N ORDIC C OUNTRIES Nordic Countries Juni 2009 Office Stockholm Västmannagatan 4 11124 Stockholm Tel. 004684546592 Fax: 004684546595 email: info@fesnord.se 2- 2009 FINLAND AND PROSPECTS FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP Raimo Väyrynen Finnish Institute of International Affairs Finland’s intentions vis-a-vis NATO are for many outsiders a puzzle. The issue also divides the Finnish public and its class politique. For some, the country which is not any more in the shadow of its Eastern neighbor, be it the USSR or Russia, has legitimate reasons to join the alliance that promises security and freedom. Finland should join all international organizations whose membership consists of democratic countries. For others, joining NATO would unnecessarily increase the vulnerability of the country in a crisis and thus even undermine its national security that is now based on strong territorial defense and general conscription. Historical context of the Finnish (non)alignment Moscow’s approval of them in various bilateral deals. The divided opinion of the Finns on the relationship with NATO cannot be separated from the shadow cast by the Cold War as the divisions can be traced back to the political experiences during that period. The official view, promoted especially by Presidents J.K. Paasikivi (1946-1956) and Urho Kekkonen(1956­81), was that Finland should manage its relations with the Soviet Union on a bilateral basis and avoid any undue Western interference in them. In effect, NATO’s policies, and the German role in them, were considered in Helsinki to have contributed to both the so-called note crisis in 1961, prompted in part by Soviet reactions to the Multilateral Force(MLF) plan in the Baltic Sea, and other problems in the Finnish-Soviet relations. Kekkonen’s efforts to integrate Finland in Western European free-trade and payments arrangements were made contingent on The other view, which is surfacing now but could not be mentioned during the Cold War, was that the nuclear deterrence extended by the United States to Europe protected also Finland. In this perspective, NATO has been an alliance producing deterrence- and ultimately defense in the case of an attack- that contained the Soviet expansionist plans and thus protected the entire Europe. On the conceptual level this might have been the case, but contrary evidence is provided, for instance, by the meeting of the NATO Council held in the fall 1968 in the aftermath of the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces. Information leaked from this meeting hinted that in the case of the Soviet attack on Northern Europe, NATO would come to the rescue of Sweden but not of Finland. The Finnish discussion on NATO is on one level a non-debate. Finland has been an