minister’s Office 2004:79). For the FDF this meant that

they needed to have trained troops that could be deployed at short notice, and that this

would not be possible either with conscripts or by using the traditional method for

recruiting peacekeepers of asking reservists to volunteer.

This has seen a limited movement towards a ‘Danish system’. In 2004 the FDF

announced they would recruit competent soldiers from the more difficult to enter

conscript units, such as the paratroops: there would be two types of these ‘contract

soldiers’ – first contract soldiers recruited for approximately a year or 14 months who

could be used for conventional crisis management operations abroad, and beyond that

professionals who would sign up for five years and be trained to take part in the most

demanding military operations that Finland might need to contribute to (HSi

10.11.2004). The Finnish government had promised the EU to have 200 troops ready

for the EU battlegroups (HSi18.5.2004). The first 90 volunteers began training at the

Pori Brigade in the spring of 2006. Finland is currently taking part in two EU battle

groups: the Nordic group to which it has committed 221 soldiers, and the German-

Dutch-Finnish battle group to which it has committed 160. The nature of the battle

group system is that different groups rotate on and off readiness for six month

periods, and this means that Finnish troops are not needed to be ready at all times.

Without a core of professional soldiers being available to cover their readiness

periods, the FDF contracts former conscripts for slightly over a year. They are

retrained for their battle group role for the first half of this period and then are on call

for potential deployment for the second half. They then leave the forces once their

battle groups rotate off readiness.

For this reason there are many in the FDF who support full involvement in the NATO

reaction force (NRF), despite the government showing some mixed feelings over this.

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The current situation is that Finland will not provide soldiers for the readiness

brigades of the NRF, but will take part in training and other supplementary activities

(Karvonen 2008). The military has to plan to train soldiers for the battle group

commitments, but then sees these soldiers leave the forces, necessitating new contract

soldier and more training for the next rotation. The Defence Staff are said to see more

international commitments in the form of the full NRF involvement as necessitating

more professional soldiers recruited on multi-year contracts – which would greatly

ease these planning difficulties.81

The increasing internationalisation of Finnish Defence Forces is met with some

resistance and criticism as it alters the FDF from a purely conscript military aimed at

national defence towards an internationally compatible and deployable force – a

“techno-army” in the jargon of Finnish military officers and analysts. This is seen by

some to be stretching resources too thin – at the start of the decade Tomas Ries

considered that in effect the FDF was pulling down everything but the frame of the

old conscript-based regional defence edifice, with all the resources being moved into

the three much smaller, modern and fire-power heavy readiness brigades (Ries

interview 2001). Colonel Rannikko notes that international task are further stressing

the permanent staff of the FDF, who are already more busy than in the past because

the shortening of conscription periods allows two intakes a year of conscripts, with no

‘down time’ before the next cohort enters the military (Rannikko interview 2008).

The argument was that if the security situation in the immediate region worsens with

the ‘frame’ left of the old system, it could be rapidly rebuilt to provide a huge army

once again. But with the continual lack of investment in the ‘regional reserve forces’

this is called into question. At the same time Finland is taking on more international

obligations in addition to the battle groups, such as maintaining its contribution to

ISAF in Afghanistan and joining the EU mission to Chad which is outside of the

battle group system. Critics claim the defence forces are overburdened and ignoring

their prime role: Juhana Rossi wrote in Helsingin Sanomat (1.8.2007) that Finland

should withdraw from Afghanistan: “The Finnish Defence Forces are a training

organisation in which a small group of professional soldiers train conscripts in case

81 The current position of the FDF’s international commitments were relayed to the author by CharlySalonius-Pasternak, crisis management and peacekeeping researcher, Finnish Institute of InternationalAffairs, interview, Helsinki, June 2008.

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Finland needs to be defended militarily. The resources… allocated to this are meagre

and they should not be used for purposes of relatively little benefit to Finland… the

main task of a Finnish cadre officer is to practice leading an army corps or brigade in

a war, and not to push papers in the staff headquarters of some multinational force in

a foreign country.”

Increased international activity has had greater effects on the FDF, and hence the

conscription system, than any other post-Cold War phenomenon. Despite the still

over-whelming support for conscription both within political circles and from the

general public, what was seen as the necessity in taking part in a wide range of

multinational security operations – and in particular the EU battle groups – has begun

to challenge the logic of the conscription system to some extent.

This tension demonstrates the second hypothesis of this study: that ‘internal’ and

‘external’ cannot be separated in understanding security policy change. A

conscription system favoured by domestic actors – in this case a clear majority of

Finnish society – and the military forces need to be involved in international

operations create the need for a balance. There is change but change is limited

because politics cross the ‘great divide’ between inside and outside. From where that

sense of necessity to be involved in international operations has come, will be

explored in the next chapter. This tension is also indicative of hypothesis three: of

different Finnish security actors having different world views, the modern versus the

postmodern; between Finland’s social democratic national bargain – ‘emancipatory

nationalism’ and the forces of globalization.

5.5 Conclusion: globalization versus emancipatory nationalism

It is worth revisiting the quote that opened this chapter – particularly as it comes from

a Ministry of Defence document outlining Finland’s security strategy until 2025:

“General conscription lays the groundwork for the Finnish citizens’ strong will to

defend the nation and for their commitment to national defence. It also promotes

citizens’ social equality and guarantees the transparency of the Defence Forces’

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activities in the society” (Ministry of Defence 2006:17). The discussion above

suggests that all of these claims are questionable. Conscription does not create the will

to defend in Finns, rather it is the opposite – the will to defend is a central aspect of

Finnish identity and it is this that allows conscription, which some authors describe as

a military system of the early modern era (Williams 2008:201), to continue in a, for

Europe at least, predominantly post-modern time. Secondly, the claim that social

equality is reinforced by conscription is tenuous, if nothing else because women do

not serve, and the most important minority in Finland, the Swedish speakers, serve

separately if they wish. Again it is more likely to be the other way around, that

equality is an important part of Finnish national identity, and ensuring the continuance

of a relatively fair and just system bonds the nation and the state together – the nation

willingly gives to the state through conscription to ensure the continuance of the

rights made explicit in the welfare state. This is an essentially modern equilibrium that

is being called into question by globalization. Thirdly the claim that it ensures the

transparency of the Defence Forces activities, seems unlikely. There has been no risk

to the democratic Finnish state from the military since the very earliest period of the

republic in the aftermath of the civil war. Rather conscription is a very good way of

the FDF being able to influence the public debate and set the agenda, as the discussion

over the Ottawa convention showed.

The debate over conscription, particularly in the light of the increased involvement in

Finland in multinational, overseas security operations, can be seen as indicative of the

tension between globalization and nationalism, or of the postmodern and modern

worlds. Globalization has brought many benefits to Finland – for example the Finnish

economy, and hence wealth of the country, is heavily reliant on exports for its

wealth82, with Nokia alone being an important part of that. Twin imperatives drove

the push towards Finnish EU membership: the necessity to maintain equal access with

Sweden to the major export markets of Europe and, secondly, to ensure Finnish

security by anchoring the country’s identity in western Europe building real links to

the Western security institutions. Again these are ways in which Finland has opened

up to globalizing forces and has become stronger as a result – as Clark (1999:112)

suggests would happen to strong states. Finland has become in the new conditions of 82 In 2007 exports accounted for 42.57% of GDP in Finland, compared to for example 19.98% in theUK, 7.75% in US, 22.8% in France and 46.6% in Sweden (source: Legatum 2007).

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globalization, “an active progenitor[…] in which the distinction between inside and

outside is much less pertinent than before”, it not just an “object of globalization” but,

alongside other strong states, “also its subject” (ibid).

But globalization also changes balances particularly between the state and the nation.

For example, whilst some industries flourish, others face competition that they had

not experienced before – the Finnish economy is no longer subsidised and protected

to anything like the degree pre-EU membership. This directly impacts on people’s

lives. In the same way the military compact between state and nation is being altered.

Conscription, representing the Finnish peoples’ willingness to defend the state in

return for expected rights as citizens, is no longer the only narrative in the security

thinking for the state. The Finnish state clearly sees international activism as

important – Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994 under Esko Aho’s

Centre Party-led government; the preparations for the activation of the EU’s ESDP

took place under the SDP-led coalition governments of Paavo Lipponen (1995-2003)

along with a deepening of relations with NATO. The centre-right coalition that has

been in power under Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen since 2003 has continued to

maintain an active international profile in multinational security operations, including

maintaining the Finnish commitment in Afghanistan, providing troops to two EU

battle groups and committing troops to the EU deployment in Chad. All the major

parties, from the former-communist Left Alliance to the conservative Kokomus party,

have been in coalition governments for some period since the end of the Cold War,

and although there are clear differences between and within parties, and over time, no

party has left a coalition government over international security operations. This

period has also seen two different presidents, Ahtisaari and Halonen, who despite both

being from the SDP represent very different wings of the party, particular with regard

to foreign policy. The support for international activism across the party spectrum,

only increasing in the last 17 years, is demonstrative of the Finnish state seeing the

necessity of being part of new globalized security networks. It is a realisation by elites

that security does not just happen on the country’s borders.

The Parliamentary Security Policy Monitoring Group stated in 2008 of threat to

Finland: “Various multi-dimensional disturbances are more probably than military

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crises. These may involve disturbances of the infrastructure vital to society, major

accidents, environmental disasters, pandemics and crises spawned by climate change”

(Valtioneuvoston Kanslia 2008:66). Yet at the same time the group of

parliamentarians insists that Finnish defence must continue to rest on general

conscription (ibid.), never suggesting why if the “threat of war is remote” (ibid:67),

Finland continues to need a wartime army of 350,000 to deal with these other types of

threats. It would seem this is, rather, a necessary political position to adopt for MPs

when the general public so clearly still supports conscription. Therefore conscription

demonstrates the first hypothesis of this study: that security policy is not just a

response to the international environment, rather it represents how a country

understands that environment, mainly through the prism of it historical memory and

that further this helps to illuminate the power balance between state and society.

Finnish support for conscription can be seen as part of the resistance to the social

changes that are inherent in Europeanisation and globalization more generally83. A

2007 Helsingin Sanomat article’s title summed this up this unease: “Finns

increasingly critical of EU, NATO, USA and immigration” (Aitamurto 9.1.2007) and

included a comment from a Tampere pensioner: “now Finnish boys are to be sent to

fight wars in different places. It is frightening. New things are always

frightening”(ibid.). The prime minister addressed the tendency toward isolationism in

2004: “I know that many Finns feel that Finland has managed to remain in the

periphery, at peace from the threat of terrorism. This could easily lead one to think

that it’s best to keep quiet and out of sight, without attracting anyone’s attention. A

famous Finnish writer from my own hometown described life in his poem about a

squirrel: ‘soundly sleeping, the squirrel snuggles in its mossy bed; neither hound’s

tooth, nor hunter’s trap, ever reached here’. There’s no need to blame oneself for

being swept up in the mentality of ‘the treacherous world far away’.”

(“Pääministeri…” 23.4.2004) Vanhanen’s speech then goes on to explain why this

can no longer be the case, noting that Finland has to play its part in maintaining the

international system from which it is benefiting. But the central point is that the prime

minister understands that there are many Finns who do not accept this.

83 Polling for EVA in the autumn of 2007 showed that more Finns are suspicious of globalisation thansee it as beneficial and particularly believe that it leads to the off-shoring of Finnish jobs. The trend isthat these attitudes are becoming incrementally more dominant (Haavisto et al 2008:91) .

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Conscription has become part of Finnish identity because it represented the successful

balance between the Finnish state and nation and has become indicative of the ‘good

Finland’ – or emancipatory nationalism as Laitinen describes it (Laitinen 2006:50) –

the social democratic bargain of equality and social security. Conscription is seen as

both part of the bargain and the way in which it is protected from malevolent outside

forces. Changes to conscription represent changes to that compact and, hence,

represent the change and uncertainty implicit in globalization. But it is the FDF itself

that is far more aware of how these globalizing forces are changing the environment

in which they operate – not only internationally, as outlined above, but also

domestically. Colonel Rannikko notes that the conscription system is seeing an ever

increasing number of drop-outs for mental health reasons, so that at the current time

the biggest threat to the conscription system is “the way of life we have in Finland”

(Rannikko interview 2008). Statistics demonstrate his point: in 2007, 55.3 percent of

those not completing their service for medical reasons did so due to “mental health

disorders”84 and the prescribing of antidepressant to conscripts is on the rise as a way

of limiting the discharge rate for mental health reasons (YLE 8.7.2008). Likewise, Dr.

Martelius of the MoD planning department argues that the conscription was a system

that fitted an agrarian society, but now Finland is an information society. He believes

that there is now a “fragmented value base”, that the internet has made a big

difference and that Finnish children now grow up in a different sort of world because

of Europeanisation and Globalization (Martelius interview 2008). These social

changes are blamed for the increasing mental health issue amongst conscripts: “the

military may in some cases be the first time someone tells you what to do” according

to Dr. Mika Mattinen of the Karelia Brigade when asked to account for the increasing

use of antidepressants by conscripts (“Antidepressant use…” YLE 8.7.2008).

