Security policy for all

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By Kari Huhta
     
      The attempt to push foreign and security policy back into its old channels was doomed. Such an attempt was made earlier in the week at the President's Forum held at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki.
      Raimo Väyrynen, director of the Foreign Policy Institute, made an appeal at the forum suggesting that not absolutely everything should count as foreign policy. Traditional foreign policy involved an intention - something that might, in principle, be influenced. Now, everything that influences security gets included, and ultimately, almost everything does. Included are development and environmental policy. This is difficult on an analytical level if it is not possible to narrow down the meanings of the concepts involved.
      "Dr. Kissinger-Väyrynen", commented MP Erkki Tuomioja (SDP) with the authority of a recent foreign minister. The epithet was a reference to the American conservative foreign policy strongman Henry Kissinger, who apparently is not a model that Tuomioja aspires to emulate.
      Tuomioja also called for limits to security policy - not to its content, but rather to publicity. He felt that public exposure, openness, and honesty are a difficult combination in analytical debate. Kissinger would certainly have agreed with him on that score.
     
No hope of that. The President's Forum was like a lit match in a lumberyard. Security policy ebbed and flowed as the topic of the week, competing with the Eurovision Song Contest.
      Public exposure will significantly disturb the right of professionals to deal with security policy in peace, in the traditional manner, with a pen, glass, or weapon in hand.
      Sometimes publicity can come unexpectedly, as it did when President Tarja Halonen expressed the wish for a study into news coverage on the dispute between Estonia and Russia, and on the situation in Iraq. Halonen's wish, which was apparently not prepared in advance, and which remained unclear, became one of the week's most intensely read news items in Finnish web publications. Hit counters on web sites are an excellent tool in discussions on whether or not certain topics are considered interesting by the public at large.
      Security policy interests Finns to an exceptional degree. Finland's Ambassador To NATO Antti Sierla condensed the message in a speech he made on Wednesday, saying that people in Finland know how to make technical matters political, while in Sweden people are able to turn political issues into technical ones. Security policy is rarely discussed in Sweden.
      Sierla was mainly speaking about NATO, but Finnish foreign policy debate should not be reduced to a debate about NATO. There is much more on offer, even if the field of traditional security policy is adhered to.
     
Debate in Finland got a new framework in the March elections, and in the formation of a new centre-right government. The setup changed, although the foreign policy line did not.
      It used to be that when people harped on problems in relations between Finland and the United States, what they meant was specifically the relations that the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs had with the United States. At the same time, the Ministry of Defence had excellent relations with Washington. Now the differences between the ministries are smaller.
      Nowadays, "relations with the United States", means everything except the war in Iraq. The aim is to isolate that as a problem of its own along with President George Bush, while at the same time moving forward on other issues. It is not certain how well that will succeed, because accusations concerning the beginning of the war in Iraq also erode the credibility of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva waits for a bilateral meeting.
      The wait will not be boring: Russia is seeing to that. Numerous meetings are in store for Russia and Finland.
      The statue dispute that broke out between Russia and Estonia in late April shook the sense of security in the Baltic Sea environment, but it was in a side role already in the speech of President Vladimir Putin marking Victory Day. More than Estonia, he criticised the United States.
      Relations between Finland and Russia will become more intense as the year moves ahead, because next year there will be Presidential elections in Russia, while Finland holds the chair at the European Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE should monitor elections and democracy in its member states, and Russia does not want any monitors.
      Coming challenges in EU-policy must be bypassed here for the sake of brevity, but one example of the future should be noted: not a single government is involved in the project aimed at boycotting the Beijing Olympics in 2008 for human rights reasons. Non-governmental organisations are behind that effort, which is new security policy.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 12.5.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Presidential spokeswoman denies Halonen called for study on media response over Estonia and Iraq (10.5.2007)
  Kanerva defends EU action in Estonian-Russian statue dispute (9.5.2007)

KARI HUHTA / Helsingin Sanomat
kari.huhta@hs.fi