From Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation to the end of Finlandisation? Finland’s road to a NATO application

ABSTRACT

Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 triggered a process that saw Finland abandon its traditional policy of military non-alignment and, together with Sweden, submit an application for NATO membership. Finland’s history of Finlandisation came up routinely in the parliamentary debates on a NATO application and there was a broad consensus that NATO membership would mark the end of Finlandised Finland. Accordingly, this article has a dual aim. First, it seeks to chart the main lines of post-war Finnish foreign and security policy since the late 1960s using Finlandisation and post-Finlandisation as the organising concepts. Second, it explores why, ultimately, Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is suggested, engendered a psychosis of fear among the Finnish public, stirring collective memories of the loss of land, lives and livelihood at the hands of unprovoked Soviet aggression in the 1939–40 Winter War and the fear of history repeating itself at various tension points in Finno-Soviet relations thereafter. Strikingly, until 24 February a clear majority of politicians and the Finnish public opposed NATO membership.

KEYWORDS:

• Finlandisation
• post-Finlandisation
• NATO
• Putin
• Ukraine invasion

“In Finland Finlandization is spoken of simply as a Cold War phenomenon, but it did not end there”.

–Heidi Hautala, Finnish Green Party MEP¹

Introduction

Putin’s wholly unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 triggered a process that saw Finland, along with Sweden, abandon a traditional policy of military non-alignment and seek NATO membership.² Finland’s history of Finlandisation came up routinely in the internal parliamentary debate on a NATO application and, particularly on the political right, there was an insistence that membership of the 30-member defence alliance would mark the end of Finlandised Finland. In the 14-hour parliamentary debate on 12 May, Antti Häkkänen (National Coalition) referred dismissively to a wholesale Finnish dependency on the Soviet reaction during the Cold War period whilst the National Coalition chair, Petteri Orpo, used the term post-Finlandisation to describe what he saw in the post-Soviet era as the naïve belief in Finland that Russia would democratise and stabilise. Against this backdrop, the present article has two central objectives. The first is to chart the main lines of post-war Finnish security policy since the late 1960s using Finlandisation and the variant, post-Finlandisation as the organising concepts. The second is to analyse why, ultimately, Finland applied for NATO membership in May 2022. Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine starting three months earlier, it is suggested, engendered a psychosis of fear among the Finnish public, stirring collective memories of the loss of land, lives and livelihoods at the hands of unprovoked Soviet aggression in the 1939–40 Winter War and the fear of history repeating itself at various tension points in Finno-Soviet relations thereafter. Strikingly, before the invasion of Ukraine a substantial majority of both politicians and the general public were against Finnish membership of NATO.

Three basic premises underpin the article. First, it is assumed that Finlandisation is sui generis that is, a distinctively Finnish phenomenon, uniquely bound up with the specifics of post-Second World War Finnish history. Put another way, it cannot be transported to an entirely different context and assigned a prescriptive value as, for example, in references to “a/the Finnish model”. Indeed, when, writing in the Financial Times in February 2014, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former US National Security Adviser (NSA), presented the “Finnish model” as a formula for an independent and territorially undivided Ukraine in its relations with Russia,³ and Henry Kissinger, another former NSA, in a letter to the Washington Post, also drew on the Finnish experience to advise Ukraine carefully to avoid institutional hostility towards Russia,⁴ a number of veteran Finnish diplomats rightly pointed to the difficulties of duplicating the Finnish experience. They noted that, unlike Ukraine, Finnish political culture had been influenced by the seven centuries it spent as a part of the Swedish crown [the West] far more than its century as an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Czarist Russian empire between 1809 and 1917.⁵ In short, Finland’s history was very different from that of Ukraine.⁶

A second basic assumption in this piece is that, whilst the term has assumed a widely pejorative connotation, dating back to the West German right-wing critique of Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik – Axel Springer’s Die Welt and the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, in particular, railed against the Finlandisierung of West Germany – Finlandisation nonetheless remains a perfectly serviceable concept when analysing the history of post-war Finno-Soviet relations, albeit with the caveat that Soviet source material from the Brezhnev era remains out of reach.⁷

A third assumption is that, in line with the opening citation from the Green MEP, Heidi Hautala, Finlandisation did not end with the end of the Cold War. Put loosely, there were “withdrawal symptoms”, a legacy of Finlandisation, in the form of a type of post-Finlandisation. Old attitudes towards Russia died hard, particularly on the part of an older generation of politicians for whom a cautious and deferential culture, bordering on the uncritical persisted. A note on the use of our basic concepts is in order at this point.

Following Kansikas (2014) the term Finlandisation is understood in a dual sense: (i) Finlandisation as a pro-active large power [Soviet/Russian] strategy (Suomettaminen) designed to influence the politics of a small neighbouring state [Finland], restrict its room for manoeuvre and undermine its sovereignty; (ii) Finlandisation, as a form of preventative diplomacy (Suomettuminen) practised by a small state [Finland], concerned to anticipate an adverse reaction on the part of a large-power neighbour [Soviet Union/Russia] and in this way preserve its independence and sovereignty.⁸ By post-Finlandisation (jälkisuomettuminen) I mean the persistence of a diplomatic culture in the small state [Finland] heavily impregnated in its approaches towards the large-power neighbour [Russia], by the values of the Finlandised era.

The paper employs what might be termed a “total absorption method”. It draws on interviews with Finnish ministers, ministry officials and parliamentarians conducted over many years, analysis of legislative debates, newspaper material and opinion poll data pertaining to NATO membership; and two articles by the present author in European Security (on an embryonic NATO debate in the 1990s) and in the Journal of Common Market Studies (on Finnish membership of the European Union).

The article is organised into four sections. The first describes and analyses the primary features of the “dark age” of Finlandised Finland between 1968 – the start of Urho Kekkonen’s third term as Finnish president – and the 1980s, when Mauno Koivisto succeeded Kekkonen as head of state. The second focuses on post-Finlandised Finland from the disintegration of the Soviet Union into the “new Russia”. The third section concentrates on Putin’s imperialism, the threat of renewed Finlandisation and the security options available to Finland subsequent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 September 2022. The fourth section entitled “End of Finlandization?” deals with the decision to apply (along with Sweden) for NATO membership, the factors underpinning it and the attitude of the political elite and Finnish public towards NATO membership. The concluding discussion reflects on Finland’s road to NATO and the whys and the wherefores of the application.

