Finland’s EU Security Politics and NATO Membership

• Autores: Tuomo Melasuo
• Localización: Cuadernos de estrategia, ISSN 1697-6924, Nº. 228 (EU Common Security and Defense Policy. Quo Vadis? How European capitals understand CSDP), 2024, págs. 71-101
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Besides geopolitics, political culture is essential for understanding Finland. Joining the EU and NATO are major changes in Finnish foreign and security politics. The history of the last two centuries explains how these memberships are integrated in the Finnish society.

    Finland is an old cultural and socio-political entity that is very young as a nation and a state. For most of the past millennium, the Finns have been governed by outside forces - Swedish more than anything else, Russian also but much less.

    When a part of Sweden, Finnish civil servants participated in the administration by using Swedish as bureaucratic vehicle with two consequences. First, Finns used to be governed in another language instead of their own, and second, in order to enter the state administration, they needed to learn Swedish and to work in a language that was not their own.

    For the political culture, this resulted in the Finns relying on forces from outside their own sphere. This was visible in country’s evolution between the World Wars, in the relations with Soviet Union, and during the EU and NATO membership process. These features form the political culture from which the security and defence policies evolve.

    From a global perspectives the NATO membership of Finland and Sweden has two dimensions. First, it impacts Europe’s strategic autonomy and defence capabilities. What is the relationship between USA-led NATO and independent Europe after these two contries joined? Second, in what measure do Finland and Sweden benefit from their neutrality despite their NATO membership? This heritage could be important to the relations towards the “Global South”.

    The positive elements of this neutrality heritage could be important to Europe and NATO, maybe even more than their individual membership in the Atlantic organisation.