(LifeSiteNews) – In a week which saw former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s party lose in the national elections, Finland has formally joined NATO.
In a coup for the U.S.-led military alliance, the move sees Finland abandon its neutrality. Its membership, finalized on April 4 in a ceremony in Brussels, sees NATO move eastwards once more.
Since the assurances of the 1990s, when former Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev was told that NATO would not move “one inch eastwards,” the organization absorbed fifteen former Warsaw Pact nations. A process which began with East Germany, and paused with the accession of North Macedonia in 2020, NATO enlargement is once again taking place.
With the addition of Finland, NATO’s land border with Russia now extends to over 1,500 miles. Neighboring country Sweden – also formerly non-aligned – is in talks to join the organization, with the procedure for membership ongoing.
NATO is obviously strengthened by this move. Why would Finland take such a step? On closer inspection, Finland’s national sovereignty has been ended by a political popularity contest.
Political maneuvers
The Finnish Social Democratic Party was initially opposed to NATO membership. In January 2022, their leader (and former Finnish Prime Minister) Sanna Marin said
it was “very unlikely” her country would join NATO during her time in office.
The next month she announced a bid to join NATO, as her left-wing party saw its support melt away to the now victorious National Coalition.
The reason? The National Coalition was a pro-NATO party, which saw its support rise with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
By sheer coincidence
The polls showed nothing new in Finland in January 2022. A poll conducted by Helsingi Salomat – and reported by Finnish news site yle on January 20, 2022 – found only 28 percent of Finns supported joining NATO.
On January 18, Sanna Marin had stressed her strong, independent credentials by denying Finnish NATO membership was “very unlikely,” and that Finland “makes its own decisions” when it comes to foreign policy:
“Nobody can influence us, not the United States, not Russia, nor anyone else.”
Why would Sanna Marin say that? In a remarkable coincidence, Joe Biden had mentioned the issues the previous day. What is more, in so doing he confused the Prime Minister Sanna Marin with the Finnish President, Sauli Niinistö – with whom he had recently shared a telephone call related to Russia.
“I spoke with the Prime Minister of Finland. And, you know, we’re talking about concern on the part of Finland and Sweden about what Russia is doing. The last thing that Russia needs is Finland deciding to change its status.”
Within a few weeks the decades-long national security policy of Finland was abandoned, and the polls showed a dramatic rise in support for NATO membership – at over 60 percent. What are the odds?
A brief history of Finnish politics
The two major parties of the Finnish left and right were founded in 1918, following the victory of the anti-Russian Whites in the Finnish civil war. Finland had been a duchy of the Russian Empire since 1809, until its declaration of independence from Russia following its Bolshevik October Revolution in 1917.
With the fall of the Russian Tsar, civil war broke out in Finland, dividing the nation. Both factions included a broad spectrum of left and right opinion. The Reds were led by pro-Lenin, pro-Bolshevik revolutionaries, who were joined by the social democrats.
Their power base was the cities and towns in the South. The Whites were monarchists, farmers, and conservatives – with many young liberals in their diverse faction. Supported throughout the countryside, they prevailed in the war mainly due to the support of the German Kaiser.
The Imperial German state was determined to weaken Russia at the time, and together with its infamous funding of the Bolsheviks to destabilize Russia, it spent millions of marks on funding the pro-German Finnish nationalists within the Whites.
The civil war lasted 14 weeks, ending in May 1918. Finland remained a monarchist German protectorate, until the German defeat in World War One occasioned a bid for sovereignty.
On the March 3, 1919, the first free elections were held, and Finland declared its independence.
The divisions of the Finnish civil war would continue to shape the national political landscape into the next century.
Left and right – or Russia and NATO
It is a simplification, but a helpful one, to say that in Finnish politics the concepts of “left” and “right” are inflected by Russia and NATO to this day.
The Social Democratic Party disavowed Soviet communism after the civil war, but was nevertheless perceived as being broadly pro-Russian, and pro-socialism.
The National Coalition, however, has sought to make political capital out of this position, playing on the Finnish perception of “Russia=Left” – a strategy which delivered dividends following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It is unsurprising that anti-Russian sentiment can be marshaled by signs of international aggression, as the Finns themselves were invaded by the Soviets in November 1939. The Winter War, as it is now known, ended with the mighty Soviet Union fought to a bloody stalemate, having suffered appalling losses five times those of the Finns.
The Finnish developed a remarkably effective military strategy of retreat combined with the intentional division of superior forces. Called motti, it is based on the idea of chopping up firewood. There is an excellent video here on this divide-and-conquer method.
