Finland National Security
Escutcheon in front of Ministry of Defense,
Helsinki
IN THE STRATEGICALLY VITAL REGION of northern Europe,
Finland and
Sweden together form a large expanse of neutral territory
between
the two military blocs of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization
and the Warsaw Pact. Finnish defense policy in the late
1980s was
based on the principle that, while not directly threatened
from
any source, Finland was in danger of becoming involved in
the
event of a larger conflict between the great powers. In
such an
eventuality, Finnish territory might be violated in
military
operations targeting objectives beyond Finland's borders.
If, as
seemed most likely, the potential invader was primarily
engaged
elsewhere, determined Finnish defensive action should have
a
realistic chance to succeed, or at least to inflict severe
damage
sufficient to discourage potential incursions.
Finland's standing forces were modest in number (about
35,000), both as a requirement of the 1947 Treaty of Paris
and as
a result of the economic constraints on a nation of fewer
than 5
million inhabitants. The treaty also prohibited Finland
from
acquiring arms of an offensive nature. Nevertheless, a
conscription system provided military training for nearly
all
young men, and, in an emergency, a reserve force of former
conscripts could put up to 700,000 men, nearly 15 percent
of the
country's population, in the field. When mobilized, this
sizable
fighting force, aided by natural defenses of deep forests,
marshes and lakes, and a bitter winter climate, could
present a
formidable challenge to any invading army.
Historically, Finland has been a source of strategic
concern
to the Soviet Union because of its proximity to the
densely
populated, industrialized zone centered on the Soviet
Union's
second largest city, Leningrad. Although Leningrad was
still
important militarily, by the 1970s the strategic focus had
shifted northward, where sparsely inhabited Finnish
Lapland lies
close to the concentration of Soviet bases and ports on
the Kola
Peninsula. Upon the outbreak of war, these northernmost
regions
of Europe would, in all likelihood, become a key area of
conflict. Finland's northern defenses, both ground and
air, had
been reinforced during the 1970s and the 1980s to
emphasize its
determination to prevent Lapland from becoming a corridor
for
attack by one of the military alliances.
The Finnish military relationship vis-a-vis the Soviet
Union
was governed by the 1948 Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation, and
Mutual Assistance, which committed Finland to use all of
its
available forces to repel an attack from the West, if
necessary
with the assistance of the Soviet Union. Soviet
involvement
would, however, require Finland's assent. To preclude the
possibility of the Soviet Union's insisting on introducing
its
forces onto Finnish soil under the pretext of a developing
threat, Finland deemed it essential that the Finnish
Defense
Forces be perceived as having the capability to deny the
hostile
transit of Finnish territory. The Finnish defense posture
thus
gave considerable emphasis to effective surveillance and
alertness in order to detect violations of Finnish air
space and
land and sea intrusions in any part of the country.
Officially, Finnish defense strategy assumed that
attack
could come from any direction; hence, its standing forces
were
distributed throughout the territory. Finland's sensitive
relations with Moscow precluded a deployment suggesting
that the
most likely threat was along its extended eastern border
with the
Soviet Union. Nevertheless, a possible scenario was a
Soviet
crossing of the northern territories of Finland and Sweden
to
attack North Atlantic Treaty Organization bases in
northern
Norway that threatened the movement of Soviet fleet units
into
the Atlantic.
Finnish strategic doctrine had emerged from the lessons
learned during the two phases of its conflict with the
Soviet
Union between 1939 and 1944--the Winter War and the
Continuation
War. The Finns' experience of fighting against vastly
superior
manpower had taught them that set battles with
concentrations of
forces should be avoided. Defense in depth and mobility of
forces
were necessary in order to minimize attrition. The
emphasis was
on smaller fighting elements that could, by guerrilla
tactics,
employ terrain and weather to pin down and to divide
larger enemy
forces, then swiftly concentrate their own units for
punishing
attacks. The ultimate objective was not to win a clear-cut
military victory against a more powerful opponent but, as
in
Finland's World War II campaigns, to inflict sufficient
losses on
the attacker to persuade him that a negotiated settlement
was
preferable to a continued drain on resources.
Although Finnish first-line units were undergoing
modernization in the late 1980s, the Defense Forces as a
whole
were only moderately well equipped for the mission of
resisting
armed attack against or across Finland's territory.
Military
outlays continued to be among the lowest, in relation to
national
income, of all of the developed countries. Nonetheless,
the
nation was firm in its resolve to defend Finnish territory
and
independence. It was confident that its military
preparedness,
combined with the qualities of its individual soldiers and
its
forbidding geography, presented a strong deterrent to
intervention from any quarter.
Data as of December 1988
|