The “Dark age” of Finlandised Finland

Tapio Juntunen (2017) has referred to the “golden age of Finlandization” – I would prefer to characterise it the “dark age of Finlandization” – as the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. He argues convincingly that whilst Finlandisation was linked to the shifting currents of East–West confrontation, it was, as importantly, anchored in the “intentional decisions made by the Finnish foreign policy elite” (Juntunen 2017, pp. 74–75). In other words, Finlandisation should be set in its historic setting rather than simply viewed as a wider theory of “adaptive acquiescence” (Mouritzen 1988) practised by a small state in the lee of a large, powerful neighbour. In Cold War Finland four features may be said to have conspired to shape the distinctive features of “dark age” Finlandisation: (i) political geography; (ii) treaty obligation; (iii) constitutional prescription; (iv) party system dynamics.

In terms of geography, the search for security was fashioned by the dictates of Finland’s position as a frontier state (reunavaltio) sharing a 1300-kilometre border with the Communist superpower. As the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin observed when a Finnish delegation visited Moscow in October 1939 on the eve of the Winter War: “We can do nothing about our geography. If you [Finns] were not our neighbours, we should not have all these difficulties” (Nykopp 1975, p. 56).

As to treaty obligation, the cornerstone of post-war Finnish foreign and security policy was the 1948 Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance Treaty (FCMA) with the Soviet Union and the first two articles in particular (Allison 1985). Article 1 of the FCMA stated that in the eventuality of Finland, or the Soviet Union through Finland, becoming the object of an armed attack by Germany or any state allied with the latter, Finland, true to its obligations as an independent state, would fight to repel the attack. If necessary this would be with the assistance of, or jointly with the Soviet Union. Article 2 stated that the High Contracting Parties shall confer with one another if it is established that the threat of an armed attack is present. At its core, therefore, Finlandisation represented a form of preventative diplomacy designed to obviate the military consultations set out in article 2 of the FCMA. Between 1954 and 1978 the Soviet Union sought regularly to bring the two armed forces together for joint military exercises (Salminen 1995).

In terms of constitutional prescription, the 1919 Finnish form of government was semi-presidential (Duverger 1980) in the sense that (i) article 33 assigned the direction of foreign relations -– the federative function – to a president indirectly elected by the people through an American-style electoral college system; (ii) no restrictions were placed on the number of 6-year terms the head of state could serve (Urho Kekkonen was president continuously between 1956 and 1981); (iii) the president was empowered to nominate governments and senior civil servants and was also commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In short, the 1919 Finnish constitution facilitated the personalised direction of Finno-Soviet relations and a type of “sauna summitry” between Kekkonen and the Kremlin leadership. This gave the long-serving Finnish president considerable licence to “interpret the Moscow mind” and direct domestic politics accordingly.

As to party system dynamics, the Cold War Finnish party system bore a resemblance to Sartori’s (2005) model of “extreme multipartism”, although it lacked the characteristics of polarised pluralism. In other words, there was a numerically significant radical left in the form of the Communist-dominated Finnish People’s Democratic League (SKDL), which was the largest parliamentary grouping following general elections in 1945 and 1958, and it languished in the opposition between 1948 and 1966. In the latter year, however, SKDL entered the so-called left-centre Popular Front government. Whilst a split in the party was exacerbated by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, the existence of a large Finnish Communist Party gave the Soviet Union the leverage to seek to influence the course of domestic Finnish politics.

Conversely, presidential concern to accommodate the Finnish Communists, and by extension Moscow, meant that in the 1970s no less than three non-socialist parties – the centre-right National Coalition (Junnila 1980), the populist Finnish Rural Party (Vennamo 1989) and the religious-niche Finnish Christian League (Almgren 1999) – found themselves “offside” (paitsiossa): they were cast as pariah parties for “general reasons” (yleiset syyt) in the coded parlance of Finlandised Finland (Virolainen 1982). “General reasons” was the euphemism for unacceptable “in high places”. Finlandisation delimited de facto democratic competition for office, which was restricted to parties approved by Moscow and/or president Kekkonen.

The Soviets, in turn, sought to apply indirect pressure in an attempt to influence Finnish domestic politics by meeting with the political parties and cultivating a network of Finnish “informers” (kotiryssät) – politicians, diplomats and business leaders – who would be fed informally with the Soviet view. The Soviet confidants would then report their conversations with the two leading figures in the Soviet embassy in Tehtaankatu in Helsinki – the ambassador Vladimir Stepanov and the “embassy consul” Viktor Vladimirov – back to Kekkonen. Equally, these two did not always speak with one voice. Following the 1979 general election, for example, at which the National Coalition was excluded from office despite polling its [to then] best-ever result, Vladimirov it seems would have accepted its participation in government (or at least ministers with a known National Coalition background), whereas Stepanov was probably the author of a pre-election Pravda article which came out strongly against the National Coalition (Korhonen 2015, p. 191).

A by-product of Finlandisation was an oppressive intellectual climate in which career-concerned academics and journalists hesitated to “call a spade a spade”. At one level Finlandisation as a form of preventative diplomacy involved a necessary element of self-censorship. In Salminen’s (1996) terms, passive self-censorship entailed the avoidance of criticism of Russia and the other socialist bloc countries out of a genuine concern about the risks to Finland’s Ostpolitik, the fear of Soviet reprisals and even Soviet intervention. Indeed, the 1947 Peace Treaty expressly proscribed anti-Soviet propaganda whilst in April 1948 changes to the criminal law rendered Finnish journalists liable to two years imprisonment for writing slanderous material about a foreign state [the USSR] should the president choose to press charges (Salminen 1996, p. 33). The essence of passive self-censorship was nicely captured by the long-serving National Coalition MP Ben Zyskowicz, a parliamentarian continuously since 1979: “it was necessary to deny the truth”.⁹

Active self-censorship, in contrast, involved deliberate and tactical self-regulation emanating from considerations of political expediency (Salminen 1996, p. 21). Nevakivi (1996) has contended that this type of active self-censorship spawned the only distinctively Finnish feature of Finlandisation, namely a “decaying elite culture”. The diplomat and journalist Max Jakobson was unequivocal that the 1970s were – in the words of the Finnish Communist Party leader Aarne Saarinen – the “new danger years”, not because of an outside threat but from “internal submission, compliance and surrender”.¹⁰ The term “danger years” (vaaran vuodet) was initially used to characterise the 1944–1948 period when the danger of a Czechoslovak-style Communist coup in Finland was felt to be very real.

Summing up, during the dark age of Finlandisation from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, seeking to distinguish between foreign and domestic policy was akin to trying to draw a line on water (Jakobson 1981) – it simply could not be done. Soviet pressure, amounting at times to a Soviet veto, contravened article 6 of the FCMA treaty in which both states pledged themselves to non-interference in the internal affairs (decision-making) of the other state. This was most clearly evident in the so-called Night Frost crisis in the autumn of 1958 when Soviet disapproval led to the collapse of a coalition government that included the centre-right National Coalition and “patriotic”, right-wing Social Democrats but excluded the Communist-dominated SKDL, the largest parliamentary group following the general election earlier in the year. Despite Kekkonen’s best efforts, moreover, Moscow ruled out Finnish participation in the Nordic Economic Community (Nordek) project in March 1970 and accepted Finland’s free-trade agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) only on the condition that the long-serving president remained in office as personal collateral. This involved the enactment of an Exceptional Law (poikkeuslaki), temporarily setting aside the constitution, which enabled the Eduskunta to extend Kekkonen’s term of office by four years without recourse to the electorate (Junnila 1980).