Modern Finland: A defense of independence
Finnish defense has a particular character derived in part from its development of tactics suited to its terrain, strength, and likely opponents. It has taken defense very seriously, and it is easy to understand why. To this day strategic points are still wired to be detonated in case of invasion, with Finland maintaining a trained military reserve of around 200,000.
The contemporary politics of Finland
“Conservative” Finns of the National Coalition are older, and share the liberal agenda of their European namesakes. There is a sort of atmosphere of celebration around the Finnish accession to NATO, it being perceived as a defeat for the “left”, and for people like Sanna Marin.
Marin herself lacks the substance to have made any serious consideration of the consequences for Finland of NATO membership. When asked about the solution to the war in Ukraine, she appeared to take the opportunity to perform a sort of mic-drop, simply stating “The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine” before laughing and striding away on her high heels.
As leader of the Social Democrats, she decided to pivot to a pro-NATO position to recover some of her lost support in the polls. This was a success – she won more votes than any other candidate, and her party did better in this election than in the last.
Nevertheless, the vote share of the conservatives and nationalists increased – to a combined 91 of 200 seats. The National Coalition squeaked into first place, followed by the nationalist True Finns, who appear to have captured much of the youth vote. As Politico reported:
The National Coalition Party (NCP) secured 48 of 200 parliamentary seats versus 43 for the Social Democrats, with the anti-immigration Finns Party securing second place with 46 seats.
A lesson from history
The former Finnish president and prime minister Urho Kekkonen spent many drunken days with the Soviet leader Krushchev, sharing jokes and saunas, whilst securing Finland’s precarious neutrality at the height of the Cold War.
Kekkonen was the longest serving Finnish leader, and he was a steadfast guarantor of Finland’s non-aligned independence.
This well defended and hard-won national sovereignty has diminished, due to the use of NATO membership as a political football.
Just as the Germans and Russians decided the fate of Finland in 1917, once more the nation is determined by powers beyond its own borders. The United States appears to have benefited from a serendipitous change in the national political mood, which happens to coincide with its strategic objectives.
A victory for NATO
This is undoubtedly a victory for NATO. It makes relevant an organization searching for a purpose, which it maintains is not to build an anti-Russian alliance. This is hard to gainsay with talk of securing perhaps the best defended nation in Europe, whose relations with Russia have been cordially managed for decades – until now.
NATO gains a strategic advantage in the Baltic region, not only bordering Russia but also being closer to the formerly indefensible NATO states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. This new member territory allows for a level of force projection against Russia which was previously impractical.
Naturally, this also alters the balance of power. In simple terms, it raises tensions, being a direct challenge to Russia on its northwestern border. This a claim likely to be dismissed by people like Victoria Nuland, and the execrable Robert Kagan, whose careers have destabilized and wrecked so much of the world in the name of peace, democracy, and security. The expansion of NATO is a neoconservative dream come true.
The view from Moscow
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Tuesday April 4, to what the Russians see as “yet another escalation,” saying, “NATO’s expansion is posing a threat to our security and the interests of the Russian Federation.”
In an article published by Russian news agency TASS, Peskov warned of consequences: “We will take countermeasures to ensure our own security both tactically and strategically.”
Whilst any mention of Russian countermeasures is often inflected with hysteria, it is worth noting that Peskov is talking about securing his own nation against the approach of a hostile military power.
He went on to dismiss comparisons between Finland and Ukraine, before demonstrating a view of history which may raise a few Finnish eyebrows:
According to him, the situation around Finland “is fundamentally different from the situation in Ukraine.” “Firstly, Finland was never anti-Russia, and we have had no disputes with Finland,” Peskov maintained.
“Things are quite the opposite with Ukraine, and the situation there is potentially more dangerous. This was why we needed to conduct the special military operation with the aim of attaining all the goals we set out,” he concluded.
The Russians clearly viewed the possession of Ukraine by NATO as an existential threat deserving the enormous risk and expense – in blood, treasure, and diplomacy – of mounting an invasion.
Regime change – with a twist
Sanne Marin got more support – not less – following this historic pivot. Such a calculated maneuver from a woman formerly most famous for lockdown nightclubbing, smooching a man other than her husband, grinding on another woman, and taking a drug test to “disprove” suspicions over her partying is difficult to accept.
She has now stepped down as leader of the Social Democrats, and will likely be offered an attractive sinecure by her internationalist regime friends. Finland will perhaps profit – in the short term – from reducing its military expenditure along the lines of other NATO members, a habit of U.S. reliance which has all but disarmed nations such as the U.K. and Germany.
It is a move which has enlarged NATO at the expense of stability, once again changing the strategic balance in Europe. Sadly, it seems this is a move towards, and not away from, escalation and confrontation. It is to be hoped the future leader of Finland has more to offer in substance than the Dancing Queen, to whom party politics was always about the bright lights.