Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
Finland is trending.
This year, the country was named the happiest in the world — for the seventh time in a row. It managed to join NATO without Russian punishment. And its all-encompassing national security efforts have gained global media attention, with The New York Times pronouncing Finland the world’s “prepper nation.”
But being known as a country facing geopolitical threats also has its drawbacks — particularly when it comes to the economy. What company would want to do business where there’s a risk of attack?
Of course, in today’s world, it’s not just Finland facing such risks. There are many other countries that must also try to square that circle, and how Finland chooses to respond and reassure the business community will likely be a leading example.
Those googling “Finland” these days are likely to receive a lot of hits about Russian threats, the Finnish government’s response to Russia’s threats, stories about Finland’s comprehensive national security — the list goes on in a similar fashion. Even ChatGPT says: “While Finland is geographically and politically stable, its strategic security concerns remain in flux due to the changing geopolitical landscape, particularly with Russia’s more aggressive stance and broader European security dynamics.” (ChatGPT has definitely been trained on think tank reports.)
Finland does indeed have admirable comprehensive defense. It’s even more impressive when one considers that it was perfected during the Cold War, when the Soviets banned the country from operating auxiliary military organizations — the kind of volunteer-staffed organizations that support the armed forces and formed a formidable pillar of Sweden’s Cold War era “total defense.” And while Finland’s comprehensive approach may not feature auxiliary defense organizations, it does include the armed forces, four government ministries, various government agencies, government-owned companies and all manner of boards and consultative bodies.
But it’s the preparedness part of this comprehensive approach that most impresses other countries and journalists because it involves every part of society and, unlike the military, it doesn’t rely on strict command and control. Governments have to engage the private sector and civil society; they need to educate, cajole, meet and plan.
“The biggest challenge is always command and control,” said Pekka Toveri, a retired major general in the Finnish Defence Forces who is now a member of the European Parliament. “The Finnish model is that you have ministries that take care of issues in their respective areas, but the problem is that threats rarely affect just one area.”
Still, Finland does preparedness well. Getting the country’s much-lauded strategic reserves to work, for example, involves legislation, the National Emergency Supply Agency, consultative meetings, as well as companies with products stockpiled in the reserves.
Preparedness is so difficult, though, that even a leading nation like Finland can’t execute it perfectly: When the government ordered the stockpiles be opened during Covid-19, it found, among other things, face masks with 2012 use-by dates. “There’s no silver bullet,” Toveri said. “Everyone has to participate, and it takes decades to build such a system perfectly.”
And trying to execute total defense brings another challenge too: Being primarily known as the subject of national security threats isn’t exactly good for business.
Of course, the Nordic nation has little choice but to highlight the Russian threat: Russia isn’t hiding its combative nature. And Finland has successfully ensured the world doesn’t forget about the menace next door. It has done well in marshaling its national resources to counter it. Even Finnish companies that used to depend on exports to Russia have managed to shift their exports to other countries.
But how the nation eventually manages (or not) to balance calling attention to Russia’s threats and convincing the business community is yet to be seen.
Paradoxically, the answer here lies in resilience and preparedness as well. No country can change its location, but every country has agency over how it counters threats. Indeed, a country can signal that its society can keep going, even in the face of extremely serious harm. The key is being able to show the capacity for resilience before the harm occurs, as such demonstrations signal to prospective attackers that their attempts aren’t worth the effort.
The master of this métier is Cold War-era Sweden, where total defense truly involved the totality of the country — including some 11,000 companies designated as “crucial” to the economy. The government maintained special arrangements with these companies, allowing them to continue operating even in case of an invasion. The message was clear: “You may have a vast military, but our society and economy will keep going no matter what.” And it was a convincing message too. Despite the massive Soviet threat, Sweden’s economy chugged along, even flourished.
This is the tightrope Finland must now walk. Indeed, every Western country now needs to convince investors and money markets that it can keep going, even if Russia or another country tries to harm it.
Such harm is already happening — think bombs on cargo planes, breaking into water plants and murder plots against executives — and in recent weeks, intelligence chiefs in Britain, Germany and Sweden have all warned of worse to come. Business types follow such news and they’ll be following the news about countries’ efforts to thwart aggressors just as closely.
The countries that do best will win business.
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