In response to an external perception of Finland as a Finlandised state, and as a code word signalling to the West a desire to be seen to be independent, Finland professed a policy of neutrality. It drew, however tenuously, on the preamble to the FCMA which recognised Finland’s desire to remain “outside antagonistic great power interests”. Unlike Austria, Cold War Finnish neutrality was not based on legal prescription; unlike Sweden, it was not steeped in historical tradition; and given the defensive commitment built into article 2 of the FCMA it lacked resonance and the Soviets never really recognised it (Suomi 1996). Nonetheless, it created some limited room for manoeuvre between the “antagonistic great power interests” and, starting in 1969 Helsinki hosted rounds of the US-USSR Strategic Arms Limitation (SALT) Talks and in 1975 staged the closing Conference on European Security and Co-operation in Europe. On the 30th anniversary of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty Kekkonen went so far as publicly to claim that “we work from the premise that Finlandization means political compromise with the Soviet Union and from that viewpoint our entire post-war foreign policy has been Finlandized policy. We are satisfied with the results” (Salminen 1996, p. 162).

Compromise with the Soviet Union came at a price. Politicians competed for the ear of, and favours from Moscow whilst individuals and political parties were deemed “untrustworthy in foreign policy terms” (ulkopoliittisesti epöluotettava) and sidelined. The “Moscow card” could be played to make or break political careers and to facilitate, or when necessary, complicate the task of government-building. Yet whilst Finlandisation was an insidious political culture that permeated society as a whole (Forsberg and Pesu 2016, p. 480), and there were widespread celebrations across Finland in 1970 to mark the centenary of Lenin’s birth, by no means all Finns accepted the official narrative of fraternal Finno-Soviet relations. Some of the support for the Finnish Rural Party under Veikko Vennamo at the “earthquake” general election in 1970 doubtless stemmed from the perception that he was covertly pro-Western in orientation – and, moreover, detested Kekkonen (Vennamo 1989). In contrast, a young general of radicals, appalled by Vietnam and US campus unrest, were “true friends” of the Soviet Union.

Post-Finlandised Finland, 1991–2021

The term post-Finlandisation (jälkisuomettuminen) may well have been coined by the National Coalition chair Petteri Orpo speaking at a party council meeting in mid-May 2022. Orpo stated

for the last 30 years Finland has clearly been part of the West as an EU member-state and through co-operation with NATO in the Partnership for Peace (PFP) programme. But at times we have been too naïve in reading Russia’s intentions.¹¹

Orpo did not go into specifics but it may reasonably be assumed that he had at least two things in mind – Finland’s failure to take the Russian threat seriously enough, especially after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Finland’s failure to pursue its national interests robustly enough.¹² In any event, the suggestion in this section is that the term post-Finlandisation could be used to capture a diffuse critique of Finland’s management of its Ostpolitik in the run-up to, and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The case for post-Finlandised Finnish foreign policy might be made as follows.

1. The persistence of a Cold War mentality, and the continued pursuit of Kekkonen-style preventative diplomacy, in Finland’s Baltic policy in the early 1990s.

2. A naïve belief in the prospects for successful democratisation and respect for human rights in the Russian Federation.

3. A reluctance to read and react to the signs of authoritarianism in the Russian Federation and the resurgence of post-imperialist aggression in Putin’s foreign policy.

4. An “official foreign policy” in EU Finland of military non-alignment coupled with a credible national defence that, in the manner of “dark age” Finlandisation, was not to be questioned.

Finland’s Baltic policy

At a press conference on 10 January 1991 the Finnish president Mauno Koivisto reported to journalists (Koivisto 1997, p. 177) :

The Baltic states have recently pressed us to take a stance on the matter of their independence. We are not of course going to interfere in internal Soviet matters. Finland has de facto recognised the Baltic countries as joined to the Soviet Union and we of course are committed to respecting everything that is agreed internationally. There is also the danger that any form of assistance, including economic aid, would be interpreted as a political statement against the Soviet Union. That is not in Finland’s interests.¹³

The situation in Lithuania was tense and fluid. In December 1989 the Lithuanian Communist Party left the CPSU whilst at the February 1990 general election the Popular Front won a resounding victory and declared Lithuanian independence by 124 votes to 0. On 13 January 1991, special forces of the Soviet Interior ministry, supported by tanks and automatic weapons, occupied the radio and television centre in Vilnius and 14 Lithuanians died and 48 were injured in seeking to prevent them from doing so. The military declared a state of war in Lithuania and a night curfew, which the Lithuanian government proceeded to repeal.

Koivisto, who had earlier declared publicly that he had not seen evidence of the danger of military conflict in the Baltics, maintained his strategic policy of non-commitment and concern not to antagonise the Kremlin.

The best way for the Baltic situation to be dealt with is in the context of the CSCE (Conference for Co-operation and Security in Europe) process in which internal matters affecting the participating states could be taken up under agreed rules. In this case, it is an internal Soviet matter. (Koivisto 1997, p. 182)

Koivisto’s reluctance to get involved was in contrast to the Swedish foreign minister who sent his Soviet counterpart a personal letter expressing regret over events in Lithuania. It was also out of line with much of Finnish public opinion and there were demonstrations in Helsinki in support of the Baltics and demanding Koivisto’s resignation.¹⁴ Even the newly-formed, post-communist Left Alliance (VAS) in Finland was quick to dissociate from the Kremlin and was critical of Soviet action in the Baltics. Its chair, Claes Andersson subsequently received a letter from Koivisto reprimanding him and his party for interfering in an internal Soviet matter.¹⁵ Comments from Estonia made it clear that Koivisto’s stance was viewed as Finlandised. Indeed, the Finnish Green Party leader recalled how on a trip to Tallinn there had been extensive criticism of Koivisto and the damage he had done to the Estonian cause. She added that in the circumstances “it was difficult to be a Finn in the eyes of the outside world”.¹⁶

Misreading Russian democracy

There was a “honeymoon period” of democratic promise in Russia, which joined the G8 and the Council of Europe and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. Elections were held to the Russian Duma, although the nascent party system was both highly fragmented and highly polarised. No less than 13 (proto-) parties were represented in the 450-seat parliament following the 1993 Russian general election and they included the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s (hopelessly misnamed) Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, which polled 23 per cent and Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party which, with 12.4 per cent of the vote, showed signs of revival. Zhirinovsky’s claim that Finnish independence in 1917 had been illegal, and his demand for a revision of the Soviet Union’s “near abroad” to include Finland (and Poland), gave him the nickname of “Finland gobbler” (Suomi syöjä). It is not clear how seriously Zhirinovsky was taken in Finland (Koivisto 1997, p. 257) but on the wider point of the proliferation of embryonic parties, Max Jakobson displayed real prescience when writing early in 1996 that “in Russia today democrats argue among themselves and this creates the paradoxical situation in which the staging of democratic elections provides the enemies of democracy with the opportunity to gain power”.¹⁷ Indeed, the second war in Chechnya in 1999, initiated by Vladimir Putin, enhanced his personal popularity, prompting a shift towards authoritarian rule and the beginning of the end of parliamentary democracy in Russia.

