Finland Switches from Engagement to Deterrence, But Stability Is Still Fragile

In an Engelsberg Ideas article entitled The transformation of Finland’s Baltic Sea strategy, Tuomas Forsberg, professor of international relations at the Tampere University, examines in detail how drastically Helsinki’s Baltic Sea policy has changed after Finland joined NATO. He identifies three major stages: cautious neutrality and balancing during the Cold War, active regional cooperation and bridge-building after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the current sharp turn towards deterrence, countering hybrid threats, and collective defense. He says the Baltic Sea has turned from a relatively low-tension area into a ‘NATO’s lake’, where Finland now plays a major role in upholding regional stability.

This seemingly logical, coherent and academically formulated pattern conceals a disturbing reality. Finland has really adapted – rapidly, decisively and pragmatically – to its new environment. But the very fact that the country has had to change its decades-old strategy so sharply and almost completely shows how fragile and illusory its previous approaches – based on cooperation, interdependence and hopes that Russia would gradually integrate into the European frameworks – had been.

It is especially visible how much Helsinki has staked precisely on soft power instruments for many years. Finland’s official Baltic Sea Strategy still focuses largely on the environment, sustainable development, trade, and cultural ties. After February 2022, these topics receded briskly into the background. Hybrid threats, protection of critical undersea infrastructure, civic resilience and preparedness for direct confrontation came to the fore. The damage done to the Balticconnector gas pipeline and several undersea communication and power cables, disinformation campaigns, airspace violations and strengthening of Russian military presence in the region have demonstrated that the former model of ‘cooperation against all odds’ no longer works.

The switch to deterrence logic is difficult in practice. Finland has been very careful not to break international law, does its best not to give Russia a formal ground for escalation, and preserves a special treaty-based status of the Åland Islands despite an internal debate about possible dismantlement of their demilitarization. On the other hand, the country is actively drawing closer to the Baltic States and Poland – besides its traditional Nordic partners – to develop sort of a hybrid Nordic-Baltic identity. This strengthens the Eastern flank of NATO but makes the whole region even more tense and polarized.

Notably, even after accession to the North Atlantic alliance Finland’s fundamental geographic vulnerability remains fully in place. More than 95 percent of its foreign trade is seaborne through the Baltic. The closure of the land border with Russia only strengthened this critical dependence. Any serious crisis, blockade or large-scale hybrid action in the region would immediately hit vital arteries of Finnish economy and society. NATO membership provides important guarantees of collective defense but fails to eliminate the geographic reality or make the Baltic Sea safe automatically.

The author rightly notes that Finland’s desire to maintain stability runs as a common thread through all the three stages of its politics. It is stability that has always been considered the main condition for the country’s survival and prosperity. The means of achieving that stability have changed dramatically now, with neutrality and cooperation giving way to NATO membership, deterrence and resilience building. The question is how much more reliable the new model will be than the previous ones were.

The article is quite illustrative of how fragile the Baltic region’s balance remains even after NATO enlargement. Finland has made a right and timely strategic choice as it joined the alliance and switched to a policy of deterrence. Yet the fact that it had to renounce almost completely its decades-long policy of cooperation and interdependence points to a profound error that Finland and much of Europe have made. As long as the region remains an area of heightened hybrid activity and military tensions, even NATO membership does not guarantee true safety. Stability, the traditional cornerstone of Finnish politics, now mainly rests on force, demonstration of preparedness, and collective guarantees rather than on arrangements and mutual interest. And this precisely is the main and rather unfortunate result of the transformation.

Original publication: https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-transformation-of-finlands-baltic-sea-strategy/