During his official visit to Washington D.C., the Finnish Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies told in a speech held for an audience at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies that "The three most important security challenges from Finland's point of view are Russia, Russia and Russia."
Since then the Finnish president Tarja Halonen, and the Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen have both been apt to publicly take distance from the defence minister’s comment. Even though the presidents’ chancellery actually had received a copy of the speech held by the Defence minister a week in advance it was to be held, the president’s chancellery obviously now seems to either have been pressed for time in order to attend to more important issues of the state or just considered the defence minister’s speech not important enough to bother to read through. The former Finnish foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja also expressed his opinion about the mentioned statement “showing a lack of judgement”.
The defence minister Häkämies refuses to step back on his statement insisting that he does not see where his views differ from those held by the President and the Prime Minister.
Well this probably is true, but even I who am not a Finn do know that these things are not spoken about in public. Everyone who has been living in Finland for some time realises that the threat for Finland’s security in any way does come from the west, nor from the south. And this is how it traditionally has been for centuries ever since Finland was a part of the Swedish kingdom, before it became an autonomic part of the Russian empire or got its’ independence in the early 1900’s. So what is new?
It just seems that this really is a question of lacking plain common sense and severe lack of judgment, there is of course the always prevailing of marking your territory, which politicians seem to have even a greater need to do than ordinary citizens have, especially when having fairly recently stepped into office as the defence minister just has earlier this spring which might just have taken the upper hand.
This all seems quite small and is of no important at all in a hundred years time, as everything does, but what surprises me is the lack of the Russia’s reactions, especially now with the presidential elections being held in a year’s time. What will they say, how will they say it and when?
Anyway, at least it now has been stated by and official Russian source that Russia really were considering selling Carelian back to the Finns in the 1980’s and even a price was mentioned but the proposition just never left the planning stage and was never presented to the Finnish officials at the time.
According to a recently done Gallup one in five did feel that the threat from Russia has increased and young people less likely saw Russia as a threat than older people do. This survey was of course done before last week's controversial speech in Washington by Defence Minister Jyri Häkämies, in which he said that Russia was the greatest challenge to Finnish security.
Yesterday the Russians finally expressed their puzzlement publicly in the media about the speech in question, they were wondering if the Finns were to change their policies as they now consider Russia being a safety threat. The word used in minister Häkämies speech was in Finnish challenge but was translated into threat in Russian.
The Finnish defence minister was this morning interviewed on morning TV and answered some questions that had been sent in by the audience. One thing was sure, the defence minister is standing for what ha has said that there is no one else to blame as he kept repeating the same meaning over and over with changing the words. Well that is quite brave and straightforward, but as a representative of a whole country and all its’ citizens one might think a bit more about what to say, when to say it and where to say it. When answering to the question whether he would have kept the same speech in Moscow the answer was a non-committal one, simply with that it is entirely another issue, what he would say there, but he kept on repeating that it was his responsibility and no one else’s.
The defence minister is later this week to meet with the president when he might get slapped on his wrist for being a bad boy, maybe even told to be resigned, but then politician have survived through big lies and cover-ups instead of speaking their honest, true mind, which is refreshing as a change.