Martelius also notes that the conscript base is just not as physically fit anymore,

reflecting the move to an information society that is more sedentary. Arto Nokkala

notes that traditionally the defence forces were diversified around the entire country

and this would create strong local links between the FDF and society, but both urban

migration and centralisations of the military into bigger barracks has lessened these

links, and this can be seen in regional difference in attitudes to conscription, for 84 Defence Command Conscription in the 21st Century: the future of the general conscription system3 March 2008 (Power Point presentation, author’s collection)

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example between the Helsinki region and rural areas (Nokkala interview 2008).

Even if the senior commanders of the FDF and civilian security policy elites are more

flexible over conscription than the Finnish public, a point that Prof. Nokkala made

when interviewed, they are limited by many factors in instigating change to the

system. Primarily because public support for the system is so overwhelming, there is

very little political support for change, and the military remain ultimately under the

control of the democratic and civilian political structures of the Finnish state.

Secondly, the FDF can be said to be a victim of its own success in the conscious

project of building the ‘will to defend’ through the Cold War era – Kari Laitinen said

“the story has been told so beautifully, they have become prisoners to it” (Laitnen

interview 2008). Limnell and Moberg (2008:4-10) looked at the attitudes of young

Finnish officers. Nine out of ten believe that service abroad should be voluntary (the

current situation) and that just under 40 percent only want to serve in Finland; a good

majority believe that NATO membership would end the voluntary nature of service

abroad and this belief perhaps accounts for that even amongst these military

professionals under half think Finland should join the alliance. Being at the beginning

of their careers means young officers more likely to reflect the attitudes of wider

society and, as Nokkala argues (interview 2008), the higher you progress in the ranks,

the more pro-international engagement (including pro-NATO membership) the officer

corps tends to becomes.

The military understands that for the tasks required of it today by Finland’s civilian

political leaders, it does not need 82 percent of each cohort of young men to serve. At

the lowest level this can be seen in a change of attitudes to company commanders,

where previously a demonstration of a successful command would be to have all your

conscripts make it through their time in that company, with the group ‘carrying’ the

weakest members. Now it is not looked down on to let conscripts get medical

exemptions – particular for mental health reasons – and to go home before their full

period of service is completed (Limnell interview 2008). This is a small step towards

the model adopted by other Scandinavian states where volunteerism has become a

central part of the military manning system. The FDF’s deputy chief of staff

operations, Major General Markku Koli, was amongst the first to suggest in 2005 that

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the defence forces should have a wartime strength of 250,000 and only be training

70% of each cohort, believing this would be the case by the end of 2007 (Nokkala

interview 2004). Koli, who attended the United States’ Army Command and General

Staff Officer Course in 1992-93 – just after the U.S.’s success in the Gulf War, was

instrumental in bringing the ideas of RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs –

networked, mobile and smaller forces with much increased firepower) to Finland. He

considered what lessons the FDF could learn from the “destruction of Iraq’s military

forces” in 1992 (Koli 1992:6). Despite his influential position, Maj. Gen. Koli’s

prediction turned out to be wrong – or at least premature – the 2009 Defence White

Paper did not make suggestions along these lines and this is still not the stated

position of the government (HSi 26.1.2009). Secondly, even if this were to become

the case, it would still be some years before his projection of Finnish conscription

rates and the attendant smaller wartime force size could become reality.

Although Finland is fully taking part in the internationalisation of security as

globalisation opens out the boundaries of where states’ security interests now lie,

there is clearly something particular to Finland that makes it buck the trend of smaller

professional militaries that have taken form across Europe in response to these

changes, even in the case of Finland’s Nordic neighbours – its normal reference

group. It should be noted that even if the ambitions of the military modernizers to

reduce the numbers conscripted and the size of the wartime forces are realized, their

aim is still that over two thirds of all Finnish men will serve for some period in the

country’s armed forces and that the potential military would still be one of the largest

in Europe, and big by a global standards.

If the Finnish conscription system is ever to change or be ended, it will be because

Finns have come see the world, and the threats that it holds to their successful nation-

state, in a different way. This demonstrates how the third hypothesis of this study on

the world view of the different actors in security policy making, relates to the first, on

how a changing balance between state and society will change security policy. The

next chapter investigates this by considering the construction of threat images, and

whether European Union membership, and in particular the EU’s first joint security

strategy, has changed the way that Finns perceive threats to themselves.

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6. Finnish security and the European Security Strategy: changed

policies but constant threat perceptions

Large-scale aggression against any Member State is now improbable. Instead, Europe

faces new threats which are diverse, less visible and less predictable

-The European Security Strategy 2003

[T]he Finns still maintain the largest artillery force in Europe.

-Nick Witney, European Council on Foreign Relations 2008

6.1. Introduction

The central question of this study is to consider whether in a period of globalisation

transnational politics impacts on the policy making of a nation-state in novel ways,

demonstrating the proposed falsity of the “great divide” that IR has conjectured

between the national and the international. This question tests the second hypothesis

laid out in the introduction of this thesis – on the falsity of the ‘great divide’ as

proposed by Clark (see section 1.2 above). For Finland the most clear

transnationalisation of its politics in the post-Cold War period has been its

membership of the EU. Security policy – previously the realm of jealously guarded

national sovereignty – has become part of the EU’s politics.

During the negotiations and at the time of Finland’s accession to the EU, the Union’s

common foreign and security policy (CFSP) was significantly limited. Nugent,

writing in the year that Finland joined the EU, described the situation at the time thus:

“There are many obstacles in the way of a developed, let alone a common, EU foreign

policy” (Nugent 1995:391). Duff describes the Treaty on European Union

(“Maastricht”) of 1992 as being “extremely tentative” on CFSP and that “such

timidity was, if anything, exacerbated since Maastricht by the accession of the three

‘neutral’ countries in 1995” (Duff 1997:124). The Treaty of Amsterdam was meant to

remedy some of these weaknesses, although the outcomes suggested “the imperatives

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of ambivalence and compromise” (ibid:125) continued allowing those within the EU

who wished to insist on national sovereignty in foreign and security policy matters to

maintain that this was still the case. For example, the idea of the “progressive framing

of a common defence policy” was stated in Art. J.7 of the Treaty of Amsterdam in

1997, but President Halonen speaking in 2000 argued that the Maastricht position that

Finland accepted when it negotiated its entry to the Union still remained the case.

According to Halonen this idea was only a “development vista” and that “it is

important to note that there is no agreement to create a common defence” (Halonen

2000).

Finland has, since joining the EU, been taking an active part in CFSP, but at the same

time the activism has been in particular directions: towards crisis management and

peacekeeping (Tiilikainen 2001:65) and maintaining CFSP in the intergovernmental

realm (Ojanen 1998:9). So an important question arises from this: is Finnish security

thinking really changing due the supranational impact of the EU? Or rather do Finnish

policy makers see the world much as before but are now using the EU as new tool to

assist in the search for security? This chapter investigates this question by considering

how the European Security Strategy (ESS) of 2003 was incorporated into Finnish

security thinking. The central method for doing this is comparatively analysing the

Finnish security and defence white papers of 2001 and 2004 which were published

before and just after the ESS. The chapter will argue that once again, the way in

which the ESS has been understood in Finland is dependent on the world view of the

recipient, and that it is understood both in a modern and a post-modern sense – as this

study’s third hypothesis predicts. This central ambiguity is reflected in the

disjointedness in the content of the white papers.

This tension between different worldviews as seen in the defence and security white

paper process and outcomes can also tell us about the different influence of various

actors in Finnish security policy making. Most notable is the difference between

Finnish society – represented by the elected politicians who are sensitive to public

opinion – and various parts of the state bureaucracy that exists in more

internationalized environments. This provides further evidence towards this study’s

first hypothesis, and therefore this case study whilst mainly looking at the

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transnationalization of the security policy making process in Finland (hypothesis

two), it will also attempt to also show how the three hypotheses are very much related

to each other.

6.2. The ambiguity of threats

Security threats are not objective facts. Security threats are the belief on the part of

one party in the existence of a capability held by another party that could do them

harm, and that there is, or may be, an intention on the part of the latter party to use

that capability. Hence threats are, in effect, socially constructed. This is not to argue

that threats are not real -- history shows them to be very real -- but rather that they are

neither natural85 nor unchanging, they can and do change.

Alexander Wendt (1992:392) took as an example how the “threat” of the United

States is constructed very differently by Cuba and Canada, or how during the Cold

War the United Kingdom saw Soviet nuclear missiles as a threat, whilst American

missiles were a defence. Wendt holds that threats are a result of identities and that

“identities are inherently relational” (ibid.). The creation of threats, as the negotiation

of identities, represent the outcome of political processes: “threats are what prevailing

conceptions say they are, and security follows suit. This claim to authority, in turn, is

justified by a commitment to a form of knowledge that is presented as self-evident

and authoritative, but never fully articulated” (Krause and Williams 1997:38). After

the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the idea that threats are a political claim rather

than a material fact has become rather evident. This is not a post-structuralist position

where, for example, “one could possibly argue one’s way out the material reality of

aircraft colliding with the World Trade Center on September 11; what it does mean,

however, is that one’s political understanding of those collisions is navigated via

one’s own cultural maps and political theories” (Booth 2005: 13).

This chapter begins from Krause and Williams’ point of seeing the politics of how

threats are created but, as with the proceeding chapters, will use Ian Clark’s argument

that in a globalising world, the impact of the actors outside of the state’s boundaries is 85 Obviously excluding natural disasters such as earthquakes or Tsunamis which may threaten states orother political and social groupings.

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increasing on that state. Centrally the claim is that Finland’s threat images are the

result of a political process that is international, not only domestic, and that these

threat images will reflect the distribution of power amongst the different actors who

influence policy.

6.3. The history of the European Security Strategy and Finland’s position on it

6.3.1 How the ESS originated

Bailes (2005:5) considers that the launch of the European Security and Defence

Policy (ESDP) at the Helsinki European Council in 1999 “helped to create the

opening and the need for the eventual ESS”. Bailes argues it provided both a receptive

audience for new strategic thinking, and an implementing authority for those ideas by

instituting a “community” of European ambassadors in Brussels who were focusing

on the intergovernmental work of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)

and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). This was the Political and

Security Committee86 and it, along with the appointment of Javier Solana as the EU’s

High Representative for CFSP and his staff, was the new audience (ibid).

The path to the ESS can be said to have started at the Amsterdam Treaty. It was

signed in the autumn of 1997 and meant that the Union would take an increasingly

active security role. The text of Amsterdam included the crisis management

‘Petersberg Tasks’ originally outlined in 1992 by the Western European Union

(WEU), putting them for the first time under the remit of the Union – Article J.7 (Duff

1997:114). Notably, the inclusion of the Petersberg Task in the Amsterdam Treaty

was a result of a Finnish-Swedish initiative that allowed the Nordic former-neutrals to

demonstrate activism within the Union whilst making sure that non-aligned members

would have equal say in EU crisis management (Ojanen, Herolf, et al 2000:127-35).

Along with peacekeeping and humanitarian work, the Petersberg Tasks suggested that

WEU members (meaning, post-Amsterdam, EU members) could use their forces for

the: “tasks of combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking” (WEU

1992:6; incorporated into the TEU as Art. J.7(2)). This meant that the EU would need

86 PSC – more commonly referred to as COPS Comité Politique et de Sécurité.

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military capacity. Slightly before Amsterdam was signed, in June 1997, the New

Labour government of Tony Blair had come to power in Britain. This new

administration started to reappraise British security policy. Britain came to see that,

particularly in the light of the tragedy of war in Bosnia, the EU needed more

credibility in security and that this could strengthen rather than weaken NATO. The

outcome of this process was an agreement with France, the EU’s other military great

power, that became known as the St. Malo Accord and was announced in December

1998, laying out a plan for creating EU military capabilities. In 1999 the Kosovo War

broke out further and demonstrated the difficult for the EU states in jointly being able

to deploy 40 to 50 000 troops, despite having over 1.5 million people in uniform

between them (Biscop 2005:8). Bailes (2005:4) writes that Kosovo “crystallized the

frustration of the EU’s largest military spenders, France and the United Kingdom,

with Europe’s poor capabilities performance overall: but it also created European–US

tension over questions of method and control in Western crisis management, leading

even the UK to express the view that Europe must have at least the option of

operating under its own flag in the future.” In response to this weakness the Union

began building capacity with the 1999 Helsinki Headline Goals, but the goals were

only about capacity, they did not include a strategic vision (Howorth 2005:89). After

the Balkan tragedies of the 1990s, Europe was developing a will to act jointly and a

capacity to do so, but had no clear statement of its analysis of the world and aims.

The 9/11 attacks of 2001 followed rapidly by the intervention in Afghanistan

dramatically suggested a new era. As American focus turned increasingly to Iraq, the

US published its National Security Strategy (NSS) in September 2002. The NSS

infamously outlined the pre-emption doctrine (NSS 2002:15). This doctrine as applied

to Iraq threatened the coherence of the EU like no other issue had, dividing what

Donald Rumsfeld called “old Europe” led by France and “new Europe” led by the UK

but made mainly of the post-Communist states of central and eastern Europe. The

feeling that the EU would founder if these divisions became widespread and the

member-states felt the need to try and repair the damage and reassert their common

perceptions and the EU strategy against weapons of mass destruction was the first

product of this (Bailes 2005:9-10). The ESS quickly followed – “the drafting was kept

under close control by a few key individuals, offering the chance of maintaining a

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‘personal’, non-bureaucratic and user-friendly style” and it was unveiled in June

2003(ibid:11). Minimal changes were made from the first draft and the strategy was

adopted by the EU in December 2003. Bailes notes: “what stands out immediately

from these events in a procedural sense are the confidence placed by EU members in

Solana and his team; the self-restraint shown by states when they refrained from

quibbling before the June ‘welcome’ and publication of his text, or from prolonging

and over-complicating the phase of intergovernmental redrafting” (ibid:12).

