Column | Security policy changed between elections

Sin Uomi, the days are counting down to NATO membership, which means a huge change in the country’s position. Still, security policy is not one of the major themes of the parliamentary elections. Instead, the topic of conversation in recent days has been whether Prime Minister Sanna Marin (sd) has talked too much about the Hornets.

Hornet-kohu resembles älämölö, which was born from the trip to Turkey of two researchers, Mika Aaltola and Henri Vanhanen, at the beginning of February. Aaltola brought greetings from Turkey that Turkey wants to separate the processing of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO memberships. The researchers were accused of stepping into the politicians’ territory. Raippoja came, for example, from Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto (Green).

Multi things have changed, but one thing seems to remain: security policy is dominated by a liturgy, the supreme guardian of which is the president of the republic at that time. If someone says something that deviates from the liturgy, the president is asked if he was allowed to say it. The position of the president’s eyebrows tells how bad the mistake was.

At the moment, Sauli Niinistö works as the guard of the right line, but the question is more about the position than the person. After all, last spring Niinistö did something very extraordinary for the president of the republic, when he publicly revealed that after the Russian attack, he was just as unsure about Finland’s direction as other citizens. One would have thought that such a recognition would open the floodgates of discussion, but it did not. Finns clearly want security from their president, not humility or humanity. If you don’t know, pretend you do!

During the entire post-war period, it has been hammered into the heads of Finns that one should not express one’s own thoughts about security policy or become a slob. And that way of thinking didn’t disappear with the Soviet Union – just ask Jyri Häkämäie or Alexander Stubb. Russia, Russia, Russia!

Before last year’s complete reversal, the right line of security policy was guarded most closely by the social democrats, and the coalition’s “NATO hawks” were usually accused of going solo. Now the parts have changed. “Marin is somehow on his own line”, commented Antti Häkkänen (Kok), the chairman of the defense committee of the parliament to Ilta-Sanom, who demands an “explanation” from the government about the Hornet matter.

But what to remember these. Finland tends to make its historical turns in a tight formation looking straight ahead. That’s how we went from the yya era to the EU era, and that’s how we’re going to the NATO era as well. The pins just change in the front of the little jacket. When marching in the middle of a crowd, it feels as if you didn’t turn anywhere, but instead the line was straight and consistent the whole time. It’s a safe feeling.

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The pins just change in the front of the little jacket.

The time before the full translation is not remembered because almost every one of the decision-makers has statements from previous years that they would like to forget. In addition to memory loss, some decision-makers seem to have the ability to create completely new memories – psychologists have recently enlightened us about this exciting phenomenon. For example, Prime Minister Marin has recalled that he supported Finland’s NATO membership for a long time. It was a surprising piece of information, because in public Marin speculated as late as January 2022 that Finland is not applying for NATO during his term of office.

In Finland it’s claimed to have had good luck, but sometimes it’s more important for gentlemen to have good luck – regardless of gender. That is exactly why Napoleon wanted only lucky generals in his service.

There is skill behind the success of Finland’s NATO process, but there was also luck in it – everything could have gone completely differently. When the war broke out, many other than Vladimir Putin believed that the Russians would seize Kiev and take Ukraine under their command. If that had happened, Russia would have been able to dictate its peace terms. Then we would hardly be joining NATO now.

Ukraine saved Finland with its fight. We owe the Ukrainians a lot.

The author is the person responsible for the editorial and opinion editorial.