Much of the Finnish political elite – ministers and party leaders – did not, or did not want to see things as they really were or then they preferred to keep quiet. In contrast, the Green Party politician Heidi Hautala pulled no punches in a 3-minute speech at a festive sitting of the Eduskunta in early June 2006 to mark the centenary of the Finnish parliament. Hautala began by noting that the Eduskunta and Russian Duma had common origins in Czar Nicholas 11’s October Manifesto in 1905 but she proceeded to suggest that one-hundred years later the Duma had been eviscerated as an institution of representative democracy and reduced to its pre-1905 status vis-ä-vis the all-powerful Czar. The deputy Duma Speaker, who was in the visitors’ gallery, was outraged; several Finnish MPs remonstrated that the comparison, implicit in Hautala’s remarks, between Putin and an omnipotent Czar, was inappropriate and inaccurate; and in an interview later the same day, the Eduskunta Speaker Paavo Lipponen condemned Hautala’s remarks as “boorish and baseless and unbecoming [of a politician] in a civilised state”. Her response to an incandescent Lipponen suggested she had few regrets: “There is always the risk that in parliament political opinions will be expressed”.¹⁸

The same year as Hautala’s controversial speech, the activist and journalist Anna Politkovskaja was murdered, the former KGB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko was poisoned, and the right of association was curtailed. Democratic opposition in Russia was finally eliminated during Putin’s third presidential term beginning in 2012 which also saw the murder of Boris Nemtsov in 2015. Yet as Hautala has noted, it was a measure of the post-Finlandised elite culture in Finland that, with only very few exceptions, senior politicians would have nothing to do with the democratic opposition in Russia.¹⁹

Finlandising the Russian security risk

In a controversial speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington in the autumn of 2007, the Finnish defence minister, Jyri Häkämies (National Coalition) stated

whilst it would be foolish and mistaken to conclude that the new Russia will threaten Finland’s security, those who at the end of the Cold War were eager to proclaim that the era of geo-politics in Northern Europe was over were just plain wrong. Geopolitics is back and back with a vengeance. (Häkämies 2007)

Häkämies asserted that Russia viewed military force as a staple element in the conduct of international relations and he observed a concerted programme of strengthening Russia’s military capability. He saw evidence of the renewed strategic importance of the Kola peninsula and the re-appearance of Russian bombers in the seas around Iceland and northern Scotland. Häkämies concluded that Finland’s three foremost security challenges were “Russia, Russia and Russia” (Häkämies 2007).

The speech caused a stir. President Tarja Halonen noted that ministers when abroad are representing Finland and it was to be hoped that impressions out of step with Finland’s agreed position would not be created. Both Halonen and prime minister Matti Vanhanen expressed concern about the tone of Häkämies’ rhetoric and insisted he was expressing a personal view. The former foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja dismissed the speech as lacking in judgement, arguing that it was one-sided and delivered in exactly the wrong place. “How would it feel if a Finnish minister visited Moscow and warned the audience of the security risks posed by the United States?”²⁰ Seven years later, even after the Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine, the Eduskunta Speaker Eero Heinäluoma held that Häkämies’ 2007 speech was ill-considered and contrary to Finland’s best interests, arguing that “Finland’s policy is to maintain the best possible relations with our neighbour Russia, notwithstanding our differences”. Häkämies’ response to Heinäluoma and the wider criticism of his Washington speech was that it represented evidence of Finlandisation and the [dark-age] mentality of the 1970s and 1980s.²¹

Further evidence of the Finnish political elite’s reluctance to accept the reality of Häkämies’ thesis, that geopolitics was back and that Russia constituted the foremost threat to Finland’s security policy, may be found in the way right up to Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022 researchers in the parliament-linked Finnish Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) were not expected to present Russia in too negative a light. The FPI director has revealed how attempts to restrict criticism of Russia contributed to de facto self-censorship, with researchers concerned about the possible loss of funding should they call a spade a spade. An FPI investigation in 2016, which correctly anticipated Russia’s geo-political threat and concomitant action to reclaim its lost sphere of influence, led to controversy and claims of baseless scaremongering from Finnish politicians. An FPI report on the Russian invasion of Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 went unpublished when the word “invasion” (hyökkäys) was felt to be too strong and the authors refused to remove it.²²

An “official foreign policy” that brooked no alternatives

Finland’s application for EU membership in March 1992, submitted only months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, coincided with a slide into economic recession. Between 1990 and 1993 the Finnish economy shrank by 15 per cent – more than any OECD member-state since 1945 – and unemployment, which at its peak reached 23 per cent, was surpassed only in Spain among the EU countries. However, although EU application was “sold” in large part as an answer to these economic difficulties, its primary, though publicly unstated, rationale was the perceived security value of membership (Arter 1995). So much is clear from Koivisto’s (1995) volume Historian tekijät (History-makers) in which he noted his belief that EU accession would in its own right improve Finland’s security position without any military commitments and that the EU would not remain indifferent to the security position of a member-state, notwithstanding their different defence commitments. In December 1993, even before the EU membership referendum the following year, Finland signed up to the common foreign and security policy outlined in the Maastricht treaty. In May 1994 Finland also joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme. Equally, as late as 26 November 1993 the outgoing president Koivisto, in a speech to the Paasikivi society, held that neutrality was still viable, albeit now the “core of neutrality” which soon became Finland’s post-Cold War security policy orthodoxy, rendered liturgically as military non-alignment and a credible national defence (MNA-CND). Indeed, when in an interview in the newspaper Vasabladet in the run-up to the 1995 general election the Russian ambassador, Juri Derjabin, warned Finland not to join NATO the new, post-election prime minister Paavo Lipponen intoned the MNA-CND formula. He also noted, when bilateral talks between NATO and individual post-communist states began in February 1996 on the question of enlargement, that Finnish participation in the IFOR peacekeeping operation in Bosnia would not be a stepping stone to Finnish membership in NATO (Arter 1996, p. 621).

