Since many people know nothing about Finland, jump on click bait headlines and retweet without checking facts, here a short overview of the things Russia has threatened Finland with so far & what their consequences are/would be:
1. Cutting electricity exports as of today
No problem, thanks to a new nuclear power plant + wind power Finland will soon be self-sufficient and even a net exporter. Finland used to import ~10% from Russia. Sweden & the Baltics can compensate for any short-term shortages.
2. Cutting gas deliveries (will prob happen this month)
A bit annoying because some industries need gas but on the whole no problem because gas is only ~5% of Finland’s energy mix. Finland already works with Estonia on the purchase of a LNG terminal ship.
3. Ending the lease contract of the Saimaa canal (Finland has leased the part of the canal that runs through Russia)
Finland doesn’t really need it anyways & would end up saving a s*it ton of money from the modernisation of the infrastructure.
4. Stationing troops at the Finnish border
Currently the question is: what troops
In the long term expected to happen anyways, regardless of whether Finland is in NATO or not. Russia already declared Finland an enemy along with the other EU countries.
When I say Finland is prepared, I mean it. Russia has never NOT been THE security issue No. 1 for Finland. Although the world only recently found out about our 1340km border with Russia, we never once forgot about it. So rest assured, WE HAVE THOUGHT THIS THROUGH
Oh and one more thing: the Finns are actually happy that Russia is cutting off the remaining energy supplies because the Finnish people have been demanding their government to stop the exports on their own account.
So the joke’s basically entirely on Russia
*exports and imports. All of it.
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I am incredibly lucky to know many senior people in my field of work whose experience and insights I greatly value, them having witnessed the world transition from the Cold War to what came after it.
But I think there’s value also in lacking that experience.
If you lived through the Cold War, you appreciate in a different way how far we have come since, say, the CSCE Helsinki Final Act in 1975 in terms of self-determination of peoples and respect for sovereignty of states whatever their size.
But there’s also value in taking all that for granted.
If you, like my generation of Europeans, grew up in a post-Cold War united Europe where national borders had become increasingly irrelevant thanks to European integration, your standards are in a way higher.
The whole thread leaves me simply speechless. It’s utterly incredible to me that the Finlandisation idea would make a comeback in any serious conversation especially AFTER Finland itself joined NATO and by doing so made it clear that non-alignment wasn’t an option anymore
If one thing is clear about the changes needed in a new or at least adapted European security order, it is that spaces for neutrality are almost nonexistent.
Neutrality a la Finland was never an option for Ukraine for several reasons:
1) Ukraine is much higher on Putin’s obsession scale than Finland ever was, and Ukraine is also much more important than Finland. It was partly luck that Finlandisation worked, as the Soviet Union didn’t deem the benefits to overweight the costs of trying to subjugate Finland.
Taking stock of 2,5+ years of Russia’s war against Ukraine:
- Western leaders have successfully avoided nuclear war
- but made the war in Ukraine a world-order changing event, which it didn’t necessarily have to be
- and made nuclear proliferation more likely in the future
The West’s incremental strategy has enabled Russia to gather support from China, North Korea and Iran who were more hesitant in the beginning. They are now building the BRICS+ alternative, which can become serious competition to the western-led international order.
Thanks to this dynamic, both Iran and North Korea are less isolated now than pre-2022. Iran might very well reconsider the costs (which seem pretty low) and benefits (which seem high, given that Russia was able to coerce the West into indecision) of crossing the nuclear threshold
Takes on Finlandisation and its post-Cold War legacy are almost exclusively bad. Labelling it as “diplo-nonsense to appease the USSR” is as mistaken as romanticising it as some kind of stroke of genius that could be exported to any other country with a Russia problem.
The only mind-boggling aspect of this is that things many Finns privately thought are now within the limits of political correctness to be said out loud.
The gist of Finlandisation was that there was a thin, performative official truth but the reality was often the opposite.
Finland was to an extent a victim of its own success, as the thin official truth had to be convincing enough to the Soviet Union. External western observers only saw the official truth and believed it to be the full truth. Pretty cringe sometimes to read literature from the time.
This is what I feared. I had hoped that things changed in the past 80 years and supporting Ukraine’s defence TO THE FULLEST would be a no brainer. But the western incremental strategy to keep Ukraine afloat but not more was bound to lead to this disillusionment & loss of trust.
The consequences of having generations of Ukrainians who remember how we, in fact, did NOT stand with Ukraine in their hour of need will be devastating. And I don’t think western leaders appreciate it enough what a powder keg this might create, if we end up failing Ukraine fully
Sorry to be the cliche Finn and to go on about the Winter War, but the trauma of having been left alone then just sits so deep.
Just this week it was announced that Sweden will be the framework nation for Finland’s NATO FLF and people are like, ok but can we trust them now
It bothers me about the alarmist takes on Russian nuclear sabre rattling that nukes are reserved for an extreme case & the conditions of an existential threat must be met to contemplate use.
Even with a more “liberal” 🇷🇺 doctrine, I don’t see how this war would tick the boxes.
As much as Putin would like to twist and turn it, it’s not a defensive war for Russia. It’s also not an existential one. It’s a war of choice.
AND it’s supposed to be a minor regional conflict, so nuclear use in such a context would signal extreme weakness.
Military experts have pointed out that Russia would hardly gain much by using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. On the other hand, politically that would change the conflict significantly, for the worse for Russia.