6.3.2 Finland and arrival of the ESS

The reception of both the idea of the ESS and of the finished strategy itself could be

described as passive but that this, in itself, was a signal of support for the document.

Secretary of State Risto Volanen of the Prime Minister’s Office said that Finland has

supported the drafting of the document because it fitted with the Finnish widened idea

of security that took into account both classical military security but also non-military

threats (Volanen interview 2008). Jukka Salovaara, State Under-Secretary for EU

Affairs (Prime Minister’s Office) remembers that in Helsinki the NSS of the US was

also seen as the “trigger” for the ESS. The understanding within the government in

Finland at the time was that the strategy was primarily “a presentational instrument”

and that whilst this was important in itself, it would not change the content of EU

policy by itself. Salovaara stated that there was therefore no reason to attempt to

shape the ESS in any particular way (Salovaara interview 2008). For the Finnish

government, anything that improves EU security is seen to add to Finnish security.

Pauli Järvenpää, Head of the Defence Policy Department at the Ministry of Defence

put it thus: “For us [the EU] is the only game in town. We are not a member of NATO

and we are not likely to be members of NATO for some years” and the ESS was easy

to accept as it was a “cut and paste job” from the NATO strategic concept87; a

document of which Finland was supportive, even if it was not a member of NATO

because in it, the alliance had stressed the prominence of crisis management and

working with partners88 (Council of State 2001:41,24). Järvenpää notes that within the

87 There are similarities, although the NATO document is clearly a pre-9/11 text in that terrorism is notparticularly prominent (NATO 1999).88 Finland had joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme in 1994, the Euro-AtlanticPartnership Council in 1997 and sent troops to Kosovo under NATO (KFOR) command in 1999 (Nato2008)

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MoD expectations were not particularly high so there was no disappointment in the

finished document (Järvenpää interview 2008). A similar reaction came from the

military: Maj. Jyri Raitasalo from the Department of Strategic and Defence Studies of

the National Defence University noted that even amongst military academics there

was little more notice taken of the ESS than in wider society. Raitasalo notes that the

EU is a limited actor militarily and the ESS focus is on threat where the Union may

have capabilities to respond and he notes pertinently that those in Finland who would

have been disappointed in the content of the ESS, would not have been looking to the

EU for their security answers anyway (Raitasalo interview 2008).

The Finnish Parliament – Eduskunta – via the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), did

engage with the ESS during the preparatory period recalls Liisa Jaakonsaari MP who

was chair of the FAC at the time. Jaakonsaari states that the attitude was positive from

the committee but “it was a novelty, we didn’t take it so seriously – it was one paper

amongst many others” (Jaakonsaari interview 2008). Nevertheless, despite that the

FAC chair admitting that they did not realise how important the ESS would later

become, the committee did in 2003 examine the issue – calling civil servants from the

Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFA) to give evidence of Finland’s preparations for the

strategy. They also invited to Helsinki members of the unit at the European

Commission who were involved in formulating the strategy in Brussels to address

them on the issue, but Jaakonsaari noted that this was very ad hoc, after the FAC had

happened to meet the relevant people at a conference (ibid).

6.4. The “EU-ification” of Finnish defence policy

6.4.1 The EU Battlegroups and the ESS – parallel discourses

The Finnish 2004 security policy white paper – Finnish Security and Defence Policy

2004 – directly references the ESS saying: “Finland contributes to strengthening the

EU as a security community and an international actor in accordance with the

European Union’s security strategy approved in 2003” (Prime Minister’s Office

2004:6). The report then goes on to discuss the ESS in some detail (ibid:48). The

white paper also notes that Finland, as a member state of the EU, is developing its

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forces for crisis management in line with the EU’s Headline Goal 2010, and that the

headline goal, set in May 2004, “takes into account” the ESS and the threats it

describes (ibid:51). The Headline Goal attempts to provide capabilities to deal with

the wide-ranging and amorphous security threats that are identified by the ESS in

addition to providing the capability for the related CFSP tasks that the Union set itself

with the incorporation of the Petersberg Tasks (Headline… 2004:1). The Headline

Goal states:

The ability for the EU to deploy force packages at high readiness as a

response to a crisis either as a stand-alone force or as part of a larger

operation enabling follow-on phases, is a key element of the 2010 Headline

Goal. These minimum force packages must be military effective, credible

and coherent and should be broadly based on the Battlegroups concept”

(Headline… 2004:2).

Finland is now a contributing partner to two of the EU battlegroups – the Swedish-led

Nordic group and the German-Finnish-Dutch group. The battlegroup system became

operational at the beginning of 2007 and each battlegroup cycles through six month

readiness periods. Both battlegroups with Finnish components have now been through

their first readiness periods (Puolustusministerio 2008).

It is therefore possible to draw a line backwards from Finnish battlegroup

participation, via the Headline Goal 2010, to the ESS and argue that this is the impact

of the strategy on Finnish security policy. But, as Dr. Hanna Ojanen of the Finnish

Institute of International Affairs argues – this is a “post facto justification” and that

events did not unfold that way. Rather, she argues that Finnish battlegroup

participation was the product “of a parallel discourse” that was centred on the

meaning of the constitutional treaty, what would become the Lisbon Treaty, for

Finnish security (Ojanen interview 2008). Ojanen argues that Finland has always

centred its policy on ensuring that it can take part in all EU security and defence

functions: “Finland has worked against the blueprints of permanent structured

cooperation that would have been limited to the most willing and able members only”

(Ojanen 2007:72). Permanent Structured Cooperation – that sub-groups within the EU

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could develop defence and security cooperation more deeply – could have meant that

Finland might have been excluded if certain standards had been set for joining those

sub-groups. But the Permanent Structured Cooperation as it appeared in the Lisbon

Treaty89 does not set specific criteria and suggestions of what they could be remain

just that (for discussion of possible criteria see Biscop 2008:7). Ojanen writes that

Finland joined the EU accepting ESDP “under ‘solidarité effective’ but not ‘solidarité

de principe’… It seemed that Finland was early on conscious of the potential harm

caused by such a gap. Repeatedly, it has sought to compensate in practice for what it

might have harmed in theory… by activism and generous troop commitments”

(Ojanen 2007:59). Finland’s willingness to contribute to the battlegroup system is a

balance against the limitations it argued for within the constitutional/Lisbon process

and ultimately is a reflection of the country’s tortured NATO debate and the questions

of whether both to commit to and accept a mutual defence obligation. This

commitment to activism within the EU context is not just at the political level, within

the defence forces there is said to be a growing frustration with the non-use of the

battlegroups with officers questioning what is the point of investing the resources

necessary to create a force deployable at five days notice, if the decision to deploy

takes the politicians months to take (Raitasalo interview 2008).

6.4.2 How EU security cooperation is constructed domestically

Another dimension to the debate around the battlegroups was how the policy was

justified to domestic audiences. Here a threat perception which maintains the focus on

Russia is central, so Finnish involvement in the battlegroups becomes seen as a way

of bolstering national defence. This used to be done very directly, Raitasalo notes that

in the 1990s all international cooperation was “marketed” as training to improve

national defence, but he notes how Finnish society, as well the military itself, has

learnt that the military can have tasks beyond defending the sovereign territory

(Raitasalo interview 2008). This is reflected in Advisory Board of Defence

Information (ABDI) polling question that asks what factors improve or negate Finnish

security: Finnish participation in establishing the EU’s mutual defence is seen as the

greatest asset to Finnish security out of the various options given, and more Finns see 89 “Protocol on Permanent Structured Cooperation established by Article 28 A of the treaty onEuropean Union” 17.12.2007; OJ C 306/153.

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Finnish involvement in EU crisis management operations as increasing security than

those who feel it makes no difference or lowers Finland’s security (ABDI 2008:42).

Interestingly, the positive answers to both these questions have trended upwards since

2004 to reach a high in 2007; but the 2008 figures show a slight decline in Finns

believing these factors added to their security (ibid). The polling was done after the

August 2008 crisis in Georgia and may well reflect concerns over Russia stemming

from the fighting.

Nevertheless, international cooperation as training for national defence is not simply

marketing for domestic audiences. Karvonen (2007) argues:

Unlike our neighbouring countries Sweden and Norway, Finland does not

give top priority to crisis management but places it third in order of

importance among the duties of the Defence Forces, after defending

Finland's own territory and providing executive assistance to other Finnish

authorities. Only a fraction of Finland's defence budget goes towards crisis

management.

Sallinen (2007) agrees that crisis management is a third priority and is also centrally

about bolstering Finland’s national defence; she writes:

it is important to note that in the Finnish defence system, participation in

international crisis management is primarily to support the development and

the credibility of national defence. The development and training of forces

for international deployment is based on national troop production… All

troops, which are trained for international tasks, are primarily trained for

national defence tasks. Most capabilities used in international crisis

management operations simultaneously belong to those reserved for national

defence. (ibid:171)

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Participation in the battlegroups is amongst the most recent and significant changes to

the Finnish defence system as a result of EU membership90. Clearly one important

role of this participation is that the training and acquisition of new materiel for these

international missions improves Finnish national defence. But, arguably, the more

important conclusion to be drawn is that Finland sees the EU as central in helping it

deal with the threats its perceives and therefore is cooperating fully to ensure that it

both gets the full access to all the security actions of the Union and that with its

budget and troop contributions, it shows it full commitment to those activities. Yet

this does not still fully answer the question of whether Finland shares the same threat

perceptions as the EU?

6.5. The Finnish white papers and the ESS

The Finnish white papers on security and defence represent an evolution in Finnish

security policy themselves. They have been published in their modern forms in 1995,

1997, 2001, 2004 and with one that was scheduled to be published in 2008 but that

was delayed for political reasons until early 2009. Earlier reports on security and

defence were written by the parliament by MPs or by people close to the parties. Two

were produced in the 1970s and a third in 1981, an additional two were written in the

1980s by parliamentary “boards of defence”91 (Järvenpää interview 2008). These

reports were not intended for a wide readership or to provoke discussion, but the 1995

report was designed for such. Stephen Blank (1996:v) argues it was “to educate

Finnish elites and masses as to the purposes behind Finland's policy and in order to

give it a formal public statement”. Although educating the masses sounds patronising,

the idea that the wider electorate needed to be informed on matters to do with security

policy is demonstrative of the way that security was becoming more widely discussed

in post-Cold War Finland92. In particular the report argues that to gain security from

EU membership requires the country to be an active member (Council of State 1995).

90 See previous chapter for a discussion on how these new crisis management commitments have led tothe semi-professionalization of the Finnish army for the first time.91 Järvenpää recalls that when these reports were written the SDP refused allow the writing group to becalled a committee for reasons that “I failed to understand then and I still don’t understand to this day”(Järvenpää interview 2008).92 For example, Martti Ahtisaari had become president in 1994 and during his term in office over sawthe constitutional changes that decreased presidential powers in particular in the field of foreign anddefence policy.

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The 1997 white paper builds on this by always discussing the EU first in the lists of

factors effecting Finland’s security environment, whilst always stressing military non-

alignment and an independent defence (Council of State 1997:18, 47)

6.5.1 The 2001 white paper

The 2001 white paper was the last Finland produced before the changes in the

international environment that prompted the writing of the ESS. The 2001 report can

be said to represent the last of the “interregnum” period (Cox at al 1999:4): the post

Cold-War era where western focus was predominantly on the reordering of Europe

after the fall of the Soviet Union. The 2001 report was by no means uncontroversial,

but parliamentary debate on it focused on relatively traditional issues around

Finland’s defence policy including notably the landmine issue and potential NATO

membership (HSi 6.9.2001). The parliamentary debate on the report also happened

just days after a successful state visit of President Putin of Russia to Finland. Putin

had publicly accepted the membership of the Baltic States in NATO and had been

conciliatory to Finland (HSi 4.9.2001). The al-Qaeda attacks in Washington and New

York were just days away.

6.5.2 The 2004 white paper

The 2004 white paper had to reflect the huge changes in the intervening three years;

not only 9/11 and the Anthrax attacks in the US, but the invasion of Afghanistan and

the UN-mandated ISAF mission that followed, and of course the US led invasion of

Iraq. These events, and the tensions they created within the EU, led to the ESS and as

Tuomas Forsberg points out, the Finnish 2004 white paper being the first to be

produced by an EU member after the agreement on the ESS at the end of 2003.

Therefore the ESS was an important factor when the 2004 white paper came to be

written (Forsberg interview 2008). Different observers or those involved in the

writing of the 2004 white paper discuss the impact of the ESS on it in different ways.

Järvenpää stated “there is obviously a cross fertilisation, so it [the ESS] was in the

background of every ones’ minds” but says there was no conscious decision to

incorporates its threat perceptions (Järvenpää interview 2008). Jukka Salovaara

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essentially agrees with Järvenpää saying that whilst attached to the group that wrote

the white paper, he remembers no discussion that such and such an issues should be

included because it was in the ESS (Salovaara interview 2008). Similarly State

Secretary Risto Volanen said “it was in the air” during the preparation of the white

paper but “we didn’t talk much about [it]” (Volanen interview 2008). Looking on

from the parliament, Liisa Jaakonsaari saw the white paper as essentially copying the

view of the security environment expressed in the ESS (Jaakonsaari interview 2008),

but this does not necessarily contradict the recollections of the those involved in

writing of the report and quoted above because both the EU and Finnish papers reflect

the same global security situation.

