Hanna Ojanen

Finland: Rediscovering Its Nordic Neighbours After an EU Honeymoon?

FINLAND HAS BEEN characterized as ‘realist’ and as a ‘good European’ (Volanen, 2005).1 There seems to be an interesting tension between the two. The ‘good European’ had the upper hand right at the beginning of Finland’s EU membership in 1995. ‘Realism’ seems now to set the limits on exactly how good a European the country can be. For observers, Finland’s policies may seem inconsistent: increasing emphasis on European security policy is accompanied by a strong national accent in the conception of security threats and needs. Finland has also had a hard time figuring out what being a ‘good European’ might mean in practice in relation to the changed international situation of the past few years. The split within the EU and the uncertainties around transatlantic relations puzzle Finland, which finds taking sides problematic. The enlargement of NATO and the EU to include the Baltic states and the warming impact that the war on terrorism has had on NATO–Russia relations add to the confusion. For Finland, finding the right reference group has always been important. Now, however, such a group seems harder than ever to identify. The tension between ‘realism’ and ‘Europeanism’ is also visible in Finland’s relations with its neighbours, which serve as an indication of broad trends and policy changes.

Power in Inter-Organizational Relations

This chapter argues that power and power relations offer an important perspective to understand the interaction between international organizations. International organizations need power, exert power, and their relations with other organizations are both a factor that affects their power and a venue where they exercise that power. Such a power perspective has thus far been rarely used, particularly in the analysis of international organizations in the field of security policy. The chapter takes a deeper look at the reasons that have limited power analysis in inter-organizational relations, suggesting ways to overcome them. Looking at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the United Nations (UN), and the European Union (EU) in particular, the chapter argues that understanding their power relations helps to understand the specificities of international organizations as organizations, and their current position in the international system.

The Finnish Presidency: Efficiency Before Eloquence?

At the conclusion of the second Finnish presidency of the European Union (EU) in the second half of 2006, the Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja noted that the Presidency had consisted of 65 per cent unforeseen events and 35 per cent anticipated events; and overall, it had been more successful with the former than the latter (Tuomioja, 2007). There are several reasons for such a surprising conclusion. Above all, some of important issues like the services directive, REACH and the EU Battle Groups had been largely agreed prior to the Finnish presidency. Therefore, the ambitions on the legislative front and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) were not particularly high. Due to the expiration of the Partnership and Co-operation Agreement (PCA) with Russia and the fact that that relations with Russia is a special field of interest and expertise of Finland, the presidency’s main efforts concentrated on concluding the mandate for the negotiations on the PCA. However, these efforts were impeded by the dispute between Poland and Russia on meat imports (see Allen and Smith, this volume). Another anticipated item on the agenda, enlargement, proved to be more strenuous than before.Against this background it can be said that the successful handling of the unexpected war in Lebanon ‘saved’ the Finnish presidency and it can be considered a ‘successful’ presidency. The Finnish presidency would appear as one in which political leadership was the most prominent in sudden crises and least prominent in issues EU’s on the long-term agenda. JCMS 2007 Volume 45 Annual Review pp. 17–24

The EU’s Responsibility for Global Security and Defence

With the development of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), the EU is assuming both new tasks and new means — civilian and military — as an international security agent. Its ambitions are plainly expressed in the European Security Strategy of 2003, where the Union declares its ‘readiness to share in the responsibility for global security’. In that document, the Union commits itself to acting in various ways: disciplining violators of international norms, supporting stability in the neighbourhood, preventing conflicts, and tackling a number of complex security threats. Moreover, it aims at assuming a role in the defence policies of its member states in that the Constitutional Treaty, in its existing form, includes a common defence clause and the establishment of the European Defence Agency. If taken literally, all these tasks together amount to an enormous burden of responsibility. Can the EU credibly take care of all this? What bearing does this shouldering of responsibility have on its actions in practice?

Power at Work: Relevance and Tasks

This is the first of three empirical chapters in the book. It first deepens the discussion on relevance as a sine qua non for an international organisation. What can the organisations do to maintain and even increase relevance? How do they find relevant tasks? How do they deal with allocation of tasks and try to get to choose their own tasks, or attempt at defining what the relevant tasks are? As examples, the chapter presents the case of “right of first refusal,” part of the shaping of EU-NATO relations in the mid-2000s and the attempts at redefining security threats. The chapter goes through the emergence of cyber threat on the agendas of the organisations as an example of how they localise new security threats and show their helpfulness in addressing them.

Power at Work: Relevance and Hierarchies

This chapter looks at situations in which hierarchy appears in some form or another in the relations between the EU, NATO and the UN and where hierarchy is perceived as problematic. These relations, in fact, display a constant tension between attempts at forming a hierarchical order of some kind and attempts at resisting it, defending instead the autonomy of each organisation. Here, the concepts of positioning and dependency help understand the relations. Three examples are looked at. The first is the EU’s development as a military actor and its autonomy. The division of labour and specialisation as forms of dependency in EU-NATO relations are themselves divisive questions. They are also questions about power; more in particular, this can be seen as a case of resistance or retrenchment. The chapter then looks at the articulation of the EU-UN relationship that tries to avoid spelling out a hierarchical relation. Status and rank order matter; the EU is not—and is not happy with being defined as—a regional organisation of the classical type. It is something different; just how different? The suggestions and solutions as to the position of the EU within the UN tell more about these tensions. Finally, the chapter examines NATO-UN relations where there is tension between NATO’s needs to seek legitimacy and stay independent. Hierarchy and legitimacy are at stake: the cooperation agreement between NATO and the UN of 2008 and how it was arrived at is an illustration of this.

