During the years of détente, when political movements across Western Europe were calling for unilateral disarmament and the dissolution of NATO, there was real fear of what the “specter of Finlandization,” to use Lacqueur’s term, posed for the continent. Today, the signs of creeping Finlandization across Europe are abundant. With the rising popularity of anti-EU parties (some of which enjoy warm relations with, if not actual monetary assistance from, Moscow), a plurality of Germans favoring neutralism over the Western alliance, and the City of London effectively an oblast of the Russian Federation, sacrificing Ukraine on the altar of better relations with Moscow would reinforce a disquieting trend. Relinquishing Ukraine to this fate amounts to a massive strategic and moral failure on the part of the West. Nor would it repair relations with Moscow. For the Kremlin’s appetite will not be satisfied by a Finlandized Ukraine; it will next demand similar arrangements for all the countries in its “near abroad.” For most Europeans, Jean François Revel wrote in his 1983 classic How Democracies Perish, Finlandization offered “the vague suggestion of a comforting compromise, a chance to become accustomed to their inevitable servitude.” A relic of the Cold War, Finlandization was an unfortunate overreaction to Soviet aggression. And like the expansionist communist ideology that provoked it, so to the dustbin of history should Finlandization also be discarded. Far from being the scrappy strategy of fond memory, Finlandization was a kind of imperialism. Our foreign policy mandarins ought to study what exactly it was, the costs it entailed, and the threat it posed to the Western democracies before so casually wishing it upon others. the-american-interest/articles/2014/07/27/finlandization-is-not-a-solution-for-ukraine/
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:00:13 +0000
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