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The unprovoked nature of Russian invasion of Ukraine utterly discredited this long-standing approach to national security and Finland abandoned it. Share of Fi

• hollerith 2y ago
  These decisions on when a weaker power should appease a great power on its border and when it should stand up to it are made (and should be made) by people who've spent a career specializing in such matters. It's not like us amateurs in this comment section need to settle on a single simple policy suitable for any country at any point in time. But even a simple analysis conducted by amateurs in a comment section can see that Finland's decision to join NATO in 2023 does not discredit their decision not to join in 1947 because the line past which the great power to the east cannot project military force has moved east a great deal between 1947 and 2023 and because the decisionmakers in the Kremlin might reasonably have seen the Finnish border as the Kremlin's point of greatest vulnerability in 1947 whereas in 2023 it was obvious that they would be seeing their border with Ukraine as the greater vulnerability (by a wide margin) since it is close to Moscow and important strategic-nuclear installations and since it is very densely populated compared to its border with Finland and since it is where much of Russia's food is grown.
  • mopsi 2y ago
    I don't mean to sound harsh, your analysis has nothing to do with what actual experts discuss regarding Finnish-Russian relations. It was precisely in Helsinki, Finland, where representatives of all countries of Europe met in 1975 and adopted joint principles for cooperation to reduce Cold War tensions. These principles became known as the Helsinki Accords and are considered a major milestone in European diplomacy and security. Among the most important principles was the inviolability of national borders and a pledge to refrain from the violent alteration of international borders in Europe: III. Inviolability of frontiers The participating States regard as inviolable all one another's frontiers as well as the frontiers of all States in Europe and therefore they will refrain now and in the future from assaulting these frontiers. Accordingly, they will also refrain from any demand for, or act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State. By brazenly violating this commitment with the invasion of Ukraine, Russia proved that it is a far less trustworthy country than the USSR, which had upheld that commitment until the very end. In many ways, Ukraine had had a similar approach as Finland to east-west relations. Ukraine had tried to maintain good relations with both sides, but in the end, this did not save Ukraine from the Russian invasion and provided them with less support from the West than they might have received as a full ally. For Finland, this was a learning moment and the final nail in the coffin for Finnish neutrality. Experts abandoned it, and the public opinion followed them. Finnish diplomacy had for the longest time tried to establish clear principles to foster good relations between different blocs in Europe, but Russians just flushed it all down the drain and there was nothing left to work with.