6.5.3 Comparing the ESS to the Finnish white papers

To gain a sense of the parallels between the ESS and the 2004 white paper, it is worth

looking at the frequency of common terminology in comparison to the 2001 Finnish

report. The ESS identifies five dangers in its “key threats” section (Council of the

European Union 2003:9-13), these being terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of

mass destruction (WMD), regional conflicts, state failure, and organised crime. There

is a clear increase in the use of these terms between the 2001 and 2004 Finnish white

papers93. The 2001 white paper mentions the words terrorism, terrorist and anti-

terrorism only about 15 times. This is in stark contrast to the 2004 white book in

which the same words feature over 200 times. Likewise, WMD proliferation is

mentioned four times in the 2001 report (although unconventional weapons are

discussed many time elsewhere but only in the context of disarmament – the

predominant Cold War framing of the issue [Council of State 2001:28-9]) whilst the

same subject is discussed 34 times in the 2004 report. The terms regional crisis or

regional conflict are used 11 times in the 2001 report and twice as many times in the

2004 report. Failing states or the problem of state failure was not mentioned in 2001 93 The comparison of the texts is approximate and is for illustrative purposes, rather than seriouscontent analysis. A note on methodology: a PDF version of the 2004 white paper is available makingthe references easy to count via the search function. The 2001 report is only available in printed formand necessitated a full re-reading of the text, marking and counting the terms when they appeared. Arelatively inclusive approach to the terminology was used, for example in addition to “failing states”,terms such as “failed states” and “state failure” were also counted, as were “transnational” and“international crime” in addition to “organised crime”. References appearing in contents pages, indexesand glossaries were not included, hence the data should be considered only approximate relying on thewriter’s ‘editorial decisions’.

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but appears six times in 2004. Organised and transnational crime was clearly an

important issue in 2001 being mentioned 18 times in the text, but references to this

issue had increased exponentially by the 2004 report to 74 mentions.

6.5.4 Terrorism as the first “key threat” of the ESS

As can be seen in the chart, there is a distinct increase in references of the five threats

outlined in the ESS between the 2001 and 2004 white papers, but correlation does not

mean causation. According to the ESS, terrorism is the “key threat” (Council of the

European Union 2003:9) to European security, but Finland has not suffered from any

terrorist attacks in modern history. Indeed since the bloodletting of the civil war there

has been an almost total lack of any kind of political violence (Archer 2004:16-22).

Would the 2004 Finnish report have featured terrorism so much had it not been for the

EU document?

The 2004 white paper was the first security and defence report that the Finnish

government had produced after the September 11 attacks on Washington and New

York in 2001, and therefore it could be expected that report would reflect the

government’s activity on the issue the predated the ESS’s writing. In other states that,

like Finland, had no history of terrorism, particularly of the Jihadi form, the issue

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likewise became very prominent in the security discourse (on Estonia, see Noreen and

Sjöstedt 2004:740). Serious policy work was done in 2001 and 2002 on how Finnish

authorities could respond to a similar catastrophic act – this work was coordinated by

the Prime Minister’s Office and led to an inter-ministry committee being formed

(Volanen interview 2008). The Ministry of Defence in December 2002 also

commissioned a report on the implications of international terrorism for Finland and

this was published in January 2004 (Archer 2004). Järvenpää noted that they were

conscious that terrorism had only been mentioned “in passing” in the 2001 report and

therefore they possibly over-compensated in their focus on it in 2004 – but this does

show how seriously the issue was taken in the later report (Järvenpää interview 2008).

Risto Volanen said that the writers of the 2004 report did not read the Solana paper

(ESS) and conclude that as say terrorism was prominent in it, then the Finnish report

had to deal with it, but rather the ESS was “one of the documents describing the

orientation of the time… so really we were responding to the security community

worldwide, or European-wide” (Volanen interview 2008).

Terrorism’s prominence within the ESS clearly was not the cause for the sudden

importance of the issue in the Finnish security discourse as represented by the 2004

white paper. Despite there being basically no terrorist connections to Finland and very

little threat of modern Jihadi terrorism to the country (Archer 2004:61)94, terrorism

still became a central concern of the 2004 report. This is a very clear case of the

transnationalisation of security, where the internal security concerns of other states

impinge directly and seriously on that of another, as predicted by this study’s first

hypothesis. This transnationalizaton is even more amplified in the context of EU

membership, as the 2004 white paper states:

94In 2005 the YLE TV documentary MOT reported on the possible connection between a small groupof Finnish-Kurds resident in Turku and the Jihadi group Ansar al-Sunnah in Iraqi Kurdistan. The reportwas based on information from the Finnish security police, SUPO, and from the Kurdish community inTurku. Two Finnish passport holders were held by the Kurdish authorities for some months onsuspicion of being involved in funding terrorists. This was seen as the first case of ‘real’ terrorismconnections to Finland, but it subsequently came to light that the suspects had been released inKurdistan and allowed to return to Finland where they returned to normal life in the restaurant businessin Turku. Information from within the Kurdish community in Turku subsequently suggested that theaccusations originated from other Kurds in the city who felt this small group of very conservativeMuslim were not supporting wider community activities. It is not known whether SUPO knew fromearly on that the intelligence was suspect (although the author does know that both British andAmerican intelligence had been informed of the situation by SUPO), nor is it clear why the informationwas provided to the media.

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global terrorism has been established as a serious threat to the physical safety

of EU citizens, a fact demonstrated by the bomb attacks in Madrid on March

11, 2004. In March 2004, the European Council decided to adopt in advance

the obligations on terrorism contained in the solidarity clause of the

Constitutional Treaty. The solidarity clause underlines the obligation of the

Union and its Member States to assist a Member State hit by a terrorist

attack. The solidarity clause and the consequent effects mean that a terrorist

strike anywhere in the EU would have an immediate effect on Finland”

(Prime Minister’s Office 2004:21).

In this sense the ESS did not cause the change in Finnish policy but reflects it, as

Finnish threat perceptions expand to encompass threat images shared across the

Union.

6.5.5 Envisioning Russia – a central difference

Despite the ESS’s confident assertion that opens this chapter – that large scale

aggression against any EU member is “improbable” (Council of the European Union

2003:9), the Finnish Ministry of Defence disagrees saying: “use of military force

against Finland is still possible - furthermore, the threat can increase rapidly” and they

make clear that this threat would emanate from Russia (Puolustusministeriö 2006:11).

This is the fundamental difference in the threat images that seem to underlie the

Finnish and European documents. How ‘official Finland’ discusses Russia is

immensely complicated and reflects both differences in nuance and also far more

fundamental differences amongst the different centres of power and influence within

Finnish elites. The central problem could be described as how to talk about Russia

without talking about Russia; Arto Nokkala writes that this is historically rooted in the

Cold War experience where the duality of both needing to maintain friendly relations

with the Soviet Union whilst at the same time ensuring the public understood the

threat that the USSR represented. This produced a discursive dilemma for Cold War

Finland of: “how to represent relations with the eastern superpower continuously in

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favourable cooperative terms without giving an impression that the same neighbour

might not be Finland’s most important security challenge” (Nokkala 2008:77).

This remains the situation to the current day – the 2004 white paper notes that Finland

is “continuing and intensifying its wide-ranging cooperation” with Russia (Prime

Minister’s Office 2004:82), yet at the same time as one military officer says “when

you look at our defence policy and related threat perceptions, the only thing that can

come to mind is Russia” (Raitasalo interview 2008) . Whilst Finland maintains as its

fundamental military strategy a huge conscript army of 350,000 wartime strength and

territorial defence -- protecting all of the country from any invasion -- this cannot be

disputed. Even if one argues that conscription has purely become a social/educational

institution with no military value and that territorial defence is simply regional policy

based on transfer payments to marginalized parts of the country, it is still justified to

Finns as a necessary military system for the defence of the country and there is no

doubt whom that defence is from.

On the other hand the European Security Strategy only mentions Russia as a

cooperative partner: “we should continue to work for closer relations with Russia, a

major factor in our security and prosperity” (Council of the European Union

2003:28)95. The absence of Russia in the ESS is the most obvious evidence of that

document’s postmodern worldview in comparison to the modern aspects clearly still

visible within Finnish security thinking. Looking from the parliament, Liisa

Jaakonsaari said that the ESS “didn’t take into account… the complex issue of

Russia” and therefore from the point of view of having Finnish threat perceptions in

the document “of course this was a failure” (Jaakonsaari interview 2008). This

arguably reflects the higher hopes held in the Eduskunta for the ESS; Jukka Salovaara

was the committee counsel of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the civil servant

attached to the committee, for some of the period when Jaakonsaari was the chair, and

he remembers that the committee had high hopes that the strategy might evolve into

something more than a presentational instrument (Salovaara interview 2008). If there

was an expectation that the ESS would become important, then clearly for Finland not

to have its threat perceptions considered would be more of a problem than for the 95 Russia is also mentioned as cooperation partner in stabilizing the Balkans (Council 2003:18) and inthe search for peace in the Mid East (ibid:19).

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senior civil servants in the MoD and Prime Minister’s Office who believed the

document to be more about communication than setting policy.

The ESS could fairly be described as a postmodern document in Cooper’s sense, and

this is not surprising considering he is said to have written the first draft of the

document after joining the Council Secretariat of the EU as Director General for

external and politico-military affairs in 2002 (Dempsey 2003, Foley 2006:14). The

only state that the ESS mentions as a threat is North Korea and even then this is as a

result of the more general threat posed by its nuclear proliferation activities, not the

direct actions of the state itself. On the other hand the 2004 Finnish white paper spans

the ‘post-modern’ threat images in common with the ESS and the more ‘modern’

threats of the possibility of state-to-state warfare and the defence requirements of the

large military forces that this threat perception implies. Järvenpää said of the Ministry

of Defence that “post-cold war, our agenda has enormously broadened and deepened”

(Järvenpää interview 2008) but as one anonymous senior military officer interviewed

by Nokkala (2008:88) stated: “of course, in defence policy, Russia is central. I would

say it is the only factor. Everything else is something extra. All the core functions

focus on Russia.” Hence the differences in worldview between the documents reflect

the different normative stances of the actors in Finnish security policy making;

evidence for the third hypothesis of this study.

6.6. Criticism of the Finnish white papers reflecting different threat perceptions to the

ESS

Former chair of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee (FAC), Liisa Jaakonsaari,

said that in Finland traditionally the security and defence white papers are treated as

“some sort of holy paper that you are not allowed to criticize”. Nevertheless, in 2004

the FAC had thought that the white paper did not connect its appreciation of more

diverse security threats with its policy recommendations for the Finnish military in

particular. The committee wrote: “The report is… partly structurally inconsistent. For

instance, the relationship between the description of the security environment and the

lines of action is inadequately portrayed” (FAC 2004:6). Parliament’s final response

to the white paper was given by the Defence Committee and was more supportive

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than the FAC’s report96, although the Green Party member of the Defence Committee,

Tarja Cronberg, noted in her dissenting statement that the report failed adequately to

connect internal and external security as modern threat scenarios suggest is necessary

(Defence Committee 2004:40). Jaakonsaari believes the problem they saw in the

report “in some way illustrates the whole Finnish security policy discussion – on one

hand we emphasize the broad concept of security and multilateralism and all these

kind of things, while on the other hand we focus really strictly on the national

defence, and these two parts really have very little to do with each other” (Jaakonsaari

interview 2008). This tension has become important to the domestic politics that

surround the security debate within Finland. The criticism put forward by the FAC

illustrates the problem of needing a security policy for both the modern and post-

modern views of security. As the concept of security has widened, and major new

government policies have resulted and these policies have produced tensions between

a more traditional, predominantly military conception of security and a wider, less

military-focused idea of security. The tensions reflect the continued importance of

fear of Russia in Finnish identity whilst at the same time the country rapidly integrates

itself into the European Union mainstream.

Previous to 2004, the white papers had already been similarly criticized for not

connecting their analysis of the wider security environment with defence policy

recommendations (Salovaara interview 2008). In particular the FAC’s response to the

2001 white paper was particularly critical of the government for failing really to take

account of the widening security agenda: noting the changes but not making policy 96 That the parliamentary response to the 2004 white paper was given by the Defence Committee andnot the Foreign Affairs committee (FAC), is an interesting subplot to this issue. The debate over whichcommittee would give the parliament’s response was politically divisive, including within parties. Thedecision to let the Defence Committee lead was made for political reasons: the National CoalitionParty, at the time in opposition wanted a critical response to the governments report. The defencecommittee saw the FAC as too pro-NATO and too pro-EU and, according to Jaakonsaari, watereddown the criticism of the white paper made by the FAC, leaving her “disappointed”. The DefenceCommittee saw it as “natural” that the “main focus” of the report was defence issues (DefenceCommittee 2004:7). The defence committee’s position gave strong support to continuing conscriptionfor all and territorial defence (ibid:21-2) and placed less emphasis on the widening of security. Many ofthe objection statements of committee members included in the report focus even more on traditional,non-aligned military views of security, both from the left (see the objection of Jaakko Laakso/LeftAlliance [ibid:36-9]) and from the right (Tony Halme/True Finns [ibid:41-3]). With the Coalition partynow in government and controlling both the defence and foreign ministries, they have been happy forthe Parliamentary response for the 2009 report to come from the FAC (Jaakonsaari interview 2008). Acivil servant who has worked for both committees said “it was highly symbolic” which committee gotto give the parliament’s report because it represents how security is being seen: the two committeeshave “very different world views” (Salovaara interview 2008).

