Foreign policy|Joel Linnainmäki, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute, interprets the differences in foreign policy that have become public recently as a kind of extension of the culture war.
Foreign policy a researcher at the institute Joel Linnainmäki assesses that the foreign policy leadership has not succeeded in its attempt to communicate its unity in the line of foreign policy.
On Friday, this was attempted as well as the president of the republic by Alexander Stubb that the prime minister Petteri Orpon at the press conference.
“The fact that the image of Finland’s foreign policy conveyed by the government and the president did not remain unified for even one whole day is a bad sign. The goal of the foreign policy leadership to convey a unified message was not successful,” says Linnainmäki.
Stubby and after Orpo’s press conferences on Friday, the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah (kd) publicly confirmed that he had left a dissenting opinion in tp-utva regarding Finland’s voting decision in the UN.
TP-utva is a joint meeting of the president and the government’s foreign and security policy committee.
At the UN, Finland voted in favor of declaring Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories illegal.
Differing views on the foreign policy line are not exceptional in themselves. What was extraordinary was that Essayah told it For Democrat newspaper. Tp-utva’s discussions are normally kept away from the public.
Conflicts in the foreign policy leadership arose before this, the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavion (ps) on the decision to leave the equality coalition for the reconstruction of Ukraine. President Stubb criticized the flow of information related to the matter.
Foreign policy the release of the conversation is a good thing in itself, the researcher estimates.
“However, it is a different matter whether there is a general foreign policy discussion or whether the internal conflicts of the foreign policy leadership become public.”
In particular, the cooperation of key actors should work as well and efficiently as possible, says Linnainmäki.
He reminds that the importance of a dissenting opinion is not very great in tp-utva, because it is not formally a decision-making body.
“But it would certainly have been wiser to say directly that there was such a disagreement, because in any case it was clearly wanted from the point of view of the Christian Democrats and from the point of view of Minister Essayh to bring it to the public.”
Linnainmäki also highlights the importance of the internal unity of the government.
“It is also a question of how united the government must be in terms of foreign policy. The more divisive the government goes to the tp-utva meetings, the more room for the president to play.”
Why foreign policy is being argued about in public right now?
Linnainmäki believes that it is partly a matter of chance. Now the burning questions are the questions regarding which there are conflicts of values in the government.
The questions that came up, such as the status of sexual minorities and Middle Eastern issues, have also been important to the Christian Democrats and fundamental Finns in the past.
Now, however, the speeches of the parties gain more weight when the parties are in the government and it is also about Finland’s foreign policy line.
“Yes, this is partly a continuation of the culture wars in the foreign policy space, which is, of course, somewhat new to this extent within the government.”
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