(Europa) Finnische Streitkräfte

[Quintus Fabius]

Dann nimm den Artikel 5 der NATO: Zitat:

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/offic...dLocale=de

.....Beistand leistet, indem jede von ihnen unverzüglich für sich und im Zusammenwirken mit den anderen Parteien die Maßnahmen, einschließlich der Anwendung von Waffengewalt, trifft, die sie für erforderlich erachtet.....

Dann wäre der Artikel 5 genau so ein Gummiparagraph, den man könnte jederzeit behaupten, dass man ein militärisches Eingreifen der eigenen Kräfte eben nicht für erforderlich hält.

Im Vergleich dazu ist der Artikel 42 (7) viel weniger ein Gummiparagraph. Und die von dir zititerte Veröffentlichung bezieht sich ausdrücklich auf die Unterstützung durch die neutralen Staaten bzw. im Kontext auf diese - und Finnland ist in Wahrheit nicht neutral. Wie ich es schon schrieb, ist die finnische "Neutralität" in Wahrheit eben keine, Finnland hier ein Sonderfall und eben nicht mit Österreich, Irland etc vergleichbar. Auch wenn Finnland in dem von dir vernetzten Artikel als neutraler Staat geführt wird, so ist die aktuelle finnische Neutralität von der der anderen genannten Länder vollkommen verschieden. Das lässt die Veröffentlichung des EU Parlamentes aus 2016 (!) außer Acht. Im übrigen hat sich seitdem auch das Verständnis dieser Bündnisverpflichtung in der EU durchaus gewandelt.

Kurz und einfach, Gummiparagraph hin oder her, jeder ernsthafte militärische Angriff auf Finnland führt zur Auslösung des Bündnisfalls für die EU und dem militärischen Eingreifen der anderen EU Staaten oder die EU endet zugleich mit diesem Angriff. Nach finnischem Recht kann Finnland auf der Stelle seine "Neutralität" beenden und damit müsste man dann die Karten auf den Tisch legen.

Noch eine deutlich aktuellere Ausarbeitung zu der Thematik (statt etwas von 2016 zu zitieren):

https://ecfr.eu/publication/ambiguous-al...n-defence/

Reading Article 42.7, one could conclude that the EU already is, in fact, a defence alliance. At a minimum, it raises questions about how the neutral states square the circle of being a member of a union that has a mutual defence clause while upholding their non-aligned status. The EU attempts to address this contradiction in the article, stating: “this shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States”. This provision, also known as the ‘Irish clause’, is generally understood to refer to the neutral or non-aligned EU member states, effectively giving them an opt-out from EU mutual defence in case of an attack. As this essay collection shows, the special status states differ to a surprising degree in their interpretation of the applicability of Article 42.7.

From neutrality to activism: Finland and EU defence

Tuomas Iso-Markku, Matti Pesu

EU member since: 1995
Neutral since: 1955 (changed status from neutrality to military non-alignment in the context of EU accession)
Population: 5.6 million
Current defence spending as a share of GDP: Approximately 1.9 per cent
Number of troops: 12,300 active and 280,000 reserve

The steady decline of neutrality and non-alignment

Finland’s accession to the European Union in 1995 marked a fundamental change in its foreign policy. From the mid-1950s to the early 1990s, the country pursued a policy of neutrality that put strict limits on its involvement in Western economic and political cooperation. More importantly, neutrality helped Finland to maintain a degree of distance from the Soviet Union. It strengthened Finland’s international position in the challenging cold war environment, providing the country with more room for manoeuvre during a time when Finnish foreign policy was largely conditioned on Moscow’s behaviour. Finnish neutrality was, above all, a political instrument – but it was internalised by Finnish policymakers and voters alike.

However, the Finnish foreign policy leadership quickly realised that Finland’s previous definition of neutrality had limited use after the end of the cold war – and that neutrality was largely incompatible with the nature and requirements of EU membership. As a result, Finland began to pursue a less restrictive policy of military non-alignment.

When it joined the EU, Finland expressed its full commitment to, and supported the development of, the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Moreover, during its first years of EU membership, Finland sought to shape the EU’s nascent security and defence policy. Despite its abandonment of strict neutrality, Finland was still averse to the (faint) possibility that the union’s security and defence policy would develop in the direction of territorial defence. Thus, Finland, along with Sweden, advocated a stronger EU role in crisis management – both to pre-empt the potential rise of a more traditional defence agenda within the EU and to demonstrate that the two countries were not neutral oddballs but rather fully fledged and active EU members.

