Northern Europe Thread

Nrjxll brought up that we don't have a politics thread for this region, so here it is. This is a thread discussing events in Northern Europe, which includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. Ireland and the United Kingdom can also be included, though the UK has it's own politics thread, so events related solely to them should be discussed there instead. To start, the UK has pledged to support Sweden and Finland if the countries come under attack by Russia.

Edited by CookingCat on Oct 20th 2022 at 4:57:26 AM

Speaking of the ongoing unpleasantness and its relationship to the Nordic countries, on the first of June, Denmark is having a referendum on June 1st to repeal a law that currently exempts it from making contributions to EU-related defense projects. As a founding member of NATO and a country with a laundry list of exemptions from various pieces of EU legislation, it's also become a bit of a political battleground between the Europhile parties ^note  the incumbent Social Democrats, the Socialist Party, the Social Liberals, the Liberal Party and the Conservatives and the Euroskeptic parties on the far left and right, ^note the Red-Green Alliance on the left and the Danish Peoples' Party and New Right on the right with the latter having joined forces with the yellow press to run a campaign against the referendum.

Currently the pro-European parties have a slim majority, but a similar referendum was held during the previous Liberal government with the purpose of repealing a different exemption, this one on collaborating more closely with European law enforcement, and that referendum ended in the exemption remaining in place. This was considered something of a blow to the Liberal Party's prestige and may have contributed to their defeat in the 2019 election.

The decision has been broadly supported by Denmark's small indigenous defense sector, since many EU countries, particularly those without close ties to NATO, have refused to do business with companies that are not part of European defense cooperation.

Edited by math792d on May 12th 2022 at 4:10:14 PM

Finland Nato: Russia threatens to retaliate over membership move

Another thinly-veiled nuclear threat. Wonder why they even bother to veil it anymore.

Because it's hot air. Putin has thrown away much of Russia's soft power leverage and most of his military forces in Ukraine so he can't meaningfully contest them. Nuclear tests are posturing and the M in MAD still stands for "mutual".

I'm always reminded of that one scene from Jimmy Neutron where one character kept bringing the same thing to show-and-tell for weeks.

That's what Putin's threats sound like at this point.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 12th 2022 at 11:47:31 AM

I am pretty sure I've seen that cartoon on Twitter...

So now with Finland joining NATO, if Sweden joins as well, all of Northern Europe will be in NATO, unless you include Ireland.

Edited by CookingCat on May 12th 2022 at 3:16:39 AM

I don't see anyway Sweden doesn't if Finland is.

This does actually represent somewhat of a sea-change for the security situation among the Nordic countries. While attempts to create a common security framework has existed pretty much since the end of World War 2, there's never really been a satisfactory umbrella organization. Denmark and Norway are founding NATO members, while Sweden and Finland didn't join the alliance. And while Denmark ^note albeit with an exemption in the defense area Finland and Sweden are all members of the EU and might hypothetically have found a way through the nascent EU defense effort, Norway is not a member of the European Union. There was never really an organization that could facilitate successful defense cooperation, resulting in a lot of bilateral treaties being signed to make up the difference.

Last year, if you told me that Sweden and Finland were joining NATO before Norway joined the EU, I would have told you to pull the other one. Strange world we live in.

The Turkish government is apparently unsure about letting Sweden join.

Erdogan said he's not happy about Sweden or Finland joining NATO. Or, apparently, Greece:

"We are following the developments regarding Sweden and Finland, but we don't hold positive views," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul, adding it had been a mistake for NATO to accept Greece as a member in the past. (Erdogan says Turkey not supportive of Finland, Sweden joining NATO)

Greece joined NATO all the way back in 1952, on the very same day Turkey did—Greece and Turkey joining was the very first NATO expansion—so that part seems like a pretty bizarre thing for Erdogan to be bringing up.

(There are some American arms sales to Turkey that the U.S. government has been holding up, so there may be a reasonably straightforward way out of this.)

That's most likely why he's doing it - Turkey never misses a chance to extract concessions in return for not holding up NATO processes.

See also: Any time a new Secretary General is nominated.

TBH, going back earlier in the thread, Russia's comments so far about Finland joining aren't thinly-veiled nuclear threats, and are actually slightly smarter than the usual saber-rattling, because they're making sure to note that their response will evolve based on the situation - in other words, even if Finland joins NATO, they won't be as pissed if troops aren't permanently based there. That's a degree of nuance that's kind of unusual at this point.

Though it's still pretty weak, because frankly they just don't have many cards to play here, and have implicitly admitted as much before (the biggest threat offered was to station nukes in Kalingrad, which is generally believed to already have some based.)

Turkey is also stirring up a lot of trouble in the Aegean over some of the islands near its coast that are Greek. Messing with their airspace, their sea claims, so them mentioning Greece is par for the course to their current program too.

