The NATO-ization of Finland?

Every historical era has its shorthands -- phrases that capture complex concepts, sometimes in a single word. One sign that an era has ended is the failure of friendly shorthands to account for new realities.
Take the Cold War concept of Finlandization: An off-hand insult to Finns who found themselves slandered through geo-political happenstance, name-linked to a phenomenon as old and inescapable as power politics itself -- the survival-based self-submission of a small nation to its stronger neighbor.

While Finns felt badly served by the term - they had, after all, fought the numerically superior Soviet army to a near-standstill in the Winter War of 1939 - the new noun took hold. Fair or not, the shorthand for capitulation popped up in policy journal jousting and parliamentary debates about what nation or combination of countries might be next to adopt a supine posture towards the Soviet superpower. Before the Cold War was over, Finland has been transformed from a country into a condition, with policy experts intoning about the prospects of Finlandization as far afield as Japan and Nicaragua.

Today it may be time to retire the old term and commission a new phrase -- one that accounts for the possibility of a Finland allied to the hallmark Western military organization, NATO.

No, Finland has not requested a NATO "MAP," the stepping-stone Membership Action Plan status sought in vain by Ukraine and Georgia. Not yet, at any rate. But consider this month's decision by the Finnish Government to ramp up its contribution to forces in Afghanistan, at a time when many NATO nations themselves have resisted the Obama Administration's call for an Afghan surge. To be sure, the Finns' 85-member peacekeeping contingent (one of 14 non-NATO nations deployed to Afghanistan) will in no way tip the strategic balance, but the symbolic act of doubling its commitment to a key NATO "out of area" exercise indicates the continued evolution of Finnish thinking.

The Finnish "surge" is simply the latest in a number of national security decisions that raises the prospect of a break from the Nordic nation's long history of neutrality. Take June alone: As the month began, Finland and NATO's Consultation, Command and Control Agency signed an agreement to cooperate on defense technology projects. Described as coordination on "peace operations," the interoperability of systems and technologies would sync up for military operations as well. Mid-month, Finnish forces took part as one of two non-NATO nations in the U.S. Navy-led BALTOPS war game, against a hypothetical enemy that seemed a great deal like Russia. At month's end, the Finnish Government voted to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP - the minimum recommended level for NATO nations.

Could NATO membership be next? For some respected Finns, the time has come: former Finnish United Nations Ambassador Max Jakobsen compares joining NATO to carrying "fire insurance," noting that no NATO member state has faced attack since the alliance's establishment in 1949.

Yet how fast Finland can shed its neutral stance is far from clear. While public opinion polls consistently show a majority of Finns oppose NATO membership, surveys also show a pronounced distrust of Russia. And political pulls can meet economic obstacles: Finland may have joined the EU, but it depends on Russia for 100% of its natural gas supply. Then again, that is no different from the dependence experienced by Bulgaria or the Baltic nations, current NATO members.

For all the recent steps towards NATO, it may be tempting for Finland to hang back, and play for more time to read Russia's signals. In fact, some Finns claim forbearance on Finland's part would allay Russian fears of NATO encirclement. A second school speculates that Russia's restiveness is driven by a largely internal political psycho-drama that outsiders cannot hope to arrest or alter. As Thomas Reis of the Finnish War College puts it when speaking of trading neutrality for NATO membership: "The danger is that it may always be too early - until it is too late."

Call it the political corollary to Newton's 3rd Law of Physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A follow-on phase to the Georgia war of last August - where probings and provocations are being registered almost daily - Russian pressure on Poland and Ukraine: Any of these Russian efforts to Finlandize former members of the Soviet sphere might prove the critical catalyst for the NATO-ization of Finland.