Suchergebnisse

Maude, G. The Further Shores of Finlandization. Cooperation and Conflict, XVII, 1982, 3-16. This article first traces the origin of the controversial term 'Finlandization'. It is noted that the most vociferous proponents of Finlandization theory have been people with little first-hand knowledge of Finland. Rather, the fundamental problem that seems to worry them is the effect of detente, which they have seen as Soviet advancement by other means. One essential feature of the Finlandization theory is that Finnish experience is torn out of its context and thrown into a world of generalized experience. Yet certain factors make Finland sui generis, especially the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance with the Soviet Union. No other Western or Northern European parliamentary democracy has a treaty of this kind nor is likely to have one. Moreover, many of the phenomena in Finland that are often compre hended as being directly due to the impact of the Soviet Union on Finland are in fact the result of other causes, relating to deep problems of Finnish society and national character. At its deepest level the theory of Finlandization, imprecise and overloaded as it is, nevertheless ought to lead us to consider one basic moral problem: the trust a democracy is expected to exhibit towards the foreign and security policy made in its name by the decision-makers.

A response to the following article, "Not so Dire Straits" (Gilley, 2010). Adapted from the source document.

Senior editor Arnaud de Borchgrave of Newsweek writes (July 10,1972):Today, Western Europe is a collection of nations united only in disunity. Within the last month, I have spoken with more than a dozen of the top foreign policy planners in Europe. Never before have I seen them so gloomy; never before haye I heard so much talk about Europe's confusion and disarray. "The spectacle we are presenting to the world," one expert told me, "is truly lamentable." It is more than lamentable; it is highly dangerous. For Western Europe faces the threat of "Finlandization"— which is to say, of finding itself effectively dominated, so far as foreign affairs are concerned, by the Soviet Union.

While the concept of Finlandization was often used in the past by NATO spokesmen to refer to a problem, the possible intimidation of Western democracies by Soviet military power, it may also suggest a number of positive possibilities for the Baltic republics. An examination of recent history offers a number of analytical insights for comparing the fate of Finland with countries like Poland, subjected to Communist rule, and with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, actually incorporated into the Soviet Union. Models are offered of military and other resistance to foreign pressure, of concessions and withdrawals, and of delicate balances, involving all the Scandinavian countries.

The rise of China has sparked new type of geopolitical considerations and a debate in East Asian security studies. The neighboring countries of China can soon find themselves in a similar geopolitical situation as Finland found itself after the Second World War: there was a great power in the vicinity and the balancing force of this giant was far away. Since we do not have empirical experience of East Asia's future, we will have to use empirical cases that seem similar to the one East Asia is heading at. Finland's experience is one of such cases and it is a case that has been well theorized to allow distilling of lessons from this case to cases that might be similar from the point of view of power politics. This article will use the Finnish experience as a tool for the analysis of the possible futures of the emerging political asymmetry in East Asia. This will be done by analytically and conceptually investigating the dimensions of asymmetry identified in the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union, by empirically seeking lessons from the Finnish experience and by comparatively applying the lessons to the East Asian context.