NATO was in any event unpopular with Finnish public opinion. In June 1996, for example, 70 per cent of Finns opposed NATO membership. The timing of this opinion poll was instructive since the previous month in a speech to the Finnish Defence Association – exceptionally and controversially published in full in Helsingin Sanomat – Max Jakobson set out a future European security scenario that would oblige Finland to choose between NATO and a “grey zone” of isolation. He made at least four main points. First, the EU would not, in the foreseeable future, become an independent, credible defence alliance and US contributions to European security would continue to be crucial. NATO would not only maintain but consolidate its position as the pre-eminent security policy provider in continental Europe. Second, Finland was the only EU member-state bordering Russia and its exposed geo-political location was not sufficiently understood in the West. Third, NATO would expand to incorporate the post-communist states of central and eastern Europe over time. Finally, Jakobson held that Finland should consider the NATO option, not because of a threat from Russia, but because remaining outside an enlarged NATO would leave Finland in a grey zone without influence in European security policy decision-making.²³

There was praise for the analysis and some support for Jakobson’s views in the letters to the editor.²⁴ But what was striking, from president Martti Ahtisaari to the party leaders, was the parroting of MNA-CND as the official foreign policy and the suggestion that the embryonic NATO debate was promoting the wrong impression of Finland abroad.²⁵ There was a reluctance to debate alternatives that smacked of the self-censorship of the Kekkonen era. As the former editor of Helsingin Sanomat, Simopekka Nortamo, put it in a stinging critique of the political elite: “It is time to see, and present NATO without the demonic Dracula mask in which Soviet propaganda has been remarkably successful in presenting it to naïve Finns”.²⁶

Putin and renewed Finlandisation

For the small minority of NATO advocates in Finland, opportunities to join the defence alliance had been missed. In 1999 when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic acceded to NATO, and Russia under Yeltsin was weak, only the Young Finn Party (an offshoot of the centre-right National Coalition) and Risto E.J. Penttilä, its leader, in particular, came out in favour of joining. The following year the election of a new Finnish president, Tarja Halonen, who was opposed to NATO, and a new Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was opposed to Finnish membership of NATO, complicated matters for NATO proponents. Russian diplomats made it clear that as far as Finland was concerned, their most important objective was to prevent NATO expansion to its border.²⁷ True, in 2002 the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari (1994-2000), announced he was in favour of joining NATO and two years later, Russia could do/did nothing to prevent the three states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from joining. But the Finnish public struggled to accept the Alliance’s use of military force (78 days of NATO bombing) to compel Serbia to withdraw its troops from Kosovo, despite the war crimes Serbia committed there. In 2008 the foreign minister, Alexander Stubb, proposed NATO membership shortly after Russia attacked Georgia but public opinion remained unmoved. In 2011 the six-party coalition led by Jyrki Katainen (National Coalition) included an option to apply for NATO membership in its programme but did not proceed further with it.

Russia has been characterised as Finland’s “unpredictable neighbour” (Nyberg 2016) and the year after Putin’s invasion of Crimea, Russia, in the autumn of 2015, suddenly allowed third-country nationals without proper visas to cross the border into Finland and Norway. An independent expert report in April 2016 entitled “The Effects of Finland’s Possible NATO Membership”, which was commissioned by the foreign ministry, concluded “the unexpected and unprovoked breach of the border regime … is an example of the Russian propensity to create a problem, then leverage it and offer to manage it without necessarily solving it” (Nyberg 2016). Against this backdrop it was not surprising that Putin’s special “military operation” in Ukraine, beginning on 24 February 2022, fuelled fear among ordinary citizens that Russian imperialism would see an intensification of efforts to place Finland firmly within the Russian sphere of influence – that is, renewed Finlandisation.

Four days after the invasion of Ukraine, a poll commissioned by the state broadcasting company YLE showed 53 per cent of Finns in favour of NATO membership and 28 per cent against – the first time ever there had been a pro-NATO majority – whilst over the course of Spring 2022 two civic initiatives (kansalaisaloite) collected the necessary (50,000) signatures in support of a NATO application and were lodged with the Eduskunta.²⁸ On the same day as the pro-NATO opinion poll (28 February), the Finnish government agreed unanimously to supply weapons to Ukraine, whilst on 13 April it presented parliament with its foreign and security policy report (hallituksen selonteko) and the parliamentary committees began working on it.

The report did not expressly favour an application for NATO membership but it was difficult not to read between the lines. Subsequent to the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Finland had sought to stabilise relations with Russia by not seeking NATO membership – at a time when, as noted, first the Visegrad states and then the Baltic states had done so – whilst being closely tied to the West through NATO’s Partnership for Peace in 1994 and membership of the European Union the following year. The status quo, however, no longer appeared tenable, whilst the alternatives appeared limited.

There was broad cross-party consensus that, minimally, conscription should be retained as part of a strong national defence capacity. Finland’s armed forces were strong and fully NATO-compatible. Indeed, within six months of the collapse of the Soviet Union, 64 Hornet fighter jets had been ordered from the United States. One option discussed was increased military co-operation with Sweden in the form of a defence alliance and whilst this option had its proponents there were serious doubts about whether the joint capability would be sufficient to deter Russian aggression.²⁹

Few believed that the EU’s defence dimension would develop into a credible military option, not least because 21 of the EU states were also part of the 30-strong NATO. In any event, whilst Finland had signed up to the 1993 Maastricht Treaty unconditionally – that is, including the commitment to a common foreign and security policy possibly leading to a common defence – the Finnish government in 1995 was at pains to ensure that this did not compromise “the core of neutrality” or military non-alignment. The Lipponen 1 coalition in 1995 noted that in the existing conditions – an oblique reference to the uncertain developments in Russia – “the development of the EU’s defence dimension meant strengthening its crisis management and peacekeeping capability. In other words, a distinction was drawn between co-operation in military crisis management and a commitment to collective defence”.