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changes to counter new threats (FAC 2001:6-8). The Finnish white papers were

compared unfavourably to equivalent reports produced by the Houses of Parliament

or the Bundestag by Jaakonsaari who said that in the British and German texts a

coherent political line is clear through the reports, but is missing from the Finnish

white papers (Jaakonsaari interview 2008). Within the Finnish government, Sweden is

seen as a good model where a parliamentary group writes two reports with civil

servants, producing first a report outlining their analysis of the threats Sweden faces

and then a second that, accepting that analysis, then goes on to allocate resources to

best deal with them as the budget allows (Salovaara interview 2008).

From the Ministry of Defence, Järvenpää feels that the criticisms have a validity but

claimed this was an unfortunate product of the security and defence policy reports’

structure saying that essentially the government was trying to do two different things

with one publication – both describing the general security environment for Finland

and producing a planning and budgetary document for the defence forces (Järvenpää

interview 2008). State Secretary Volanen was originally defensive about criticism of

the 2004 report (Jaakonsaari interview 2008), but now, despite maintaining that the

implementation section of the report does consider all the threats as laid out in the

security environment analysis, he does accept that how to respond to military threats

is considered in more detail than in the security analysis. Like Järvenpää he notes that

the white papers have a military planning purpose, including having to mention

specific actions that require parliamentary debate, such as the closure of garrison or

amalgamation of military units (Volanen interview 2008).

6.6.1 New comprehensive security policy making

An important outcome of the widening of security thinking has been the government’s

policy “The Strategy for Securing the Functions Vital to Society” (Security and

Defence Committee 2006). This states on its opening page that: “One of the

fundamental tasks of the state leadership is to guarantee the security of the population,

society and the state itself. Increasing national and international interdependency as

well as simultaneous societal development require that we assess and develop

Finland’s security more comprehensively than was done in the past” (ibid:3). The

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creation of this policy area was signalled in the 2001 white paper and this led to a

government resolution in 2003 on securing society’s vital functions (Government

Resolution 2003). The resolution was referenced by the 2004 white paper (Prime

Minister’s Office 2004:145) and both documents stated that the government would

review the policy area in the 2006. It was this process that produced the “Strategy for

Securing the Functions Vital to Society” document in 2006 (Security and Defence

Committee 2006).

Risto Volanen explained that Finland has a strong tradition of “total defence” to build

upon, which he noted was very different to, for example, the UK where after the

Second World War, civil defence was virtually abandoned (Volanen interview

2008)97. Total defence means “all of the military and civil functions by which

Finland’s sovereignty and the living conditions and security of its citizens are

safeguarded against threat by other nations or by other external threats” (Prime

Minister’s Office 2004:131) and includes the state level authorities, local government,

the private sector, and the defence forces. The close integration of the private sector

into the total defence system makes the Finnish system noteworthy, although the

increase of transnational ownership particularly in the telecoms industry is

complicating this (Hagelstam interview 2008). The ABDI polling on the questions of

whether increasing foreign ownership in the Finnish economy makes Finland more or

less secure reflects these concerns, showing an increase from 43 percent to 53 percent

over the last three years of those who feel that this detracts from Finnish security

(ABDI 2008:43). These concerns are indicative of fears caused by globalisation;

society may benefits through increased wealth and an increasing quality of services

available (in this case through communication technology), yet at the same time fear a

loss of control as power moves outside of national borders.

97 Finland’s civil defence infrastructure is extensive and impressive. Every office or apartment buildinghas a shelter room – often in the cellar – with thick, multi layer steel doors. The visitor will also notethe large numbers of doorways leading into the granite hillsides of Helsinki. Often now used as carparks, these huge underground spaces are designed to be able to shelter the capitals population fromeven nuclear attack. The size of these structures can be gauged by the fact that a number are used assports centres – for example Kauniainen sports centre to the west of central Helsinki is completelysubterranean but includes a number of caverns big enough for multiple tennis or badminton courts orfive a side football pitch, as well as containing a climbing wall. Civil defence sirens are still tested on amonthly basis, being sounded at midday on the first Wednesday of each month, and plans are in placeto use the buses of the Greater Helsinki public transport system, YTV, to evacuate the entiremetropolitan area to rural municipalities who are designated to receive potential evacuees.

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6.6.2 A ‘new’ middle ground of security threats

According to Volanen, total defence had the weakness of traditionally being based on

the assumption that threats to Finland come at only two levels: national and local. The

national level meant war, or the threat of war, whilst local threats were seen as

emergencies or accidents, which are the responsibility of local authorities (who could

request military assistance if necessary). With the military in charge of total defence,

preparation for war was preparation for everything below that as well, but as security

was reconsidered in a wider sense, there was a realization that this was no longer true.

Now policy identified a new middle ground or “grey area” between these two levels

which could include terrorism, pandemics, major environmental catastrophes and the

like; crises where the military would not necessarily have a role (Volanen interview

2008; see also Security and Defence Committee 2006:48-58 for relevant threat

scenarios).

For Volanen, clearly the Asian Tsunami of 26 December 2004 was central both in

policy terms and personally in bringing home this new form of security threat and the

crisis management it entailed: “in our [Finland’s] case, our foot and mouth, our 9/11

was the Tsunami” (Volanen interview 2008). The Tsunami claimed the lives of 178

Finns, the largest loss of Finnish lives from a single disaster since the Second World

War, and required a mass and rapid evacuation effort including medical evacuation –

but in which there was no role for the military. During the Tsunami crisis, Volanen

convened the Heads of Preparedness committee98, a structure set up originally for

coordinating total defence, but which brought together the heads of all relevant

ministries as well being able to involve private companies (tour operators, airlines)

and NGOs (the Finnish Red Cross, the Church). Volanen said “it was through this

instrument that the decision could be taken -- without any law, without any budget –

to evacuate all the Finns from Thailand” (Volanen interview 2008). 3300 people were

evacuated within five days; in the official report on the Swedish government’s

response to the disaster, the Finnish reaction was used as a successful example with

98 The use of the Heads of Preparedness committee as the coordinating body in such a disaster situationwas not pre-planned. The state secretary said that at the start of second day of the crisis he was not surewhat he should do next, when he realized that the committee existed and could work as thecoordinating instrument for a cross-government response.

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which to compare the Swedish failings (“Swedish tsunami report criticizes…” 2005).

Volanen argues that the old habits of cooperation across the government that stem

from total defence concept have helped prepare for these new types of security

threats: “we had this structure there that could be reorganized to deal with this new

threat” but the old total defence model needed changes. He noted particularly that the

state’s capacity for situational awareness needed to be increased; in the 2006 Strategy

Securing the Functions Vital to Society gives the task of “Maintenance of the

situation picture” to the PMO (Security and Defence Committee 2006:25).

6.6.3 The limited de-militarization of security policy making

These changes in how security is envisioned within Finnish policy have obvious

implications for the defence forces - Salovaara said that the understanding that not all

security threats necessitate military responses is growing and hence the question is

asked: “is the military the best place to organise comprehensive security?” (Salovaara

interview 2008) He cited this as the reason for responsibility for coordinating the

writing of the defence and security white papers moving to the Prime Minister’s

Office from the Ministry of Defence, and State Secretary Volanen recounted that the

move had been supported by both the prime minister at the time, Anneli Jäätenmäki,

and President Halonen who saw it as the PMO’s role to coordinate increasingly trans-

governmental issues (Volanen interview 2008). Volanen noted that moving the

responsibility for the planning of some aspects of comprehensive security away from

the military has caused concern within that institution, although he called this “normal

bureaucratic wrestling” (Volanen interview 2008). From within the military the need

for change has been noted; there have been legislative changes on giving aid to

civilian authorities, but Raitasalo argued that the mentions in the white paper of threat

scenarios connected to this, have so far been non-specific enough as not to necessitate

big structural changes within the forces. He did note though that already some have

criticized the military for becoming too involved in crisis management domestically,

noting how one Left Alliance MP had asked in a disparaging way, why it was the

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military who provided the response in the 2007 Nokia water contamination crisis99

(Raitasalo interview 2008).

Another example of the contestation of control of widened security policy, taking

power away from the military and the MoD, was discussion around the possible

transfer of the TPAK committee (turvallisuus- ja puolustusasiain komitea/Security

and Defence Committee) and its secretariat from the MoD and to the Prime Minister’s

Office during the preparations of what would become the 2009 white paper on

security and defence. Pauli Järvenpää, interviewed in 2008, said it was his “educated

guess” that this recommendation would be in the 2009 white paper and State

Secretary Volanen “personifies the pull” to incorporate it into the PMO (Järvenpää

interview 2008). As it is the 2009 white paper did not recommend changes, noting

that the MoD remains responsible for coordinating across the ministries in this area

(Prime Minister’s Office 2009:84) and the TPAK secretariat remains in the MoD

(MoD 2009). The TPAK committee: “aids the Ministry of Defence as well as the

Cabinet Committee on Foreign and Security Policy in issues concerning total defence.

The committee has a secretariat preparing topics related to TPAK at the Defence

Ministry” (MOD 2009). As an example, TPAK prepared the 2006 “securing the

functions vital to society” strategy. Nevertheless, the fact that the discussion about it

coming under the Prime Minister’s Office rather than the MoD as Järvenpää alluded

to (Järvenpää interview 2008) is demonstrative of how responsibility for security is

widening across government structures as understandings of what security is also

widen.

Whilst TPAK deals with total defence, and, through that, critical infrastructure

protection and other aspects of the under total defence, the Heads of Preparedness

committee is being used for scenario planning (Volanen interview 2008). The

Tsunami experience brought home the transnational problems of security provision:

Finns in large numbers needed protection and aid from their government, but they

were not in Finland. This demonstrated clearly that even the idea of securing the

99 In December 2007 a municipal worker accidentally let sewage flow into the mains water supply ofthe town of Nokia. The resulting contamination sickened 5000 and months were required to clean fullythe water system. During this time local people relied on water trucked in from elsewhere; the armytook a leading role in the transportation and distribution of the bottled water.

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functions vital to society cannot always secure Finnish society – meaning the people

of Finland – if they are not in, or at least near, the country.

6.6.4 What the white paper criticism say about Finnish security policy

The policy making in the areas connected critical infrastructure protection and civil

protection along with the budgetary resources allocated to them remain small in

comparison to the defence budget. Nevertheless, the spending and policy planning

work committed to this area clearly demonstrate that what can be labelled as ‘post-

modern’ threats are being taken seriously by the Finnish state – many of which are

related to the threat analysis offered by ESS. The transnational dimensions are also

clear: activism by the EU on what the Union calls Civil Protection (a responsibility of

the Environment Directorate), and by NATO in critical infrastructure protection has

been a pull a factor for member/partner states (Hagelstam interview 2008). At the

same time events have pushed the state towards new actions in this policy area. For

Finland this was most importantly a reaction to the experience of the Tsunami, but

also it resulted from watching the reactions of other governments to disasters: the

London bombings and Foot and Mouth for the UK, the Madrid attacks for Spain, and

9/11 and Hurricane Katrina for the United States.

Nevertheless, the criticism of the white papers for being disjointed suggests that

Finnish security policy is still uncomfortably balancing the modern threat of possible

Russian military aggression against all the postmodern and transnational threats laid

out by the ESS. Tellingly Jukka Salovaara, when asked why Finland could not

manage a more coherent security reporting procedure as he described the Swedes as

having, said: “Their threat perceptions are different to ours, we build things just in

case Russia changes its mind” (Salovaara interview 2008).

6.7. Conclusion – “Russia, Russia and Russia”

Despite the policy changes outlined in the above section that are aimed at responding

to a wider conception of security, Finnish security policy still places huge emphasis

on military defence. In 2007 the minister of defence, Jyri Häkämies, caused

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something of a scandal at home when in a speech in Washington D.C. he said “the

three main security challenges for Finland today are Russia, Russia, and Russia”

(Häkämies 2007:6). The difference between the mainstream of Finnish security

thinking and the ESS has not gone unnoticed domestically: in giving Parliament’s

response to the government’s 2004 security and defence white paper, the Defence

Committee wrote: “The Committee feels that the differences of the European Security

Strategy threat scenarios compared to Finland’s national crisis and threat scenarios

should also have been evaluated in the report [the white paper]” (Defence Committee

2004:13). Fundamental to the ESS is the idea that military threats to its member-states

are “improbable” and therefore it does not deal with them at all, rather looking threats

that are more “diverse, less visible and less predictable” (Council of the European

Union 2003:3). Although Finland also shares these threat scenarios, and with the

Asian Tsunami has indeed had direct experience of these new types of threats to

Finnish society, it has not yet relinquished its hold on traditional threat scenarios that

posit Russia as a potential military opponent to the country. For neo-realists, this

comes as no surprise – the logic of anarchic international environment indeed requires

that states defend against possible existential threats. But not all states make the same

decisions. Most notably for Finland, Sweden has radically altered its security policy in

the last half decade, moving rapidly away from a mass conscript army and a doctrine

of territorial defence similar to Finland’s, to a small, highly-trained and powerfully

equipped force designed more for taking part in international crisis management

missions than for defending Sweden from invasion. Norwegian defence policy has not

altered to the same extent as Sweden but has also clearly moved in the same direction,

away from a model that again was very similar to Finland’s chosen defence solutions.

