By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies On April 4, 2023, Finland officially became the 31st member of the NATO military alliance. The 830-mile border between Finland and Russia is now by far the longest border between any NATO country and Russia, which otherwise
As a foreign national who has lived in Finland for the past 22 years, I subscribe almost entirely to the opinions you voice here.
Almost but not quite all. In particular, I disagree with this:- 'Of course, it was Russia's decision to invade Ukraine that drove Finland to abandon the "Helsinki Spirit" in favor of joining NATO'. I would say that that invasion only provided (fortuitously) the heaven-sent opportunity to obtain a prize for which certain sections of the political class had been vainly striving since the dissolution of the USSR - namely to convert a majority of the Finnish public into supporting a marriage with NATO.
One such section was the party, the National Coalition Party, of which Finland's incumbent president (Sauli Niinistö) had been a leading member, culminating in becoming Finance Minister immediately prior to becoming Speaker of the parliament. As president he played the leading role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy and so was chiefly instrumental in the decision to apply for NATO membership, thereby fulfilling a long-cherished aim of his former party the NCP.
There was no rationality whatsoever in Finland's abrupt switch from non-aligment to throwing in its lot with the USA: Niinistö himself acknowledged candidly that Russia had posed no threat to Finland. It was a pure wave of emotion.
Interesting Robert. But why do you think was it so easy to turn the people away from neutraliy--a position that has served Finland well for many decades? Are people really afraid of Russia?
I wish i knew the definitive answer to your - very good - question, but I don't. In fact I personally found the almost universal instantaneous revulsion among the Finns towards Russia and all things Russian absolutely baffling. I guess that shows how out of touch I must be despite living here!
One clue might be that the wave of emotion I referred-to followed hard - as I recall - on the "discovery" of the false-flag Bucha "massacre" and was, of course, precisely the kind of effect which those who staged that transparently-obvious fraudulent episode were aiming to produce. I suppose I'm suggesting that in part at least the Finns were simply dupes.
But undoubtedly it goes deeper than that: there must have been a predisposition on the part of many Finns to accept as axiomatic that "Russians" equates with "barbarians" - in other words an atavistic racist-tinged view which sees Russians as "asiatics". That has a long history, and by no means only in Finland.
It's also the case that among the older generation of Finns (of a bourgeois or rightward-inclined sort anyway) the greater part of Finland's period of neutrality (up until the eve of the USSR's dissolution) is looked-upon as shameful subservience to a despotic overlord. "Finlandisation" was, after all, coined in the West during the cold war and was hardly intended as a complimentary epithet - quite the opposite. Many Finns wanted to throw off the opprobrium as quickly as possible after the USSR imploded, so as to be seen to have unmistakably "rejoined" the West.
But those are entirely my own views and no doubt they'd be hotly contested by many Finns.
As a foreign national who has lived in Finland for the past 22 years, I subscribe almost entirely to the opinions you voice here.
Almost but not quite all. In particular, I disagree with this:- 'Of course, it was Russia's decision to invade Ukraine that drove Finland to abandon the "Helsinki Spirit" in favor of joining NATO'. I would say that that invasion only provided (fortuitously) the heaven-sent opportunity to obtain a prize for which certain sections of the political class had been vainly striving since the dissolution of the USSR - namely to convert a majority of the Finnish public into supporting a marriage with NATO.
One such section was the party, the National Coalition Party, of which Finland's incumbent president (Sauli Niinistö) had been a leading member, culminating in becoming Finance Minister immediately prior to becoming Speaker of the parliament. As president he played the leading role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy and so was chiefly instrumental in the decision to apply for NATO membership, thereby fulfilling a long-cherished aim of his former party the NCP.
There was no rationality whatsoever in Finland's abrupt switch from non-aligment to throwing in its lot with the USA: Niinistö himself acknowledged candidly that Russia had posed no threat to Finland. It was a pure wave of emotion.
Interesting Robert. But why do you think was it so easy to turn the people away from neutraliy--a position that has served Finland well for many decades? Are people really afraid of Russia?
I wish i knew the definitive answer to your - very good - question, but I don't. In fact I personally found the almost universal instantaneous revulsion among the Finns towards Russia and all things Russian absolutely baffling. I guess that shows how out of touch I must be despite living here!
One clue might be that the wave of emotion I referred-to followed hard - as I recall - on the "discovery" of the false-flag Bucha "massacre" and was, of course, precisely the kind of effect which those who staged that transparently-obvious fraudulent episode were aiming to produce. I suppose I'm suggesting that in part at least the Finns were simply dupes.
But undoubtedly it goes deeper than that: there must have been a predisposition on the part of many Finns to accept as axiomatic that "Russians" equates with "barbarians" - in other words an atavistic racist-tinged view which sees Russians as "asiatics". That has a long history, and by no means only in Finland.
It's also the case that among the older generation of Finns (of a bourgeois or rightward-inclined sort anyway) the greater part of Finland's period of neutrality (up until the eve of the USSR's dissolution) is looked-upon as shameful subservience to a despotic overlord. "Finlandisation" was, after all, coined in the West during the cold war and was hardly intended as a complimentary epithet - quite the opposite. Many Finns wanted to throw off the opprobrium as quickly as possible after the USSR imploded, so as to be seen to have unmistakably "rejoined" the West.
But those are entirely my own views and no doubt they'd be hotly contested by many Finns.