Finland looked southeast to Russia, west to Norway, and southwest to the EU, and the message is clear. So let's not be surprised that Finland sees the writing on the wall and has fine-tuned their foreign policy to take into account Russia's aggressiveness, America's Nobel Peace Prize-sanctified Europeanization, and Europe's fearful passivity:
Finland has no plans to join NATO and believes the main lesson of last year’s Russia-Georgia war is the need for closer ties to Russia, Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen said.
“The conclusion in Finland was that we have to deepen our relations to Russia and that we have to try in all ways to bind Russia better and better to Europe,” Vanhanen said today in an interview at his office in Helsinki. “So, more cooperation with Russia; that was the conclusion we made after the Georgia war.”
Mind you, the Finns have history on their side in that they are capable of doing serious damage to Russia in war, as they did in 1940-41. So I'm not saying Finland is about to become a satellite of Moscow. But Finland has adjusted their course due to the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. Their clear drift to the West has been arrested.
The Russians--unimpressed by dreams of Nobel Peace Prizes--aren't subtle in checking Western influence, either:
Russia, together with ally Belarus, last month conducted land, air and sea maneuvers dubbed “Zapad 2009,” or “West 2009,” to test command coordination in the event of an invasion from Poland and the Baltic nations, Russian state broadcaster Vesti-24 reported Sept. 27. Parallel war games took place at nine Russian sites under the code name “Ladoga 2009,” after the lake near Russia’s border with Finland.
Ah, memories. Every Soviet war plan that ended with Soviet troops sitting on the English Channel began with a heroic effort to repel a NATO invasion of East Germany.
So if the Russians mass troops to defend against a NATO invasion and it turns out NATO can't send even a fully combat ready brigade to Poland's border (I read some place that we have absolutely no plans to organize the movement of even a corps from pre-1989 NATO into eastern Europe to defend our newest NATO allies), the Russians will know what to do.
I fear Finland won't be the last to adjust their foreign policy.