Critics claim that Finland’s thinking on security, and therefore its defence policy, is

outdated: Liisa Jaakonsaari called the Finnish defence forces an “open air museum”

(Jaakonsaari interview 2008).

But all the interviewees for this chapter see defence as in some way, for good or for

bad, related to Finnish identity. Finland is not yet ready to move away from seeing its

relations with Russia through a modern prism, where anarchy, state interest and the

security dilemma still reign. This resistance change in policy is explained by

hypothesis three of this study: that security policy preferences indicate the power and

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influence of different actors inside the policy-making process. Currently a modern

worldview that sees Finland existing in an anarchic, or partly anarchic, international

environment remains influential despite new more postmodern influences that have

crossed the national boundaries in the Finnish debate – most notably via EU

membership. Whilst social changes arguably threaten this defence identity, or “the

will to defend” as the Finnish state calls it, from within (Martelius interview 2008),

transnational factors reinforce it: President Putin’s combative rhetoric to the west, the

Russian war with Georgia in August 2008, and the continued infringements of Finnish

airspace by Russian air force planes through 2007 and 2008. For the foreseeable

future, Finnish security policy will need to maintain its delicate balance between the

modern and the post-modern.

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7. Conclusions

By using the constructivist approach as outlined in Chapter 1, this work has provided

evidence that demonstrates the validity of the three hypotheses laid out in chapter one:

1) that security policy is not just the result of international relations and international

environment, but the products of how the international environment is understood

through historical experience and power relations within societies/states. 2) That the

concept of ‘the internal’ and ‘the external’ resulting from state borders is an artificial

divide and security policy cannot be understood without questioning this divide. 3)

That different actors in making security policy may hold different normative

assumptions about how the world works (and should work) and these create different

worldviews – security policy is a result of a compromise between these views

reflecting the relative power of the actors. Current Finnish security suggests that in

Finland the balance still favours those with a Hobbesian realist view, although the

dominance of this view has lessened with EU membership.

Looking for evidence for these three theses has demonstrated the politically and

historically complex nature of Finnish security policy-making in the post-Cold War

era. This work has not attempted to build a bridge between explanations of security

policy change that focus on events in the international environment and those

explanations that focus on domestic level political and historical explanations. Rather,

the thesis shows that the two levels of explanation cannot be separated from each

other – they are part of the same process. Traditionally, Security Studies has

considered that states change their security policy to deal with changes in the world

‘out there’, but when security policy changes at the state level it also “is symptomatic

of revamped societal bargains under way within individual states, and not simply of a

logic of state activity dictated by new systemic structures ‘outside’” (Clark 1999:107).

Yet the political processes move in both directions, the ‘revamped societal bargains’

are themselves the results of transnational political and economic forces –

globalization. Finland has over the last twenty years sought to find its security in

cooperation with other states in a way previously unprecedented. This is not only

close cooperation and integration, in a clearly politically limited way, with a provider

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of ‘hard’ security – NATO, but also in a far more far-reaching way through the

European Union. Again, Clark notes that this “new security agenda is not entailed

simply by the declining capacity of states to produce security of the traditional

variety. It is instead revealing of the changing social contracts within states and these

are, at the same time, part of the changing logic of state functionality in a globalized

setting” (ibid:107-8).

Finland’s security bargain has changed, and continues to do so, but it has done so in

limited and particular ways as the case studies above demonstrate. The Finnish case is

therefore worthy of study not only to appreciate what has changed, but, just as

importantly, what has not. The proceeding chapters show how political and economic

pressures and trends from beyond a country’s borders affect that country in specific

ways due to the domestic political power structures as well as historical and identity

factors (thesis one of this study). They also support Clark’s argument of a false

separation between international and domestic politics, the second thesis here. That

Finnish security policy has changed less than many of its neighbours, despite being

subject to the same international political forces, requires an understanding of the

internal political environment and the normative justifications of the various actors to

account for that lack of change (thesis three). The case study chapters (4, 5, 6) have

provided much evidence for these tests.

In this concluding chapter, the next three subsections (7.1, 7.2 and 7.3) outline what

the Ottawa Landmine Convention, the conscription and the ESS case study chapters

tell us about the validity of three hypotheses tested by this work, and hence also a

constructivist approach within a Critical Theory tradition, as proposed by Price and

Reus-Smit (1998). Overall, it could be said that Finnish security policy through the

post-Cold War era has been successful within its own terms of maintaining the

country as a sovereign democracy, but the last two subsections of this concluding

chapter (7.4, 7.5) argue that there are implications from that security success in the

kind of nation-state that modern Finland has become.

7.1 New socio-political bargain between state and society

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The introduction to this thesis followed Bryan Mabee’s argument of the need for a

more historically sensitive understanding of security policy creation. This argument

forms the first hypothesis tested: that a country’s socio-political bargain internally is

directly related to its understanding of the international environment and hence its

chosen security policy. Mabee’s argument complements Clark’s observation about the

falsity of the “great divide” between internal and external (discussed in more detail in

section 7.2 below); Mabee provides an x-axis of the temporal dimension of security

policy change reflecting social change to Clark’s y-axis of the fundamental link

between domestic politics and the wider international environment. The case studies

in this thesis suggest that Finnish security policy has altered as Finnish society has

developed through the post-Cold War period. The bargain between the Finnish state

and Finnish society is being renegotiated as a result of globalization and

Europeanization, and is reflected in security policy.

Mabee points out that the state-society bargain has never been stable for long periods

of time, and as Finland, as an independent nation-state, has not even existed for a

century, this process has been compressed yet further. As noted in the conscription

and historical chapters, Finnish society effectively saved the Finnish state in the

Second World War with its total mobilisation and a significant healing of the political

fissure that had split the society in the aftermath of the civil war of 1918. The

progressive introduction of more and more features of an increasingly comprehensive

welfare state in the post-war period can be can be viewed as those in leadership

positions within the state repaying the debt that the Finnish state owed the Finnish

people for their sacrifices and efforts in resisting Soviet attempts to exert hegemony

over the country.

Through the Cold War, Finnish society and state increasingly ‘caged’ each other in

this symbiotic relationship, creating a good example of what Mann (1997:476) calls

“the ‘modest nation-state[s]’ of the north”. Finland became increasingly wealthy

through this period, but this increase in wealth was not captured by any particular

class or social group. The state – via taxation, legislation and welfare services –

created a society that was amongst the most egalitarian in the world. By the 1980s

Finland was providing social security to its citizens that can be described as a ‘cradle

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to the grave’ welfare state. Legislation on gender equality and provision of childcare

brought more women into the workforce and increased the economic power of

women. The Finnish state became the guarantor of security and to a great extent

equality within the domestic realm, but this was balanced by the citizens providing the

state with what was seen as the only possible deterrent to Soviet power: an army of

over a million men. The Finnish defence forces in the Cold War were never designed

to defeat the Red Army, but rather they were a form of military signalling; that the

cost of an attack would be excessively high. For Finland the mass citizen army played

the same deterrence role against the existential threat that the USSR was perceived to

represent, as the small nuclear forces of France and the UK, and from this perspective

it is easy to see how military service became such an important part of Finnish

political identity as outlined in the chapter on conscription.

Another aspect of this state-society bargain was the minimal influence of Finnish

society on the foreign and security policy of the state. This is shown clearly by the

important domestic result of what became known as Finlandization. During the Cold

War there was an increasing concentration of political power in the hands of

president. During Urho Kekkonen’s period as president, this concentration of power

began in the foreign policy realm with the president becoming central to all relations

with the Soviet Union. But, again demonstrating Ian Clark’s thesis, foreign policy was

not separate from domestic politics and Kekkonen used the importance of his

Ostpolitik to control domestic political opponents. The apogee of this was the 1973

reappointment of Kekkonen by the parliament after the constitution was rewritten to

avoid the president needing to be re-elected by the people.

The state-society bargain began to evolve in the 1980s; the change in president led to

a return of power to the parliament and arguably more democracy as a result. The

opening up of the Finnish financial system to the world would also have major

repercussions as a bubble economy began to form, financed by debt. The end of the

Cold War was not just a shock to the international security environment, but the

collapse of trade with the Soviet Union as that country disintegrated helped trigger a

deep recession within Finland as exports collapsed and the housing bubble burst.

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The severity of the depression internally and the rapid changes in the external security

environment gave Finnish policy-makers options that had previously been seen as

closed off to them: most importantly, European integration, with security being an

important impetus towards this. At the same time, the recession meant that the

government needed significantly to restructure the welfare state, cutting spending.

This meant that at whilst Finnish security provision was to some degree being

outsourced to the EU, the comprehensiveness of the welfare state was being reduced.

Arguably the state was offering less to society, but also requiring less from it in terms

of society’s need to be the security producers for the state. As noted in the

conscription chapter, the post-Cold War period has seen a major reduction in the

quoted war-time force levels; these have decreased by approximately a half.

Additionally the average length of the conscription period has decreased, and the

numbers of men who have completed their service being called back for further

training has greatly reduced. In recent years there has also been an observable

increase in the numbers of young men either not completing their service on ‘health’

grounds or not even beginning it for similar reasons. The social stigma that was

clearly present in the Cold War era over alternative civilian service has also been

lowered. Overall it means that Finnish society is having less interaction with the

defence forces, although in comparison to other European societies the linkage

remains strong – a central conclusion of the study of Finland’s policy on the Ottawa

convention banning anti-personnel landmines.

As argued in the chapter on the European Security Strategy and its impact on Finland,

the Europeanization of Finnish security policy has also had impacts on the state-

society balance. Most notably, Finnish activism within the CFSP, particularly seen in

the support for the EU battlegroups, has led to a limited professionalization of the

Finnish defence forces. In comparison to the rejection of mass conscript armies

elsewhere in Europe, this change may seem minor, but the case study chapters suggest

it is not. Security remains an important part of Finnish identity; continued societal

support for conscription and a limited politicisation of security policy from all parts of

the political spectrum suggest this.

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7.2 Through the “Great Divide”: the transformation of the state, not its retreat

Some theorist of international politics, particularly in the decade after the Cold War

ended, argued that the state was becoming less powerful than before – often focusing

on the power that large corporation have in and beyond national boundaries (see

Strange 1996:xii; Gray 1998:chp. 4). The power of the state was said to be ebbing, as

transnational actors – from international finance and multinational corporations to

religions or even transnational terrorists groups – empowered by information

technologies or new liberalised regulatory systems transcend borders and roll back the

realm in which the state exists. This study’s second hypothesis suggests an alternative

interpretation to this. Instead it tests Ian Clark’s assertion that: “to present

globalization as a threat to the state, in isolation, is then to miss the central point: what

it destabilizes is not the state, but that particular accommodation between the

domestic and international components of the order”(Clark 1999:54).

The case studies in this thesis demonstrate this in the provision of security. Through

the Cold War Finland struggled continually to maintain the maximum amount of

autonomy and independence in its security policy – described by Keijo Korhonen, a

foreign minister from the time and a close advisor of President Kekkonen, as

“continuous trench warfare” (Vaahtoranta/Forsberg 2000:10). As outlined in the

historical chapter, Finnish leaders were still saying at the start of the 1990s that the

country would never join the European Union because it was incompatible with its

status of neutrality. Nevertheless, after joining the EU, Finland’s security dilemma has

been, if not resolved, at least reduced according to all the policy makers and analysts

interviewed for this study. Arguably Finland has less autonomy now in its security

decisions: as shown above it has had to make structural changes to its military in

order to produce well-trained and available forces to take part in EU operations in the

form of the battlegroup participation. It has felt significant pressure to conform to EU

norms on defence issues such as the elimination of anti-personnel landmines from its

inventory, even when it disagreed with that position. In the case of the landmines,

although it resisted the EU (and other) pressure to destroy its mines immediately, the

defence sector ultimately had to change its budgetary priorities in order to be able to

phase out the mines and replace them with alternative, allowed systems. At the same

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time, those within Finland (particularly within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs) who

supported the Ottawa treaty argued that for Finland to support international law was

more important to its security than the availability of one, very old-fashioned, weapon

type. In all these cases, the trend has been to surrender some sovereign autonomy in

the absolute sense, in order to gain the perceived greater security of transnational

cooperation, most obviously seen in the form of EU membership.

‘EU-Finland’, with its economic policy in part decided in Frankfurt and with even its

military policy now influenced significantly by decisions made in Brussels, feels itself

to be more secure than ‘neutral-Finland’ did during the Cold War100. This is more

than alliance-building behaviour or ‘bandwagoning’ that focuses on military defence

as neo-realism would suggest. Despite being in a similar strategic environment,

Finland chose a different primary security provider, the EU, from its neighbour

Estonia that prioritised NATO membership, and as a result its relations with the

United States are different. Estonia’s contribution to the multinational forces in Iraq

can be seen in this light; it was not that Tallinn saw a totalitarian dictatorship in the

Middle East as more of a threat to its national security than did Helsinki. EU

membership provides a different type of security to Finland than do NATO’s Article

V guarantees, and even joint NATO air patrols, for Estonia. This is again visible in

that Finland’s support for ESDP within the EU has principally been towards greater

crisis management capability and in particular the integration of civilian and military

crisis management assets. Successive Finnish governments have not focused on trying

to get the EU to offer some sort of complementary or even alternative defence

guarantee to NATO, rather on crisis management operations that the EU could

undertake beyond Europe.

