Pertti TORSTILA: “You have to do your homework and make up your mind about where you want to be”
Opponents to Ukraine’s NATO membership quite often point to Finland’s neutrality as an example to be emulated by our country. Is this Scandinavian country, which joined the EU in 1995 and has constantly participated in NATO operations, indeed neutral today? What does the term “Finlandization” mean to the Finns themselves? Finnish Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Pertti TORSTILA, who recently came to Ukraine to participate in an international forum on Ukraine’s non-aligned policy in European context, has answered these questions in an exclusive interview for The Day.
Mr. Torstila, you were present on International forum: Non-bloc policy of Ukraine in European context. What do you think about the discussion you have heard? What do you think about the non-bloc status?
“This is a sovereign decision by the Ukrainian government. Nothing to say about that. But like I said in my speech, the Finnish non-bloc thinking or Finnish neutrality is something which we lived with during the Cold War. But it ended in 1995, when Finland joined the European Union. You have read my speech perhaps, so I don’t have to repeat. In the Cold War neutrality was a success story for Finland. We were winning thanks to Finnish neutrality, and also the rest of Europe won. The CSCE process, the Helsinki Process Final Act, etc., and thanks to Finnish initiative it became reality and finally led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and freedom of the former Communist countries. So that was a good thing. But it’s not our recipe for today. We are in the EU, which is a political club. The EU is not a bloc because we don’t want to bring new dividing lines into Europe. The EU is open to enlargement and we can all be together in this endeavour.”
Is Brussels doing enough to prevent such line from happening in the future, helping Ukraine join the EU, and not to be the buffer zone or a bridge between European type of civilization and the Russian type?
“I think it came from the discussion very clear. This is something that belongs to you, the choice is yours. No one else from outside can or should impose any model on you. You have to do your homework and make a decision where you want to belong, which direction Ukraine takes. I mean for us in Finland the answer is very clear. Your place is in Europe. But it’s not up to us to tell it, you decide. So, it’s your way.”
I remember Finnish Minister of Defense stated that Finland should join NATO. What can you say about this?
“We are having a very lively discussion about NATO in Finland. During the decisive years in the 1990s, when NATO decided to enlarge, all the countries that joined the Atlantic Defense Alliance were former Communist countries. Obviously they felt to be in some kind of a security vacuum. They were part of the former Soviet bloc or the Warsaw Pact. But Finland was never a member of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. We already felt safe and comfortable. I was an ambassador in Hungary at the beginning of the 1990s, when Hungarians made the decision to start approaching to NATO, and it seemed to be the only choice for them when the Warsaw Pact had fallen into pieces. But as I said in Finland we felt safe and saw no need to join. Today some 65 percent of Finns, a clear majority, are of the opinion that we don’t have to join, and of course there are also those who speak in favor of membership. We are in the European Union already. That is our security anchor and that is our home, so to say. Our Government Program mentions the option to join NATO, but no such decision has been taken.”
What can you say about the term “Finlandization”? Will it come back because your president mentioned the possibility for Finland to follow the policy of Juho Kusti Paasikivi?
“Paasikivi was our president after the war (1946-56) at a difficult time, when we were building our first bridges with the Soviet Union after a very bitter war. And that was Realpolitik which meant Finland had to come to terms with the big neighbor in order to avoid another war. And we succeeded in that. And if you take the situation in Finland in 1945; a bombarded country in ruins. We had lost Karelia, 12 percent of land territory, 500,000 Karelians evacuated and resettled in Finland where population was 4 million after the war, – it was a gigantic task. A very difficult start, but then you come to the 1990s: you have the Nokia land, high-tech, belonging to the richest countries in the world, a respected country, politically, economically, socially, being well-founded in the family of Nordic countries. If that was Finlandization, I would like to say let it be then because if this is the result of our policy, even criticized by somebody, I hope that every country Finlandizes itself. Here it is the end result that counts.”
According to the current president of Finland (Mr. Sauli Niinist ), one should not close eyes to the open facts.
“There is nothing wrong in recognizing facts. I believe that we all win if we do this.”
What do you think about the statement of Putin in 2005 when he mentioned that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a geopolitical catastrophe?
“You have to put the question to Mr. Putin himself. This is the question which has puzzled many observers, analysts, and researchers in the world. What did he mean with that?”
What is your assessment of the collapse of the Soviet Union? Was it a tragedy or not?
“It was certainly not a tragedy for Finland and for the rest of the world. We don’t want that country to come back. Would you like to see it back?”
Of course not.