Analysing the Power of the EU

This chapter analyses the EU as an organisation that does have power: in fact, the EU’s power is constantly debated, either for there being too much of it, or too little. The power of the EU is particularly interesting to study. It is not a typical international organisation, perhaps not an organisation at all: its exclusive competences, autonomy, constitution-like treaty basis and citizens of the EU make it sui generis. Still, it is important not to isolate the EU as if knowledge about it could not be generalised. Instead, it is theoretically central to the nature of power and power dynamics. Similarly, the EU is empirically central as it is the development of the EU that has accelerated and intensified the interaction between international organisations, clearly visible among the three organisations analysed here. The chapter looks at the attitudes towards EU power, intertwined with expectations; it tackles the question of the specificity of the EU’s power, characterised as, for example, normative, civilian or soft, and analyses the change in the nature of the EU, its “power to” and its “power over.”

Analysing Inter-organisational Relations

The study of inter-organisational relations forms a part of organisation theory. It has not been widely applied to international organisations. This chapter points out and clears away some theoretical impediments related to the understanding of the character of international organisations. These would include the idiosyncrasies of the study of international relations when it comes to the locus and type of power, and the habit of concentrating on the state even when analysing inter-organisational relations, or still the habit of not seeing international organisations as able to have power. The attitudes towards international organisations clearly matter to how the questions are framed. The chapter then goes on to look at the empirical development of inter-organisational relations in the field of security, concentrating on the three organisations that this book is about: the EU, NATO and the UN. It looks at existing research on them and finds that power is missing in the analysis.

Re-Assessing Finland’s Integration Policy: The End of Domestic Consensus?

Pragmatism and adaptability are the qualities most often associated with Finland’s European policy. In the European context, they manifest themselves in the political elite’s view that national interests can best be pursued through active and constructive participation in EU decision-making. Finnish integration policy has thus stood in quite striking contrast with the EU policies of Denmark and Sweden, both of which have been far less supportive of further integration. Finland has pursued what has often been labelled as a model pupil strategy, a policy which has made it characteristically pro-mainstream and anti-awkward. Re-assessing this traditional image of Finland, we argue that beneath the veil of domestic consensus were strong disagreements over Europe, regarding both policy and procedure, or how the EU was approached domestically. The post-2010 situation has brought the disagreements into light. The euro crisis has shaken the foundations of this pro-integrationist approach, bringing to the surface the internal divisions that exist among both political parties and the public over Europe and even affecting EU-level bargaining. Moreover, the war in Ukraine and Russia’s actions in the neighbourhood have led to questions about Finland’s foreign and security policy, especially about the extent to which Finnish external relations and relations with Russia are tied to European level decisions. Party-political contestation over the EU sets stronger constraints on government behaviour in Brussels and lessening political consensus paves the way for more potential changes and unexpected behaviour, and thus a certain awkwardness. At the same time, we see continuity: even if more critical than before, Finland might still be firmly in the mainstream, because the mainstream itself has changed. The gains and losses caused by integration are now more thoroughly calculated, and the commitment of member states to the goals of the Union has arguably weakened. For Finland, the euro crisis and the deteriorated security situation have underlined the importance of the European framework for advancing national interests.

Analysing Power in Inter-organisational Relations

Power matters in inter-organisational relations. Relations between the EU, NATO and UN have grown in importance, and this chapter argues that these relations are quite consequential. Thus far, interaction between these and similar organisations has been studied by looking at different mechanisms of interaction, such as emulation, or else it has focussed on concrete achievements and functioning of their cooperation in different missions or operations. Here, power is brought in. The chapter starts from the claim that the performance of an organisation can be crucially impacted by another organisation. It may then need power over that other organisation to ensure that it is not losing, but perhaps even getting stronger. What would such “power over” consist of in practice? Where would it stem from? The chapter looks at the forms and sources of power manifest in relations between the EU, NATO and the UN, using some elements of the literature on power in inter-organisational relations. In this field, power is a central concept and a natural part of relations between organisations: they need to assure survival and thus need resources from their environment, an environment that includes other organisations. The sources of power might here include, for example, information, expertise, resources, position and legitimacy. The question raised in the chapter is why these would not apply even to international organisations. Indeed, they do apply: there are signs of an increasing need of legitimacy, and the importance of knowledge emerges. The EU-NATO-UN relations, when examined with these tools, lead to the question of relevance. It is in the context of relevance that power becomes necessary to understand. What crucially matters for the organisations is what happens to their task description, their image and their relations with one another. Tasks, image and hierarchies are found to be key to their relevance, and thus, the following chapters look at these in more detail.