FIIA: no wartime help for Finland without NATO

Only "temporary damage to Finnish-Russian relations" from joining alliance

Raimo Väyrynen

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According to an assessment issued on Tuesday by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), Finland should join NATO only if it is ready to defend other member states of the alliance against an attack.
     "If Finland's political decision-makers and its citizens do not feel that an attack on Istanbul, Washington, or Tallinn would be so significant that Finland should immediately offer its help, possibly also in the form of sending military units, Finland should not become a member of NATO", the report states.
     According to the writers, in such a case, Finns should not expect other countries to come to their aid if Finland is attacked.
     The FIIA text gives a cautiously NATO-positive background analysis of the development of NATO and its links with Finland.
     
In the introduction to the report, FIIA director Raimo Väyrynen writes that the ten experts who took part in the project had sharply differing views of Finnish foreign policy when they began their work.
     The text, edited by FIIA researcher Charly Salonius-Pasternak, assesses the enlargement of NATO, its new tasks, the role of the United States in NATO, and the alliance's interaction with other systems.
     FIIA does not see that NATO is getting any alternatives as a defence alliance. The common European defence will continue to be organised exclusively through national solutions, as well as NATO, the assessment concludes.
     
Decisions on NATO will have to be made in Finland and elsewhere on the basis of inadequate information, because NATO is changing. According to the report, Finnish membership in the alliance would probably cause only temporary damage to relations between Finland and Russia.
     FIIA has worked on its report at the same time that another assessment is being produced at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
     The Foreign Ministry report is to come out next week, once it has been presented to the foreign affairs committee of the President and government.
     
Minister of Defence Jyri Häkämies (Nat. Coalition Party) feels that when discussing the NATO issue, the implications of the security guarantees of the European Union should be known.
     These matters need to be examined alongside each other, and not separately", Häkämies says.
      In his view, it would be especially important, when pondering NATO membership, to know what the large EU countries feel about the EU security guarantees.
     Foreign Ministry official Teija Tiilikainen is currently drafting a report on EU security guarantees, which is expected to be ready in March.
     Defence Minister Häkämies feels that the first question in the NATO debate is if Finland needs security guarantees in case of a military attack.
      "If we want security guarantees, we need to know how the EU will implement them. If the EU plans to implement security guarantees through NATO, it would be a significant piece of information in the NATO debate", Häkämies says.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Foreign Ministry preparing NATO report (5.12.2007)
  Cautiously positive assessment of NATO from FIIA (11.12.2007)

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