The evolution of the CFSP, including the Common Security and Defence Policy, pushed Finland to re-evaluate its defence status in the late 2000s. The Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force in December 2009, contained both the mutual assistance clause – Article 42.7 – and the solidarity clause. The introduction of Article 42.7 in particular implied that EU membership could entail territorial defence commitments. In 2007, anticipating the treaty, Finland’s new centre-right government came up with a definition of Finland’s defence status that better reflected the realities of the EU: a country that does not belong to any military alliance. The differences between the two definitions may appear to be purely semantic – indeed, military non-alignment and the newer definition are used interchangeably in the domestic debate. However, the change of status conveyed an important message: an EU member cannot be fully non-aligned politically or militarily.

Despite its new status, Finland’s policy remained largely unchanged. However, Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 prompted a major shift in Finnish security and defence policy. Although this Russian aggression in Ukraine was not a sufficient incentive for Finland to seek NATO membership, it significantly increased the country’s appetite for robust defence cooperation. Since 2014, Helsinki has updated old defence partnerships and forged new ones. The most important frameworks for Finland are its bilateral partnerships with both Sweden and the United States, the Nordic Defence Cooperation, its close partnership with NATO, and the security and defence dimension of the EU. In addition to these frameworks, Finland has joined new European ‘minilateral’ defence formats: the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, the French-driven European Intervention Initiative, and the German-initiated Framework Nations Concept.

This flurry of defence activity has created a new paradigm in which Finland uses such cooperation not only to strengthen its defence and deterrence but also to create the necessary preconditions for operational cooperation in times of crisis and war. Therefore, Finland has an alliance policy in all but name. In the last decade and a half, there has been a fundamental change in the practical implications of non-membership of any military alliance – as a result of which Finland has almost entirely stopped referring to this status in official foreign policy communications.
Finland as an EU defence activist

Finland’s pursuit of closer and deeper military collaboration with its partners has influenced its approach to the EU’s defence agenda. The paradigmatic change in Finnish defence thinking coincided with the EU’s efforts to boost its credibility as a security and defence actor following a European Council meeting in 2013 and, above all, the Brexit vote in 2016. Consequently, the formerly neutral state has become one of the most vocal advocates of the EU’s security and defence efforts – and seems to have cast aside any residual neutralist sentiments and reservations. Today, Finland would readily accept a stronger EU role in territorial defence – in striking contrast to the country’s position in the 1990s and 2000s.

Helsinki’s enthusiasm for EU defence manifests in its strong support for recent initiatives such as the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence, the European Defence Fund, the Military Planning and Conduct Capability, Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), and the Strategic Compass. At the same time, these initiatives have not attracted significant attention in the country beyond a small circle of experts. Moreover, the initiatives have limited value to Finnish defence in the short term, as they neither strengthen Finland’s deterrence nor facilitate operational cooperation between EU member states’ armed forces – at least not in the context of territorial defence.

Two areas stand out in Finland’s efforts to shape the EU security and defence agenda. Firstly, Finland has tried to build up awareness of hybrid threats in the EU context, presenting itself as a “hybrid-savvy” state with a functioning whole-of-society approach to security. The most tangible example of Finland’s activity in this field is the establishment in 2017 of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, based in Helsinki. To date, 28 states – including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the US – have joined the centre, which also fosters cooperation between the EU and NATO. Countering hybrid threats featured prominently on Finland’s agenda for its presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2019. During the presidency, EU ministers and working parties conducted scenario-based policy discussions on hybrid threats.

Secondly, Finland has often reminded its fellow member states of the importance of Article 42.7. The president of Finland has even called the clause “the true core of European defence”. According to Finnish thinking, the EU is a “security community” characterised by mutual solidarity and Article 42.7 is a key element of the community. The 2020 Government Report on Foreign and Security policy states that “solidarity is of high security policy importance for Finland … Here, solidarity means that Finland will receive aid and assistance at its request, and that Finland will provide aid and assistance to another Member State or the European Union if necessary.” By stressing the importance of Article 42.7, Finland does not seek to replace or replicate NATO’s Article 5. Rather, Finnish policymakers have suggested that the former could apply in a situation in which, for example, an EU member state becomes a victim of serious hybrid influencing. However, there has been no domestic debate about the scenarios in which Finland would seek to invoke Article 42.7.