Since a defence alliance with Sweden was not deemed sufficient and the EU was not a defence alliance in a meaningful sense, Finland appeared to have no realistic alternative but to take up the NATO option. As the VAS social affairs and health minister, Hanna Sarkkinen, a recent convert to NATO membership observed, a decision not to join NATO would question the credibility and strategic significance of the NATO option built into government programmes since 2011.³⁰

On 11 May 2022 British prime minister Boris Johnson paid a one day visit to Sweden and Finland and signed a mutual defence declaration with both countries. This was the first time an outside state had officially undertaken to provide security during a possible NATO application process. At the press conference concluding the signing of the joint declaration, Finnish president Sauli Niinistö was asked about Putin’s reaction to Finland’s possible NATO membership. In deliberate English, measuring his words carefully, Niinistö responded that (i) Russia had previously maintained that Finnish and Swedish military non-alignment served as a stabilising force in the Baltic region. However, (ii) at the end of 2021 Russia announced that Finland and Sweden could not be allowed to join NATO; NATO should not accept new members. Niinistö continued that (iii) Finland and Sweden had been non-aligned of their own volition but Russia’s announcement made it clear that “we do not have the right of self-determination in the matter and this constituted a massive change, which prompted a review of our security situation”. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February compounded matters by showing it was willing to invade a neighbouring state. Addressing the international media, Niinistö concluded: “You ask about Putin’s reaction to a possible Finnish application for NATO membership. My answer is You [Putin] caused this. Look in the mirror”.³¹

The morning after the Johnson visit, Niinistö and prime minister, Sanna Marin (Social Democrat) issued a joint declaration that “Finland should apply for NATO membership at the earliest possible opportunity”. Throughout, however, Niinistö had emphasised the importance of parliamentary consultation and backing and on 13 May the Eduskunta began to debate the government’s foreign and security policy report albeit knowing that its task was in practice to approve or disapprove of Finland’s NATO application.

An end to Finlandisation?

The NATO debate in the Eduskunta lasted over 14 hours and there were 212 speeches with a 5-minute limit on each. The debate, which the author followed live, threw up few surprises. Members pointed to the value of the collective security provided by article 5 of the 1949 NATO treaty and the importance of Finland not taking the risk of becoming isolated. Several MPs cited the infantry general Adolf Ehrnroth on the lessons of the 1939–1940 Winter War – “never again alone” (ei koskaan enää yksin). The value of the principle of self-determination within NATO was emphasised; it was stressed that Finnish membership of NATO would not be directed against anybody and that Finland belonged to the West and did not fall within the Russian sphere of influence. It was also pointed out that Finland had been offered military assistance during the so-called grey zone when a Finnish application was being processed.

The Finns Party’s Jani Mäkelä, from the border town of Lappeenranta, asserted that Russians never change and that Finland should have joined NATO 30 years ago. Most contributions, however, were cautious and it was striking how many MPs revealed that they had been against NATO membership until 24 February. Several would have wanted more discussion of the costs and benefits of membership. The Green Party MP Heli Järvinen was incensed that in an editorial in Helsingin Sanomat those parliamentarians, such as herself, who had not indicated a preference for or against NATO membership were accused of dishonesty towards voters and that, she noted, was the day before the foreign affairs committee’s response to the government’s report had come before the plenary. Järvinen was concerned that NATO membership would involve billions of extra spending and she wanted to know where the cuts would come – “on pensions, the education budget or what?” Järvinen ultimately voted in favour of NATO membership.³²

It was striking that, in contrast to Sweden, where the Greens and Left Party opposed NATO membership, not a single Finnish party did so. For the Left Alliance (VAS), a member of the ruling coalition, to be sure, not taking up the NATO option had been a so-called government question – a matter of principle and a condition of remaining in office. However, at a joint meeting of the VAS party council and parliamentary group on 7 May 2022, a strong majority of 52–10 was recorded in favour of remaining in government. Typically, the VAS party chair and minister for education, Li Andersson, accepted NATO membership – albeit the conditional Norwegian format of no bases/troops in peacetime – whilst recognising the risks. She regretted the media bias in favour of membership and the way opponents were regarded as unpatriotic and Russia-friendly.³³

Opposition to a NATO application came from individuals in VAS, not the party as a whole. The arguments they used against membership can be summarised in a number of main points. (i) The process was being rushed, there was too little debate and panic decisions should be avoided. There was a need for a referendum on the issue. Finns had a right to have a say and, according to Veronika Honkasalo (VAS), women under 24 years were particularly critical of NATO. (ii) NATO membership would increase regional tensions between Finland and Russia. (iii) Finland should not be led by superpowers [the United States] and would be best served by remaining outside of superpower politics. (iv) NATO is not a peace movement and Finland should not be associated with Turkey [a NATO member] in view of its record on human rights. (v) Finland should follow the example of Norway and Denmark and reject the stationing of military bases and nuclear weapons on its soil in peacetime. (vi) “After Ukraine Russia will not be invading anywhere else soon” (Anna Kontula VAS).³⁴ vii) NATO will not necessarily increase Finland’s security; rather, it might increase the number of hostile states.

At the end of the debate on the government’s foreign and security policy report, a motion moved by Markus Mustajärvi (VAS) not to seek to join NATO was defeated by 188–8 votes with 3 absentees.³⁵ There were no abstentions.³⁶ The Eduskunta in short overwhelmingly backed the government’s decision that Finland should seek NATO membership. MPs declared an end to Finlandisation.

Concluding discussion

Structured in four parts, the analysis proceeded from, and adduced evidence in support of, Hautala’s claim (in the opening citation) that Finlandisation in Finland persisted long after the end of the Cold War. In the first part, the two dimensions (internal and external) of Finlandisation were distinguished and the institutional conditions facilitating, and the main characteristics of “dark-age” Finlandisation were presented. “General reasons” turned opposition parties into pariahs and, in a decaying elite culture, strategic self-censorship became a sine qua non for individual political advancement. In the second part, an attempt was made (the first to the best of my knowledge) to define and operationalise the notion of “post-Finlandization” and to capture a cultural legacy that spawned a cautious, deferential, even disingenuous approach to [the authoritarian] developments in Putin’s “new Russia”. With few exceptions the political class refused a “call a spade a spade” – Russia was not to be presented in a negative light – whilst for the business elite “economic diplomacy” and the primacy of lucrative commercial relations with Russia prevailed over the strictures of collective EU sanctions.³⁷

In the third part, the focus was on Putin’s imperialism, the threat of renewed (external) Finlandisation and the limited security options available to Finland. There was the inescapable reality that the EU would not be a credible security provider, not least because a majority of its members belonged to NATO. In the fourth part the process leading to a NATO application was outlined and a clear parliamentary majority for membership secured. Deference was now dead and Finnish politicians, particularly those in the centre-right National Coalition, proclaimed the end of Finlandisation.

A few concluding remarks on the radical change of political mood are in order, bearing in mind that, whilst Finland and Sweden moved broadly in tandem and, ultimately, submitted a joint application for NATO membership, it was Finland that showed by far the greater urgency and made much of the running. Indeed, a joint telephone call on 4 March 2022 from Joe Biden and Sauli Niinistö to Swedish prime minister Magdelena Andersson represented a landmark in Finnish-Swedish history.