Once again, how the EU’s CFSP and ESDP have become increasingly important for

Finnish security policy is not a one-way process. These processes are interpreted

within Finland according to local specificities as Clark’s thesis suggests – the

100 The willingness to take active roles in international affairs, perhaps most notably in military crisismanagement operations, shows that the political elite see Finland has having a latitude for internationalactivism that did not exist during the Cold War. Additionally, although there remains significantEuroscepticism in Finland, ABDI polling (2008) shows that 63 percent of Finns believe that EUmembership increases Finnish security, and faith in the EU providing security has steadily climbedthrough the last decade (see ABDI 2008:fig. 42).

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domestic is part of the international system. The significant anti-NATO sentiments in

Finland that have made any discussion of possible NATO membership politically

very difficult, led some politicians to discuss the EU as an alternative to NATO by

focusing on the mutual assistance clause that was to be in the EU constitution and,

later, in the Lisbon Treaty (HSi 31.8.2005, 12.9.2005). For the majority of EU

member states who are also NATO members, the mutual assistance clause was of

limited importance due to their pre-existing rights and responsibilities through NATO.

But for non-allied Finland it was potentially more important, and differences in

interpretations of its implications led the foreign affairs committee of the parliament

to request a study of the issue from the government (HSi 30.11.2006). This report,

authored by State Secretary Teija Tiilikainen, took a relatively conservative view of

the implications of the clause, suggesting that whilst it showed the increasing

centrality of the EU in security policy-making, the clause did not transfer any

“competence to the Union [but rather] it creates responsibilities which exist purely

between the Member States” (Tiilikainen 2008:14). Tiilikainen’s argument that

mutual assistance would have to be decided upon unanimously by all the EU member

(ibid:16-7) became a source of confusion and a subject of further debate within the

parliament (HSi 17.4.2008)101.

As discussed in the European Security Strategy chapter above, Ojanen argues that

Finnish activism within the CFSP is not aimed primarily at improving the

effectiveness of the EU’s capabilities at crisis management (although it has that

secondary benefit), but rather through showing the country to be a ‘good’ and

productive member of the Union, and to maintain full access to all aspects of EU

security cooperation by resisting the calls for permanent structured cooperation

(Ojanen 2007:72). Maintaining its position in the EU mainstream has become

Finland’s primary goal. Clearly the EU provides Finland with some sort of security—

even if it is not the hard security of defence guarantees— anchoring the country in the

European mainstream in an attempt to avoid Finland’s Cold War fate of being on the

periphery of Europe. It is influenced by the decisions of other actors within the

101 In the parliamentary debate on the Tiilikainen report, Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb appeared atfirst to suggest that offers of mutual assistance to another EU member state would require unanimoussupport from all other member states, but backtracked on this when questioned by MPs from his ownparty and the SDP (HSi 17.4.2008).

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international environment but unable to exert anything beyond minimal impact upon

them.

Finnish security policy in the post-Cold War era has been the surrender of some of the

state’s sovereign autonomy in order to gain in security. It demonstrates the effects of

globalization on a strong and well-governed state. Finland has been penetrated by the

political and economic processes that exist in the international environment; these do

not push back the boundaries of the state, but rather cross them and impact upon the

domestic political and social environment within the borders. What changes and what

stays the same is the result of power relations and political processes within the state.

7.3 Security on the border of two worlds

The third hypothesis of this study uses Robert Cooper’s tripartite division of the world

into the pre-modern, modern and post-modern world to examine the normative

position taken by different security policy makers. Those actors need to decide if

Finnish security policy is aimed at securing the country with regard to Russia; or at

further integration into the EU; a post-modern entity. This is essentially about whether

security policy actors take a Hobbesian view of the international environment where

states are in zero-sum competitive relationships, or a Kantian view that more

integration and cooperation between states produces a better world. As discussed in

the introduction, Cooper’s classification system remains problematic as an analytical

tool; many states exhibit features that mean that they do not fit into one of Cooper’s

classes comfortably, which he accepts (2003:51-2). Nevertheless the proceeding

chapters have shown that Cooper’s classification works well as a way of

understanding how policy makers, and indeed wider society, see the world and, hence,

think about security policy. It thus helps us understand the tensions and conflicting

directions in which Finnish security policy seems to move. As noted, the notion that

Finland has been an outpost on the border between two worlds -- the civilisation of

Europe and the wild space of Russia -- is an old one and indeed Finnish nationalism

was built to a great degree on the idea of the Russian other. In the 21st century,

European integration has given new impetus to an old idea. Finland is now part of the

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post-modern world of European integration, where sovereignty is pooled allowing the

supra-national community bodies to have power inside the previously sovereign body

politic of the member states. On the other hand, Russia remains very much the model

of the modern state: it jealously guards its sovereignty and finds the idea of European

integration -- of powerful countries surrendering their sovereign power to be part of a

union -- difficult to comprehend. The “zero-sum” worldview is “astonishingly

common” amongst senior Russian policy-makers (Anttonen interview 2001). Russia

is not afraid to use force in its international relations, as the war with Georgia in the

summer of 2008 demonstrated.

This modern world-view, based on Finnish perceptions of a threat from Russia, is

central to understanding Finland’s defence policy with a mass army of reservists and

the concept of territorial defence. But the modern world-view forms only one of the

opposing drivers in the creation of overall security policy, and, as the case studies

have shown, much policy-making is constructed to deal with what Cooper calls the

post-modern world. Centrally the importance of the EU, in providing the framework

upon which Finnish security policy is now built, is indicative of this trend.

The modern world-view, which, as argued above, is mainly expressed by Finnish

society and connected to national identity, causes tension against a progressively more

post-modern view of policy-makers and national leaders (see Browning 2009:287-89).

This can even be seen within the area of defence planning, suggesting the military

elites are subject to similar or the same socialisation processes as their civilian

counterparts, that leads them away from Cold War ‘modern’ thinking. As the military

experts interviewed for this thesis, along with official statements, have indicated, in a

war Finland would actually rely on the small core of the much wider mass conscript

military. These are the ‘operational forces’, the best trained, re-trained, equipped and

youngest conscript army brigades and naval units integrated with the professional air

force. This research shows that whilst the military case for the current structure (the

mass conscript army) is questioned by military professionals even at the very highest

levels, it is still supported by a large majority of Finns and, as a result, also by most of

their elected representatives. Hence, the public discourse on defence policy, if not

wider security policy, remains premised on the modern world-view wherein the state

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needs to be ready to defend itself at any point102. This world-view is predominantly

that of Finnish society, not of the state. Indeed one policy-maker described Finnish

public opinion as very conservative and said that if the political class had been

responsive only to the public mood, Finland would have remained a neutral country as

opposed to having renounced neutrality in favour of cooperating on security matters

in both the EU and as a NATO partner (Salovaara interview 2001). Nevertheless,

because Finland is a democracy, and politicians cannot move too far beyond the

majority view of the society (see conscription chapter; Jaakonsaari interview 2008)

this world-view continues to frame state policy, setting some limitations. As the

interviews conducted for this study suggest, many policy elites are far more likely to

view the world through a more post-modern prism of the EU, and form security

policy with the ESDP and CFSP as the central referent points.

This is not to argue that the continuing prominence of a modern world-view amongst

the Finnish population has stopped all policy change. Finland is not Prime Minister

Vanhanen’s sleeping squirrel that “snuggles in its mossy bed; neither hound’s tooth,

nor hunter’s trap, ever reached here” (“Pääministeri…” 23.4.2004). Rather, this thesis

has attempted to demonstrate that the transnational nature of politics affects Finland

as anywhere else; that politics flow through the presumed “Great Divide” of the

national border and the meaning of domestic and international politics is not distinct.

The international environment impacts on Finland, changing both societal

expectations as well as state policy. But how that international world is understood,

and the changes to policy that it causes, are dependent on specific local (domestic)

conditions. As Clark writes: “the international structure is what it is, at discrete

historical moments, in consequence of the nature of the polities embedded within it”

(Clark 1999:25).

Neither does the modern world-view necessarily mean either passivity or a resistance

to change. In the post-Cold War era Finland joined the EU, a huge step away from its 102 One recent opinion piece in Helsingin Sanomat expressed this thinking exactly. The writers arguethat Finland’s will to defend itself is understood and respected by Russia and is therefore central to thegood relations between the two countries, whilst Sweden’s postmodern security policy confusesRussia: “Russia respects Sweden for its history as a great power, but the security policy implementedby Sweden is too modern for Russia’s way of thinking. The Finnish policy line is clear-cut for Russia:in an extreme situation our country will defend its existence with armed force” (Mäkelä and Smith2010).

208

former position as a neutral country. The public support for joining the EU, as

expressed in the referendum of 1994, could have been a result at least in part of that

modern world-view, if the vote to join was about securing Finnish identity. As Arter

argues, the referendum was ‘yes to the west rather than Maastricht’; a vote to

demonstrate Finland’s political identity as a western democracy, not a signal of great

enthusiasm for the federalist vision of a European super-state (Arter 1995:383-4).

Whilst certain business groups and their political supporters had a clear interest in

ensuring maximum access to European markets and therefore were strong proponents

of membership, wanting to integrate further into the globalizing world economy

through the EU single market (Väyrynen 1993:38), securing Finland’s position as a

‘normal’ European country was important for the much wider section of Finnish

society. The president at the time, Mauno Koivisto said: “the strongest reason for

seeking EC membership seemed to me to lie in the realm of security policy. The

economic reasons were secondary. However, this was not something we could say in

public or use as an argument” (Koivisto 1997:246). But another Finnish leader, Tarja

Halonen, at the time foreign minister, now president, justified EMU membership in

the same way: “our EU membership was dictated by security policy aspects, just like

the approaching monetary union. Everything which binds Finland closer to the

European core favours the country’s security” (quoted by Knudsen 1999:99). EU

membership could make sense for Finland when viewed through either the Hobbesian

or modern prism where it is seen in the mould of traditional alliance building to

counter-balance other powers, or in the Kantian, post-modern prism that places the

emphasis on the more overtly normative dimensions of European integration.

Finland became an active EU member immediately upon membership, introducing

two major initiatives relating to security: the 1996 Finnish-Swedish initiative on the

creation of EU crisis management capabilities (Arter 1996:618-9) and the Northern

Dimension in the latter half of the 1990s (Arter 2000:680-2). This activism showed

that Finland would be a security producer within the Union, not just a consumer.

Nevertheless, to domestic audiences these policies were marketed as bolstering

Finnish security whether that be strengthening national defence by improving the

military, or through improving relations with Russia. This strategy only works to a

certain degree: the tensions between creating security policy for a modern world-view

209

and a post-modern world-view are visible in all the case study chapters in this thesis.

The chapter on the ESS and the Finnish security policy white papers indicate that

there are only limited shared threat images between Finland and the EU (although

Finland is by no means exceptional amongst the member states in this respect). The

debate over the Ottawa treaty was a debate over the alternative merits of staying

within the EU mainstream versus the traditional model of Finnish military defence.

The enduring institution of conscription and strong support for it from the public

suggest the continuing legacy of the Cold War (or even Second World War), whilst

the changes made over the last decade to the military personnel system are the state’s

attempt at restructuring this institution to deal with post-modern security threats. Of

course, the danger is that in trying to make policy for dealing with two alternative

world-views, the result does not fully suit either. Tarja Cronberg (2006:322) considers

this when discussing what is likely to happen to the Finnish “will to defend”

(synonymous with the modern world-view) should the ESDP strengthen, due to more

cooperation at the post-modern level of the EU:

In this case the question is the extent to which an EU member state, even a

border country such as Finland, can differ in relation to European security

and defence policy. A stronger ESDP will put additional pressures on

conscription, on territorial defence and on the harmonization of threat

perceptions.

Further EU integration, particularly in military matters, will continue to cause debate

over what defence solutions Finland should opt for.

7.4 The negative legacy of success?

Accounting for this continuing tension between the Kantian and Hobbesian

worldviews is not easy. That there is not a shared view of the security environment, or

a single opinion on how to make policy to deal with that environment, argues against

the overly prescriptive positivism of, for example, neo-realism. Policy is not a

straightforward and shared response logically derived from viewing the external,

international environment; if it were, these tensions would not arise. A domestic

210

explanation alone is also not adequate. The international environment impacts

differently on various political or social groups within a nation-state as, for example,

as the Ottawa process demonstrated. The defence elites were reacting in part to

Russian military doctrine, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs officials were reacting to

the EU position and Finnish civil society extended the lobbying efforts of

international peace and humanitarian groups into the Finnish political arena. Domestic

politics is part of the international environment.

