Carlos Pérez-Desoy
Diplomat
For some weeks now there has been a buzzword in the international news sections of newspapers: Finlandisation. The Financial Times editorial on 10 February was headlined “Beware of comparing Ukraine to Finland” while the New York Times the previous day carried the headline: “Finns don’t want to Finlandise Ukraine (or anyone else)”. President Macron, on his recent visit to Moscow, said that “the Finlandisation of Ukraine is one of the options on the table”.
What exactly does Finlandisation consist of?
It is a concept born of a specific historical moment – the Cold War – and the inevitability of geopolitics, which in Finland’s case is marked by hundreds of kilometres of common border with the former USSR, which also controlled the Baltic republics and thus the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland. The word was apparently coined by the Austrian foreign minister in 1953 as a derogatory reference to Finland’s policy of neutrality, and later taken up by the very Atlanticist German Christian-Democratic politician Franz Josef Strauss to disqualify Ostpolitik, the policy of good neighbourliness with the USSR and its satellites promoted by Chancellor Willy Brandt. “Without missiles, the FRG would be like Finland”, Strauss said.
Paradoxically, just as there are Italian or Chinese restaurants all over the world, except in Italy and China, so too all over the world there is talk of “Finlandisation”… except in Finland, where it is called the Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine, named after two post-war presidents. For those who believe in the ancient doctrine that in the name lies the substance of things, this semantic duality already reveals the existence of a problem. The cornerstone of this policy of neutrality was based on taking into account the “special geopolitical situation of the country”. Translated: Finland – which since June 1941 had been fighting the Red Army alongside Nazi Germany – was to refrain from irritating Moscow out of “political realism”.
Finlandisation’ was embodied in the Finnish-Soviet Treaty of Assistance, Cooperation and Mutual Aid (in force from 1948 to 1992), which included a military assistance clause that was only invoked in October 1961, during the Missile Crisis, although it did not go beyond political consultations.
Finlandisation’ also had domestic implications. To begin with, it meant the exclusion of the most voted party – the Conservatives – from governing coalitions for twenty years. In addition, the Soviets maintained a naval base – Porkkala – 30 kilometres from Helsinki until 1956. There was “freedom of opinion, but with self-censorship”, so that the Finnish press avoided negative comments about the USSR and avoided dealing with sensitive issues such as the opinions of Soviet dissidents like Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn, or Soviet military interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan. The aim was to “prevent the dissemination of anti-Soviet ideas” in literature or film “so as not to endanger the country’s foreign relations” and so, although possession of “anti-Soviet” books was not forbidden, their printing and distribution was prevented. After the end of World War II, Moscow demanded the removal of 1,700 allegedly “anti-Soviet” books from the Finnish public library network. Bookshops were also given an index of banned books to prevent their sale.
For the same reason, the Finnish authorities banned the showing of films such as Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three (1961) and John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
Undoubtedly, “Finlandisation” entailed obstacles and self-censorship, but it is no less true that thanks to this policy Finland avoided the fate of the Eastern European countries, maintaining its democratic and capitalist system during the Cold War, without ever considering joining the Warsaw Pact, the anti-NATO military alliance led by Moscow.
Paradoxically, as “allies”, there was no “iron curtain” on the vast border shared by Finland and the USSR.
Helena Halme’s novel The Red King of Helsinki and the Finnish TV series Nyrrki – Shadow Lines in English – reflect the atmosphere of the time very well. A suffocating capitalist oasis in the midst of the Soviet glacis, with Soviet and American spies playing jazz. Incidentally, the red telephone line (actually a telex) which, from 1963 onwards, connected Washington with Moscow, passed through Finland.
But Finland, thanks to this policy of sui generis neutrality, was also the scene of détente between the two blocs, which reached its peak at the Helsinki Conference inaugurated in 1973 and culminated in the transcendental Helsinki Final Act, the starting point of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and of relevant agreements on issues such as human rights and disarmament.
After its official demise in 1992 with the end of the Finno-Soviet Treaty of Assistance, Cooperation and Mutual Aid and Helsinki’s subsequent accession to the EU, “Finlandisation” has become an important geostrategic concept, characterised, according to former Finnish President Urho Kekkonen, by “cooperation based on mutual trust between two states with different social systems”; although geopolitics textbooks define it more crudely as “the decision of a state not to inconvenience a more powerful neighbour in order to preserve its sovereignty”.
Probably the last vestige of the old “Finlandisation” is the fact that Finland is still not a full member of NATO today.
To properly characterise the current debate on Ukraine, it should be borne in mind that “Finlandisation” is an alternative of neutrality based on realism and geographical inevitability, and in view of the historical record, is not counterposed to idyllic scenarios – friendship pacts with Shangri-Lah or Happy Arcadia are simply not on the menu – but to unappetizing alternatives such as the Brezhnev doctrine of “limited sovereignty”, or the “Austrian-style neutrality”, including military occupation, that serves as the backdrop for Carol Reed’s “The Third Man”. History offers other equally unappetizing variants: buffer-state; client-state; vassal-state; puppet-state; protectorate or “sister republic”.
In any case, whatever the geopolitical pundits may say, it is clear that in international politics there is nothing better than having a good neighbour. Or the sea. As Chesterton said: “we make our friends, and we make our enemies, but neighbours are made by God our Lord”.
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