A first observation concerns the speed and extent of the Finnish conversion to a NATO application, and the wide-ranging consensus on the matter, which was remarkable and ranged from MPs to the decision-making organs of the political parties and the general public. Several MPs, such as the former prime minister, Juha Sipilä (KESK), rationalised their change of position with the caveat that NATO membership was not directed against another state and that in the longer term it would be necessary to rebuild relations with Russia. Others such as the Christian Democrat Antero Laukkanen drew on Biblical references to seek to define his stance. Hanna Kosonen (KESK) admitted she struggled to grasp the wider ramifications of the case for joining NATO but ultimately felt that Finland’s small army would not be able to protect its borders.³⁸

The conversion of the political parties was equally swift although the National Coalition (KOK) had been pro-NATO since 2006 and the Swedish People’s Party was also a long-standing supporter of the defence alliance. Of the other parties, the first of the “converts” was the Centre (KESK) which at its party council meeting at the end of April 2022 registered its virtually unanimous support for NATO membership “if the leadership of the state (valtiojohto) decided to apply”. Only the Kainuu delegate, Ilmari Pokela, demurred, expressing a degree of cynicism about the way earlier grassroots opposition had melted away. He appeared to have had a point, since in a poll in the Centre organ Suomenmaa two weeks earlier, less than half of party council members had favoured NATO. Pokela was critical of the lack of internal party debate, the absence of a formal vote and the opportunity to record a dissenting opinion.

If Russia crosses the Finnish border, that would mean the start of a Third World War and nobody would be in a hurry to help us. And why should it be the duty of Finnish soldiers to protect the Turkish border?³⁹

The Finns Party (PS) council voted 61–3 in favour of NATO following an electronic membership ballot, the party leader Riikka Purra declaring that she had been pro-NATO since the 1990s and that it would have been better if Finland had joined NATO rather than the European Union. The Social Democrats’ (SDP) party council backed NATO membership by 53–5 with two abstentions, whilst the Greens’ party council (a notoriously obdurate body) gave its ministers and parliamentary group free hands to proceed. The Christian Democrats (KD), like the PS, staged an electronic membership ballot on the question of joining NATO, with 59.1 per cent “favourable”, 20.8 per cent “cautiously favourable” and 9.0 per cent “absolutely against”. At the KD’s September 2021 party conference only 35 per cent of delegates favoured a NATO application, following a motion from the KD Young Adults organisation, whilst over half (51.2 per cent) of respondents in KD’s electronic ballot reported changing their mind to favour a NATO application following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.⁴⁰

Perhaps most striking of all was the sudden and radical shift in public opinion in favour of NATO. As can be seen from Table 1, the Finnish Business Association (EVA) has conducted an opinion poll regularly since 1998, seeking responses to the identical statement “Finland should join NATO”. There have been five categories from which to choose: (i) completely agree; (ii) agree to an extent; (iii) difficult to say; (iv) disagree to an extent; (v) completely disagree. Over the 20 years between autumn 1998 and autumn 2021, a maximum of 13 per cent (1998) and a minimum of 4 per cent (winter 2012) “completely agreed” that Finland should join NATO. The proportion of those either in complete agreement or agreeing to an extent never exceeded a combined 28 per cent. In contrast, in a state broadcasting company YLE poll on 28 February 2022 – four days after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – 56 per cent of Finns favoured NATO membership and by 9 May – five days before a formal application was made – this figure had risen to 76 per cent,⁴¹ with only 12 per cent against and 11 per cent unable to say. The proportion favouring NATO doubled between autumn 2021 and 28 February 2022 and almost tripled by 9 May.

Table 1. “Finland should join NATO” (%).

Date	Completely agree	Somewhat agree	Difficult to say	Somewhat disagree	Completely disagree
Autumn 1998	13	15	34	15	24
Autumn 2000	8	12	28	19	33
Autumn 2002	8	11	26	17	38
Autumn 2003	8	12	25	17	38
Autumn 2004	10	12	25	17	36
Autumn 2005	10	10	29	16	35
Autumn 2006	10	10	28	15	37
Autumn 2007	10	11	23	14	40
Winter 2009	11	13	28	17	31
Winter 2011	9	10	30	15	35
Winter 2012	4	10	21	25	40
Winter 2013	6	12	27	22	33
Winter 2014	7	11	30	19	32
Winter 2015	12	14	32	16	27
Winter 2016	10	17	27	21	25
Winter 2017	11	14	29	17	29
Autumn 2018	10	13	31	17	29
Autumn 2019	10	12	32	21	26
Autumn 2020	10	12	32	19	26
Autumn 2021	11	15	33	18	22

Source: https://www.eva.fi/blog/2021/10/26 nato-jäsenyyden-kannatus-kasvoi-vuodessa.

The shift in public opinion was underpinned and reinforced by strong media support for NATO membership, particularly in the solitary national newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, along with the relative lack of a critical debate about the costs of joining the defence alliance. For NATO-sceptics the debate began with the question of when, and how quickly, Finland should join NATO, not whether it was sensible to do so. The doubters viewed the NATO application as panic-based, “sold” to an emotive Finnish public by elitist propaganda, whilst the speed of the process denied the people a say in the matter. As with Finnish membership of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999, the sense was that a major decision affecting national sovereignty was cut and dried at the top of the political tree and the people were not consulted. Among “young guns” in particular – the view of the Centre activist Janne Kaisalahti was probably representative – there was concern that NATO membership would reduce Finland’s room for manoeuvre in foreign and security policy and tie the country in practice very closely to American policy. As Kaisalahti noted, “We cannot afford to be naïve. The United States has its own global interests and the other NATO members to a greater or lesser extent go along with them.”⁴² Everything, he concluded has a price.

Ultimately, the decision to seek NATO membership followed a tradition of consensual policy-making in Finland on matters of “high politics”. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, when taken together with his demand for no further NATO expansion (a large-power Finlandisation strategy) left Finland with in practice little alternative but to exercise a NATO option that had been incorporated into government programmes since 2011. Necessity was, in large part, the mother of a Finnish NATO application. Finlandisation as a form of small state preventative diplomacy vis-à-vis a large-power neighbour, coupled with military non-alignment, gave way to association with a trans-Atlantic superpower and military alignment within a 30-member defensive alliance. All in all, Finland’s NATO application represented an end to Finlandised Finland, driven by Putin’s action in Ukraine, and predicated on a widespread, and very real public fear of a repeat of earlier Soviet transgressions of Finland’s sovereignty. For most Finns, it was, in general, Ehrnroth’s words, a case of “never again alone”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Paavo Teittinen, Mitäs minä sanoin. Helsingin Sanomat 10.4.2022.

2 The analysis covers the ground to Finland’s application to join NATO but excludes the implications of Turkish opposition to Finnish and Swedish membership.

3 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Russia needs a “Finland option” for Ukraine. Financial Times 23.2.2014.

