Researcher says EU could be Finnish security policy tool

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Speaking at a Paasikivi Society celebration in Kerava on Sunday, Tapani Vaahtoranta, the Director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, proposed that the European Union should become Finland's security policy tool. He believes that as a security organisation the EU could be equal to NATO.
      In Vaahtoranta's view, the Finnish debate on security and defence policy and NATO can be compared with shadow-boxing. He urged the voters to demand that the decision makers should discuss the country's defence policy in more definite terms.
      Vaahtoranta argued further that the Government Reports on Security and Defence Policy have a deterrent effect on discussion and could be done away with. He noted that a document is always a compromise of compromises, and any issue that is not unanimously agreed upon is omitted from it.
     
General Gustav Hägglund, the former Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces and the Chairman of the European Union's Military Committee from 2001 to 2004, agrees with Vaahtoranta on the development of the EU's military role.
      However, in his comment on Vaahtoranta's speech, Hägglund stressed that the relations with the United States should not be broken off. Both the EU and the USA take care of their own turf, while at the same time they are cooperating in crisis management.
     
The United States cannot be ignored by taking sides with the EU, commented the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Liisa Jaakonsaari (SDP) on the telephone. "Without the United States, the European Union alone cannot resolve major issues including the new threats caused by climate change, population problems, and trafficking in humans", Jaakonsaari concluded, while acknowledging that EU security guarantees provide a kind of safeguard for Finland's welfare in time of crisis.
     
Finland's foreign policy is still looking for its identity, says Tapani Vaahtoranta. Jaakonsaari agrees with him that different and often diametrically opposed patterns of thought exist among Finns as far as the country's foreign policy direction is concerned.
     
The NATO issue
has become a taboo in Finland, Jaakonsaari argues. "Even a proposal to look into the issue is regarded as a provocative and radical signal", she notes.


Links:
  The Finnish Institute of International Affairs

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