In addition to rhetorical advocacy of the clause, Finland has reportedly bent over backwards to include references to Article 42.7 in key EU documents, such as the Council of the EU decision establishing PESCO. When France, in the aftermath of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, invoked Article 42.7 to request assistance from other EU members, Finnish policymakers recognised an opportunity to set an important precedent. Helsinki swiftly decided to provide assistance to Paris, albeit indirectly. Most notably, Finland deployed additional troops to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, thereby freeing up French troops for other tasks.

Finland’s advocacy of Article 42.7 reflects the evolution of its attitude towards EU defence since the early 2000s. When the mutual assistance clause emerged in the Convention on the Future of Europe, Finland did not oppose the idea of it per se but wanted to make sure that it would not involve automaticity in the provision of military assistance. However, after the EU eventually found an acceptable formulation, Finnish policymakers quickly adopted a rather positive stance on the clause and the idea of European solidarity more broadly. The Finnish Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, for example, stressed the article’s importance as a deterrent and called on it to amend legislation on providing and receiving military assistance. The government adopted the relevant legislative package in 2017, driven partly by the French request to activate Article 42.7 in 2015 and by advancing defence cooperation with Sweden.

Despite its active and positive approach to the evolution of the security and defence agenda in Europe, Finland has not articulated a clear vision of how this process should continue. Helsinki has adopted a somewhat ambiguous position in the lively debate on ‘strategic autonomy’ in the EU. Finland is strongly in favour of increasing Europe’s capacity to act in foreign, security, and defence matters. In the Finnish view, this should involve not only the EU but also initiatives such as the Joint Expeditionary Force, the Nordic Defence Cooperation, and the bilateral defence cooperation between Finland and Sweden. However, investing in autonomy should not mean weakening Europe’s global partnerships – particularly the transatlantic relationship. Instead, it should be about the EU and European countries taking more responsibility for their own security, thereby also heeding the US calls for greater burden sharing. Finland is less enthusiastic about the broadened interpretation of strategic autonomy, which extends to industrial policy and trade. With its small, export-orientated economy, Finland is wary of initiatives with protectionist elements. According to the Finnish government’s recent report on EU policy, the EU’s strategic autonomy “must be based on the development of [the union’s] own strengths, fair competition and participation in the global economy as well as on a more resolute promotion of the EU’s values and interests and on responsibility in external action”.
Future avenues of cooperation

Finland will likely continue to develop its new approach to defence cooperation. The country’s geographic location next to an assertive Russia ensures that it has a lasting incentive to maintain a relatively strong defence capability. Given the power asymmetry between Finland and Russia, and the rising costs of defence materiel, it would be almost impossible for Helsinki to sustain a credible defence posture without extensive defence partnerships and networks. The EU’s evolving defence tools and other European initiatives will be central to the set of defence collaborations Finland uses to strengthen deterrence and prepare to respond to crises and conflicts. Finland is too small a player to shape the overall direction of the EU security and defence agenda, but it can lend its support to the initiatives of bigger member states, most notably France and Germany.

Despite its manifest willingness to intensify military cooperation, Finland is unlikely to re-evaluate its current status and join NATO in the short term – particularly given that it already has a host of interested partners that are willing to engage with it in developing deep, mutually beneficial cooperation. Significantly, Finland’s current model also serves NATO’s interests. Most Finns oppose NATO membership. And Finnish policymakers worry that the costs of Russian retaliation to Finland joining NATO would outweigh the benefits of doing so. Nevertheless, NATO membership will continue to be an option for Finland in the future, as Finnish policymakers are eager to stress. If Russia became increasingly aggressive or Sweden changed its attitude towards NATO membership, Finland would be forced to reconsider its current policy.

Currently, Finland’s official status as a non-member of a military alliance does not limit the country’s appetite for developing defence cooperation, be it the EU’s defence efforts or collaboration in smaller formats. A more militarily capable Europe would undoubtedly enhance Finland’s security. And Helsinki is ready to do its fair share to achieve that goal.