4 Henry Kissinger, To settle the Ukraine crisis, start at the end. The Washington Post 5.3.2014.

5 Jaakko Iloniemi, The Finnish experience is very difficult to copy. Financial Times 11.3.2014.

6 René Nyberg Finland’s history is so different from Ukraine’s Financial Times 25.2.2014

7 Aki-Mauri Huhtinen, Politiikasta.fi: suomettuminen paluu 17.10.2014.

8 Suvi Kansikas, Politiikasta.fi: suomettuminen paluu. 17.10.2014.

9 Interview with the journalist Jari Tervo as part of a mini-series on the Cold War: https://areena.yle.fi/1-50828775.

10 Max Jakobson, Kekkonen ja uudet vaaran vuodet. Helsingin Sanomat 31.10.1996.

11 Orpo: Jälkisuomettuminen aika jatkui helmikuuhun saakka. YLE 14.5.2022.

12 These two points were suggested by Pete Piirainen, a researcher in the Finnish Foreign Policy Institute, Email 23.5.2022.

13 Unto Hämäläinen, Suomi ei puutu Baltian maiden tapatumiin. Koivisto sanoi Suomen tunnustaneen Viron, Latvian ja Liettuan liittämiseen Neuvostoliittoon. Helsingin Sanomat 11.1.1991. Pekka Vuoristo, Presidentti Mauno Koiviston näkemys: Baltian on NL:n sisäinen asia. Helsingin Sanomat 11.1.1991.

14 Vellamo Vehkakoski, Sadat marssivat taas Baltian puolesta. Helsingin Sanomat 17.1.1991. Riitta Vainio, Marssijat vaativat Koiviston eroa Helsingissä. Mielenosoittajilta tukea Baltian maille. Helsingin Sanomat 14.1.1991.

15 Interview with the Left Alliance chair, Claes Andersson 12.3.1991.

16 Interview with the Green Party leader Heidi Hautala 13.3.1991.

17 Hannes Heikura, On pohdittava, mitä on turvallisempää – sitoutuminen vai yksinjääminen? Helsingin Sanomat 7.5.1996.

18 Pekka Vuoristo, Hautalan Putin-kritiikki kohauti juhlaistunto. Helsingin Sanomat 2.6.2006.

19 Paavo Teittinen, Mitäs minä sanoin. Helsingin Sanomat 11.4.2022.

20 Halonen ja Vanhanen eri linjoilla Häkämiehen kanssa. YLE 7.9.2007.

21 Jessikka Aro, Näkökulma: Venäjä, Venäjä, Venäjä- Suomen keskeinen turvallisuushaaste vai mörköleikin kehittelyä? YLE 19.11.2014.

22 Sonja Haapala, Tutkijoiden Venäjä-kritiikkiä on yritetty rajoittaa Suomessa, sanoo Mika Aaltola: Sopivuuden säännöt ovat olleet hyvinkin jyrkkiä. Helsingin Sanomat 21.7.2022.

23 Hannes Heikura, Max Jacobson arvioi Naton laajenemisen vaikutusta Suomen ja Ruotsin aseman: On pohdittava, mitä on turvallisempää – sitoutuminen vai yksinjääminen? Helsingin Sanomat 7.5.1996.

24 Pentti Iisalo, Suomen turvallisuuspolitiikka sotaveteraanin silmin. Helsingin Sanomat 16.5.1996.

25 NATO-keskustelu luo vääriä mielikuvia Suomen linjasta. 16.5.1996.

26 Simopekka Nortamo, Sensuuri kalvaa meitä yhä. Helsingin Sanomat 21.6.1996.

27 Unto Hämäläinen, Vaikea peli. Helsingin Sanomat Kuukaisiliite 5/22, 43-49.

28 Suomen haettava NATO-jäsenyyttä perustuslaissa säädettyjen ihmisvelvoitteiden toteuttamiseksi. 25.2.2022. Vastuuhenkilöt Matti Muukonen ynnä muita.

29 Joona Aaltonen, Nato-kriitikkona tunnettu Sdp: Erkki Tuomioja kertoo olevansa valmis äänestämään Suomen Nato-jäsenyyden puolesta. Helsingin Sanomat 2.5.2022.

30 Joona Aaltonen, Vasemmistoliiton sosiaali ja terveys ministeri kertoo kannattavansa Suomen NATO-jäsenyyttä. Helsingin Sanomat 6.5.2022.

31 Te aiheutitte tämän, katsokaa peiliin, totesi presidentti Niinistö koskien Venäjän reaktiota. Helsingin Sanomat 11.5.2022.

32 The speech was kindly sent to me by Heli Järvinen, 13.5.2022

33 Laura Kangas, Olen valmis hyväksymään Nato-jäsenyyden, vaikka näen myös riskejä. YLE 12.5.2022. 

34 Emil Elo, Anna Kontula vastustaa NATO-jäsenyttä. Tiedetään että Ukrainan jälkeen Venäjä ei ole lähiaikoina hyökkäämässä yhtään mihinkään. Helsingin Sanomat 25.4.2022.

35 Matti Semi (VAS) and Suna Kymäläinen (SDP) were absent with Covid, whilst Hanna-Kaisa Heikkinen (KESK) had just given birth to a third child.

36 Those voting against a Finnish application for NATO membership were Markus Mustajärvi (VAS), Johannes Yrttiaho (VAS), Merja Kyllönen (VAS), Anna Kontula (VAS), Veronika Honkasalo (VAS), Katja Hänninen (VAS), Mika Niikko (PS), Ano Turtiainen (Valta kuuluu kansalle)

37 Jussi Pullinen, Suomen eliitti sulki silmänsänolosti todellisuudelta vuoden 2014 jälkeen. Helsingin Sanomat 17.7.2022.

38 Emil Elo, Hanna Kosonen kannattaa NATO jäsenyttä: Pieni armeijamme ei ehkä loppuun saakka pystyisi puolustamaan maatamme. Helsingin Sanomat 25.4.2022.

39 Pauliina Pohjala, Keskusta tukee valtiojohdon Nato-päätöstä. Suomenmaa 5, toukokuu 2022.

40 Merja Eräpolku, Selkeä enemmistö KD: jäsenistöstä kannattaa Nato-jäsenyyden hakemista, kertoo puoleen tekemä kysely. KD-lehti 23.4.2022.

41 The figure of 76 percent was based on an internet panel, with a n of 1270. Pekka Kinnunen, Ylen kysely: Nato-jäsenyydellä on suomalaisten vankka tuki – 76 prosenttia haluaa Suomen Natoon, YLE 9.5.2022.

42 “Kaikella on hintansa” – Keskustalaiset skeptikot kertovat, miksi naiiville NATO-innolle ei ole katetta. Suomen Uutiset 23.4.2022.