From Small State Realism to Integrationism

5. Concluding Remarks: The End of the Cold War and

neutrality, which enabled political alignment with the EU. In addition to material arguments such as economic benefit or an increase in power, ideational factors were used to argue for Finnish EU membership. As Paavo Lipponen (2001, 151–156) – perhaps the most visible integrationist and an important entrepreneur of Finnish Europeanization – wrote in his 1994 defense of Finnish EU membership, the old world no longer existed and there was no place for the old comfortable neutrality.

Rather, Finland belonged to the club of stable Western European democracies, had a European identity, and was a nation equal to its peers.

Almost equally as important as the push for EU membership was the fact that integrationism contained a “pinch” of the traditional geopolitical realism. Although the primacy of Finnish foreign policy gravitated toward Europe, Finland also continued to defer to Russia’s security interests as an EU member. In other words, vis-à-vis Russia, Finland was still a minor power, and part and parcel of Finnish (small-state) realism was the recognition of this fact. This was the key ideational motivation for staying militarily non-aligned outside NATO. For instance, one of the key architects of the Finnish policy writes in his memoirs that it was “natural”

that the recognition of Russia’s interests was carried over into the new era:

During the entire Cold War, one of the key meanings of the policy of neutrality was to refrain from actions that would have violated Soviet security interests. Membership in the European Union did not remove this motive of Eastern policy, but it was accompanied by new ones (Blomberg 2011, 658).⁶¹

Although this “natural recognition” was not a quintessential Finnish phenomenon, it was absent from the consideration of former Soviet satellites and republics, for example, which were anxious about the re-emergence of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions and thus made NATO membership the absolute priority of their respective foreign policies (see e.g. Asmus 2004). Finnish leaders in turn understood NATO membership as a potentially confrontational move against Russia (Blomberg 2011, 644). It is clear that a solely materialist approach to the foreign policies of the states in Russia’s proximity cannot explain the variation in the policies. Rather, a central factor was the ideas the representatives of the states held about Russia.

As Publication V elaborated, Finnish leaders fought hard against the stigma of Finlandization during the Cold War. At the heart of the Finlandization talk was the questioning of Finnish sovereignty and, essentially, its status as a neutral Western power that was not a quasi-satellite of the Kremlin. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Finland’s successful integration vindicated Finland’s “Western-ness” in the minds of Finnish policymakers and the members of

61 Translation by the author.

the country’s elite. Finally, a full-fledged identification with Europe and the West was possible. A new and weakened Russia was much less proactive in intervening in Finnish domestic politics, and the nature of the bilateral relationship between the two countries changed profoundly. The awkward label of Finlandization faded, and Finland’s sovereignty was no longer under speculation. One could argue that Finnish policymakers felt a certain status boost, which, in addition to the integrationist orientation, was reflected in key foreign policy documents such as the Government’s 1995 white paper on foreign policy:

Resting on the lessons of history and geopolitics, and seizing the opportunities offered by change, Finland’s foreign and security policy has adapted smoothly to the end of the Cold War and the subsequent transformation. Finland has worked actively and independently to clarify and strengthen its international status, and to enhance its capability to pursue its security interests and bear its share of responsibility for international security (The Council of State 1995, 65).⁶²

The perceptions of the increased room for maneuver in foreign policy and the evaporation of the stigmas of the past generated fertile ground for Westernization narratives, and Browning (2002, 2008) is right that the narratives were political and contained a specific reading of history against which the contemporary identity was partly built. The narratives are indeed worth unpacking, but one cannot deny that Finnish policymakers and members of the elite felt a genuine sense of justification regarding their nation’s Western identity after the end of the Cold War. This was evident in the public debate analyzed in Publication II.

Interestingly, these new interpretations of Finnish subjectivity were connected to another change that came at the end of the Cold War, namely the relaxation of the ideational environment of Finnish foreign policymaking. In practice, this meant the greater importance of public opinion and, furthermore, the emergence of various competing schools of thought with divergent visions of ideal foreign and security policy. In other words, Publication III identified a new bottom-up dynamic in the foreign policy-public opinion nexus, while Publication II demonstrated how the hegemony of small-state realism broke down and how there were suddenly opposing ideas about the very bedrocks of Finnish security. Moreover, as pointed out in Publication V, the process of relaxation had already started in the mid-1980s, when Finlandization and the practice of self-censorship associated with the phenomenon began to wane. It is possible to find internal and external causes of the relaxation.

Domestically, partly owing to the personality of Mauno Koivisto and his successor Martti Ahtisaari, there was less inclination to control public opinion and debate.

Externally, the easing of the threat environment, namely the collapse of the Soviet

62 Emphasis added.

Union, reduced the outside pressure to control the competition of ideas. Moreover, the concrete choice regarding Finland’s possible membership in the EU empowered the public, who had their say in the consultative referendum.

These changes notwithstanding, one can hardly call the ideational transformation revolutionary but rather an adjustment of old ideas to new material and ideational realities of the post-Cold War world, in which international politics was not characterized by ideological competition but rather by a consolidation of US hegemony and the benevolent liberal world order (see e.g. Brands 2016; Ikenberry 1996). In the Finnish case, a full-fledged transatlantic orientation coupled with a disregard for Russia’s security interests, or the wholehearted adoption of a normative globalist worldview would have qualified as profound ideational change.

Why did the collapse of the Cold War – a major shift in the material and ideational realities of world politics – not result in a bigger change in Finnish foreign affairs?

First, and most importantly, Finland’s social system did not change, and domestic preferences ingrained in the societal value system indeed count as one pillar of national identity. As mentioned in Publication II, Finland’s political purpose – the core value system of the society – was not really debated. Thus, in a sense, Finland was like any other Western European democracy. None of the established democracies in Europe made complete reversals in their respective foreign policies. Rather, only minor adjustments occurred.⁶³

Secondly, although the Soviet Union collapsed and a much weaker Russia emerged from the ruins of the former Soviet empire, the power asymmetry between Finland and Russia continued to be a fact to be reckoned with in the minds of Finnish policymakers. Given the success of the policy of neutrality during the Cold War in stabilizing Finland’s international position compared to the labile early post-Second World War years, the hard core of the doctrine, military non-alignment, seemed a feasible policy line in the new circumstances as well, particularly when Finland was free to realize its political and economic objectives as a member of the EU without any unnecessary flattering of its neighbor or any accusations of Finlandization.

Thirdly, the question of change and continuity ultimately boils down to individual decision-makers and their beliefs. Although some of the policymakers and members of the elite, notably those among the globalists and euroatlanticists, advocated a thorough re-evaluation of the core aspects of Finnish foreign policy based on novel ideas, neither the majority of the elite nor the public saw an urgent need for a major ideational turnaround. An adjustment was enough for most. Mauno Koivisto – the

63 Denmark is an example of a minor policy change in a Western country. After the Cold War, and owing to an active policy by Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, Denmark adopted an active transatlantic stance, which replaced the critical “endnote” policy of the Cold War era. See Doeser & Eidenfalk 2013.

most powerful figure in Finnish foreign policy and a potential entrepreneur of change – is a case in point, as Publication I discussed.