The evidence accumulated in this thesis suggests that, along with geographic

proximity to Russia, a particularly close bond between state and society accounts for

the continued appeal of the modern worldview in Finland. Like other nation-states,

Finland has nationalism. Nationalism is often a word with negative normative

assumptions connected to it such as xenophobia and chauvinism; particularly in post-

Second World War Europe. This type of nationalism is visible in Finland; for example

in the increasingly common sight of (normally) young men wearing the Finnish lion-

rampant on a necklace, or emblazoned on clothing. Most notably, the huge rise in

support for the populist right-wing True Finns party (Perussuomalaiset – PS), which

currently has gone from relative obscurity to vying with the SDP for being Finland’s

third most popular party in the upcoming 2011 general Elections. The party’s rapid

rise in popularity, including in June 2009 having had their first MEP elected, indicates

a significant nationalist sentiment within the county. But even the rise to prominence

of the True Finns – who are unashamedly nationalists – needs to be understood within

a broader context. The True Finns do not oppose the essentially social democratic

Finnish model; they are not libertarians or Thatcherites. Rather they stand against

changes they see as imposed on that model from the outside, be that by immigration

or a supranational EU. The welfare state is not opposed, but it is seen as a closed

entity, only available to those inside: the Finns. This is what Kuisma (2007:9) calls

“welfare state nationalism”.

As Lawler (1997:566) notes perceptively about Nordic Euro-scepticism:

“Scandinavian scepticism about European integration exhibited a significant, if

intellectually unfashionable, attachment to a positive understanding of the sovereign

state which a generic term such as nationalism cannot fully capture.” Kari Laitinen’s

211

idea of Finnish emancipatory nationalism is important in understanding Lawler’s

observation when applied to Finland (Laitinen 2006:50). The success of the Finnish

nation-state in providing both security and a great degree of equality to Finnish

citizens is what has created limitations to the state’s security policy options. The state

has successfully guaranteed security – both in terms of international security and

social security – to the Finnish people, and as a result there is a reticence from society

to alter the balance of the socio-political bargain between the state and society. The

status quo of what the state asks from its citizens (most centrally, conscription and the

taxation level needed to fund the welfare state) and what it provides (international

security though neutrality/non-alignment and a welfare state) remains a very attractive

bargain to many who – with much justification – see Finland as a prime example of a

successful nation state.

This requires another consideration of the division between state and society. As

noted in the introduction, there are some theoretical difficulties in drawing this line,

but it seems to be particularly problematic in Finland because the two are seen as

being so close (Joenniemi 2002:192). Indeed, according to a number of authors, the

same closeness between state and nation is the norm across the Nordic region (Lawler

1997:587; Hansen 2002:61). Because of the smallness and homogeneity of Finnish

society relative to most other European states, Finland’s strong democratic structures

and its success as a nation-state in the post-Cold War period, the state represents

society well. To a great degree, Finnish society finds the Finnish state to be its

legitimate representative103 as long it acts within the limits set by the current

understanding of the socio-political bargain between state and society. With security

policy this can be seen most obviously in the continuing debate at the elite level about

103 Arguably, the only exceptions to this are the small national minorities within Finnish society. TheSwedish speakers have their own political party that is centrally concerned with maintaining theconstitutional protections for the Swedish language. The Åland islanders continue to toy with the ideaof independence or union with Sweden, but for the most part seem content with their isolation from themain body politic of Finland and legal exemptions, including from EU law, such as various taxexemptions. The Sami people have their own parliament and work transnationally with the Sami of theother Nordic states, and again have specific protection of their language and culture in Finnish law.Finally, the Roma are perhaps the most marginalised of the traditional minorities, and who have aconflictual relationship with both the Finnish state and the Finnish nation, with “widespread prejudiceagainst them among the majority population” (Horn 2004). Nevertheless all these groups togetherconstitute less than a tenth of the population of Finland with the majority of that amount being theSwedish speakers.

212

joining NATO, a debate that seems to have made little progress in the past decade

because there is clearly little public support for joining.

7.5 Emancipatory nationalism and the limits of normative commitment

The closeness of the bond between state and society has one final and important

implication. If the limitations on security policy change are the most noticeable

external implications of this relationship, internally it can be seen in the difficulty in

accepting the transformation of domestic society; increasingly noticeable in the

concern over immigration, despite this still being small in comparison to other

European countries. Welfare state nationalism, as mentioned above, is a limitation on

the normative commitment to equality and security that is central to the Finnish and

Nordic model104. Those who are defined as being on the inside – part of Finnish

society – are deserving of protection by the state as they are party to the state-society

bargain. Security, both internally and externally, is central to that state-society

bargain, and therefore those who are seen as not being part of that contract are not

deserving of that security. This communitarianism has both an external dimension – a

reticence to be involved in the conflicts of others and therefore a popular scepticism

over Finnish involvement in interventions through peace enforcement operations

(Archer 2003:57-8, 66) – but also an internal dimension: a resistance to immigration

and to seeing immigrants become citizens. Finland has in comparison to the rest of the

EU very low levels of immigration, and its immigration policy remains restrictive

(Railo 2009:45-6), nevertheless it has still become a central point of political debate in

recent years (Laatikainen 2009, Archer 2009:4). Immigrants, or others who are

104 It should be noted that Bergman (2007) makes a strong alternative argument that Sweden hasconstructed its commitment to the social democratic model in a specifically cosmopolitan way, whichdoes involve externalising the domestic quest for social justice. She argues that this is seen traditionallyin the Swedish commitment to overseas development aid and other policies that show solidarity withthe developing world, including now the re-structuring of the Swedish military toward internationalcrisis management (ibid:90; see also conscription chapter of this thesis). Nevertheless, Bergman doesnote some welfare state nationalism in Sweden, but specifically argues that it is not problematic to thesame extent as in Denmark because of the different political traditions (ibid:91). Bergman (ibid:85)notes that Finland has a less deep-rooted social democratic tradition but still exhibits some the Swedishstyle internationalism, although the evidence collected for this thesis supports Joenniemi’s (2002:291)assertion that Finland’s Nordic internationalism was “based on strict instrumentalism which avoidedidealist stances as well as protests on controversial issues”. Finnish ‘Nordicity’ was primarily a tool toremain a sovereign entity, balanced East and West, and not a normative commitment beyond the state’sborders.

213

constructed as being in some way outsiders, are seen as not having contributed to the

creation of the nation/welfare-state as it is, and are therefore not deserving of its

protection. Welfare state chauvinism has been detected in other Nordic states (on

Denmark see Rydgren 2004:482; Lawler 2007:111 and on Norway see Neumann

2007:68). The rise in the polls of the True Finns party is the clearest evidence of the

same in Finland – particular when it has been shown that the True Finns have been

predominantly gaining votes from those who had previously supported the left (both

the Social Democrats and Left Alliance) and the Centre Party (“Timo Soini…” HSi

8.7.2009).

This is not to argue that Finland is a particularly racist or xenophobic country,

although there remains a casual racism of a country where immigration even on the

still relatively small levels remains a recent phenomenon (see Puuronen 2002). Rather

the success of the Finnish nation-state, particularly through the Cold War era where

prosperity increased for all and where Finland, like its Nordic neighbours, became a

model of social justice for the rest of the world, is built upon specific normative

commitments that are particularly limited to the nation-state. The close ties between

the Finnish nation and state has many advantages, allowing Finns to build an

advanced, wealthy and secure state – but in a world of increasing globalisation with

political and economic forces crossing national boundaries, this closeness also can

cause problems.

7.6 In conclusion

This thesis has examined how and why Finnish security policy has changed in the

post-Cold War era and, just as importantly, why it has not. Security policy is

concerned with ‘the world out there’, whether that be huge and not always friendly

neighbouring states, a rapidly changing global economy, spill-over from conflicts near

and far, the flow of people from their home countries to new countries, a changing

environment, and what role Finland should and can play in the unprecedented

transnational project that is the EU. Being a small country has always been an

important aspect of Finnish political identity, and attached to this self perception is a

214

sense that a small country always has to be realistic about the limits of its influence on

the world (Browning 2008:112, 175). Browning notes that President Paasikivi argued

in the 1950s that whilst the great powers are the subject of politics, small countries,

such as Finland, are the object of those politics (ibid.). This somewhat pessimistic

view might lead Finland to suspect that once again, these great global forces will

shape its future in ways over which it has little control, but the evidence of this

research suggests otherwise. Rather we have seen that “[e]mbedded domestic values,

the sediment of particular collective social histories, and specific state–society

complexes can produce a wide range of individual and collective responses to

exogenous pressures to integrate, homogenize and standardize, even when orthodox

economic or security discourse appears to present such developments as inescapable”

(Lawler 1997:587-8). The evidence supports Clark’s assertion that: “the ‘domestic’ is

what it is because it constitutes a part of a specific international structure. Likewise,

the international structure is what it is, at discrete historical moments, in consequence

of the nature of the polities embedded within it” (Clark 1999:25).

What the future holds for Finland and how its security policy might change is not

clear. The future direction of the EU will be central to shaping Finland itself, and

because of this it will also define Finnish security policy. Finland has navigated

through significant changes since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent

dissolution of the Soviet Union, but through all these changes, a strong identity of

what it is to be Finnish, even if that is often cast in terms of what is not Finnish, has

set the path of security policy. Finland has taken its place in an integrating Europe and

a globalising world with a strong sense of itself. This may be both a strength and

weakness in the future, for as Joenniemi (2002:209) writes: “A European Union of

nation-states – and perhaps even a development in a federalist direction – will be

acceptable from a Finnish point of view as long as there is space for the nation to

unfold. However, a European Union resting on a joint identity would be perceived as

quite problematic”. Finnish security policy can at times, and in certain respects,

appear to be rather backward looking, but this is because Finland maintains a strong

sense of itself; of its identity both as a nation and a state. And at least for the

foreseeable future this does not look likely to change.

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Appendix 1: interviewees, bibliography and other sources

Interviews:

In addition to those named below as interviewees, this work benefited greatly from

numerous discussions with Finnish, and also some non-Finnish, politicians, civil

servants, soldiers, academic researchers, police officers, civil society activists and,

simply, politically aware and historically knowledgeable friends of the writer.

Occasionally in the footnotes, I have mentioned where one person had made a

particularly useful point to me. None of these discussions could be deemed to be

formal interviews, but this thesis would be much poorer without them. Particularly my

position at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs has meant that daily I have

worked with some of the most insightful analysts of Finnish foreign and security

policy – and I owe a great debt to my friends and colleagues at UPI.

Interviewees are listed in the following way: title, name, role/institution at time of

interview, place of interview, date (current position as of April 2010 if different).

Mr. Matti Anttonen, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 5 December 2001, (now Finnish

Ambassador to Moscow).

Cpt. (N) Ernst R. Egelid, Norwegian Defence Attaché, interview, Helsinki, 18

January 2008.

Mr. Juha Eskelinen, Save the Children Finland, Helsinki, 12 November 2001 (now

director, Kalevi Sorsa Foundation).

Prof. Tuomas Forsberg, Helsinki University, Helsinki, 2 October 2008, Helsinki (now

Tampere University).

216

Pekka Haavisto, UNEP and former Finnish Minister of Environment; Helsinki 5 Oct.

2001 (now MP).

Mr. Axel Hagelstam, National Emergency Supply Agency, Helsinki, 29 January

2008, (now at Ministry of Defence).

Mrs. Liisa Jaakonsaari MP, 18 November 2008, Helsinki (now MEP).

Dr. Pauli Järvenpää, Director of Policy and Planning, Ministry of Defence, Helsinki,

20 November 2008.

Mr. Olli Kivinen, Helsingin Sanomat, Helsinki, 7 November 2002.

Dr. Kari Laitinen, Senior Researcher, Finnish Police College, Helsinki, 6 February

2008.

Cpt. Jarno Limnell PhD, National Defence University, Helsinki, 8 January 2008.

Ms. Laura Lodenius, information officer, The Finnish Peace Union; Helsinki, 28

November 2001.

Dr. Juha Martelius, Director of Research, Ministry of Defence, Helsinki, 10 March

2008.

Mr. Kari Möttalä, Special Adviser Department of Political Affairs, Ministry for

Foreign Affairs, Helsinki, 9 October 2001.

Prof. Arto Nokkala, Finnish National Defence University, Helsinki, 10 January 2008

Dr. Hanna Ojanen, Director of European Programme, Finnish Institute of

International Affairs, 2 December 2008, Helsinki (now Research Director, Swedish

Institute of International Affairs).

217

Dr. Risto Penttilä, Director, EVA, 13 November 2002 (now CEO, Finnish Central

Chamber of Commerce).

Maj. Jyri Raitasalo PhD, Department of Strategy, National Defence University,

Helsinki. 14 November 2008.

Dr. Tomas Ries, Dept. Strategic Studies, Finnish National Defence College, Helsinki,

6 November 2001 (now Senior Lecturer, Swedish National Defence College).

Prof. Alpo Russi, University of Lapland, Helsinki, 17 October 2001 (now Finnish

Ambassador to Switzerland).

Mr. Charly Salonius-Pasternak, Researcher – crisis management and peacekeeping,

Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Helsinki, 15 June 2008.

Col. Kari-Pekka Rannikko, Senior Staff Officer, Defence Policy Dept., Ministry of

Defence, Helsinki 4 March 2008.

Mr. Jukka Salovaara, Prime Minister’s Office, Helsinki, 26 November 2008.

Mr. Jukka Salovaara, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki, 9 November 2001.

Mrs. Pilvi-Sisko Vierros, Arms Control Unit – Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki

20 November 2001 (now Finnish Ambassador to Paris).

Minister Pär Stenbäck, Former President of the Finnish Red Cross, Helsinki, 13

September 2007.

Mr. Risto Volanen, State Secretary, Prime Minister’s Office 11 December 2008,

Helsinki.

218

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