The terms NATO-Finland and NATO president annoy President Niinistö. It's about the vocabulary of a time of change, writes Elina Kervinen, HS's political editor.
Last there has been one interesting terminological side plot in the recent NATO and presidential debate. It reads: Is it frowned upon to say “Nato-Finland”? What about the “NATO president”?
President Sauli Niinistö such terms are annoying.
Niinistö has raised the matter repeatedly brought up. He did it again Ilta-Sanomit in the interview on the weekend.
“Finland has not changed for any reason. I have never heard, for example, in Norway that there is talk of NATO-Norway or a NATO king,” said Niinistö.
What is wrong with NATO-Finland?
What about the NATO president?
Niinistön the concern would seem to be that the terms exaggerate NATO's importance in Finland's foreign and security policy and shorten the entirety of the foreign and security policy.
Western media in an interview recently, he wanted to say that NATO does not revolutionize the duties of the president, which at least for him have been more global and comprehensive.
Niinistö didn't even sign that the president's powers had “somehow explosively changed in the case of NATO.”
According to the current interpretation, the president represents Finland at the NATO summit.
Experts have assessed, that the president's power actually increases with membership.
Niinistö, on the other hand, has reminded that there is one summit a year. And that the preparation of NATO affairs takes place in the ministries of foreign affairs and defense, on which work the president also depends.
“That speech at the summit is prepared together with the ministries, discussed in the tp-utva, the foreign minister and the defense minister will be there. If I think about this year, NATO has taken an extraordinary amount of it due to joining now, but not nearly half of the total workload,” he told Lännen media.
To the presidential race the matter is related to the fact that at least a couple of candidates have now stated that they are rejecting NATO-Finland as a term, scorning Niinistö.
To the headlines has risen to also the fact that the coalition candidate Alexander Stubb has used the NATO prefix.
“Now we clearly have an EU prime minister and a NATO president,” Stubb said recently At MTV's audition. He referred to his concern that the prime minister may be left out of the NATO preparations.
Iltalehti reminded In relation to the NATO presidential debate, Stubb and Niinistö's long history of relations.
Language is known to shape the world, and therefore thinking in terms is natural.
In the end, would it still be the case that there is no need to read huge meanings into NATO-Finland or the NATO president?
Maybe it's a convenient and short phrase that says in a headline that the times are different in certain things than before NATO?
Unlike before, Finland is now a full member of the military alliance, where it takes a stand on a wide range of military and political issues together with its allies. Together with the Government, the President plays a significant role in this decision-making, while in EU affairs power has been given to the Prime Minister.
“Nato-Finland” is Finland, which is in the front line of the alliance at a time when Russia is seen as the primary threat in NATO.
It makes its choices in a different framework than Finland before NATO.
Sure Niinistön a reminder that other countries should not be referred to with the NATO prefix is appropriate. However, time will fix this problem.
When the change phase is over and the initial enthusiasm behind, NATO-Finland and the NATO president will most likely fall out of the vocabulary.
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