Still, its probably just a speedbump. I imagine the Kurds (and Gulenists) will lose out and that is all Erdogan really wants out of all this.

I suspect that the reason Turkey and Greece joined together is because NATO Hq knew that if they let just one in they’d be forever vetoing the joining of the other.

It's a shame Turkey (or any country) cannot be kicked out of NATO.

And unfortunately Turkey is too strategically important to kick out either way, what with them being the reason the Black Sea Fleet can't currently reinforce at all.

Also, their drones (which at this point are almost certainly being paid for by NATO given the state of the Ukrainian economy due to the conflict) have proven extremely useful for Ukraine. If they were kicked out, they would have no incentive to further involve themselves in the war.

In short, they have the clout and leverage necessary to force the concession from Stockholm and Helsinki.

Turkey gave Finland and Sweden demands in exchange for NATO membership: https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-lays-demands-finland-sweden-121339885.html

Turkey demands Sweden and Finland drop all support for Kurdish "terrorist" groups. Well, I guess that makes some sense.

Edited by Kayeka on May 15th 2022 at 8:00:52 PM

Well, it's not surprising that Turkey would demand that. But keep in mind that what the turkish government considers "Kurdish terrorists" is a much broader category than what most would probably accept. Their official policy, for example, seems to consider the kurds fighting ISIS in Syria as just PKK terrorists under a new name. Plus I'm guessing they are angry on principle that Sweden did the heinous crime of housing kurdish refugees/immigrants.

This is one of the reasons I don't like the idea of us joining NATO: having to put up with and potentially make concessions to garbage governments like the Turkish, Hungarian and Polish ones. And there's always the spectre of the US potentially turning straight up fascist on a federal and foreign policy level themselves if the Republicans regain power soon. None of them are as bad as Russia is right now, of course, so I definitely understand the desire to join in the short term. I just don't think most Swedes - especially our politicians - are really considering what a NATO membership might mean in the long-term.

Another reason: for years and years now, whenever there's something big and new our government needs to finance - and if I'm not mistaken, joining NATO would obligate us to expand and invest more in our military? - their go-to solution is to make cuts to healthcare and education. Both of which are already underfunded due to us being stung by the New Public Management fairy in the 90s (thanks Reagan and Thatcher! ). So yeah.

If this helps Ukraine, Finland and our Baltic neighbors, I'll be perfectly willing to hold my nose and accept us joining. And I hope it does. But I'm not fully convinced it will.

Edited by Kardavnil on May 17th 2022 at 1:28:38 AM

NATO has an unofficial and legally unenforceable requirement that each member state spend 2% of its GDP on defense.

In theory, this means Sweden falls short of those expectations. In practice, the Swedish Armed Forces have ^note much like their cousins in formally NATO aligned Denmark been screaming at the government for at least a decade now that in the event of war the army has three weeks of ammunition and enough forces to hold out for the same amount of time. The pressure was on the government already, it just wasn't coming from NATO, it was coming out of Russia.

I am extremely sympathetic to having a government that got bitten by the NPM Fairy and still hasn't shaken those habits, but it's possible to have a functional welfare state and be able to defend it with credible deterrence Finland has proven as much. It's on civil society and the public ^note who have frankly been way too nice to the political establishment to make sure that if this defense expenditure goes up, it doesn't come at the cost of working families. That fundamentally undermines the motivation to even engage in a defensive effort.

In a way, social policy is defense policy, and it's time we re-learned that lesson.

Thanks for clarifying NATO's requirements for me

And you are right, the armed forces have been pushing for (and sometimes successfully getting) increased military spending for years now. I just meant that with explicit new obligations like this it's likely to become even more of a priority. Which may or may not be warranted (I'm still not entirely convinced that Sweden is at much of a risk of invasion in the first place, and that assumptions that we are are the results of overestimating Russia's power and Sweden's importance).

Regardless, you are also right that the Swedish public is partly to blame, for being so complacent and trusting of our political authorities that they do not push back on the weakening of the welfare state that has been occurring. And of course, a not-insignificant portion of the public are buying into Sweden Democrat rhetoric blaming all of our welfare-related problems solely on immigrants. Sigh, everything to avoid having to consider taking necessarily big action to solve complex issues.

But I hope we will manage to learn that lesson, we can agree on that too.

Even if Sweden, or any NATO country, isn't directly invaded, letting dictatorial regimes run rough-shod in our neighbourhood will have consequences. The Netherlands isn't exactly at risk of invasion either, but we'll probably feel it if Russia snatches up more potential diplomatic and trading partners for its "Sphere". Eventually, Russia and similar regimes will get to dictate terms to us without having to fire a single shot.

We thought we could do business with Russia, that they'd be too rational to not disrupt the status quo, and they'd eventually see the light of liberal democracy. So we allowed them control over our gas supply, and this is where we're at now.