Defense Capability – the Secret of Finnish Happiness?

Introduction: history, geography and demographics

In terms of long-term security and defense policy, Finland is an exception in Europe. During the Cold War, Finland, like many other European states, developed a whole-of-society defense concept. The current Security Strategy for Society from 2017 (soon to be updated) describes the comprehensive security concept as “the Finnish cooperation-based preparedness model, in which the vital functions of society are jointly managed by the authorities, business operators, organisations and citizens.”^[1] What makes Finland different is that it has maintained and constantly developed its national defense capability, even after the Cold War, in contrast to most other European countries. This approach is based on an essentially unchanged threat analysis: Even during the optimistic 2000s, Finnish government reports on foreign, security and defense policy never completely ruled out an armed attack.

Three factors shape the Finnish view of the security environment: history, geography and demographics. Finland has a small population of only 5.5 million, but a territory similar in size to that of Germany. These circumstances pose a number of challenges when it comes to ensuring a comprehensive and credible defense capability. Therefore, national security is seen as a task for the whole society in Finland, requiring a contribution from all citizens. The citizens’ duty to contribute to national defense efforts is enshrined in the Finnish constitution. For male citizens, this means military service, or alternatively non-military civilian service. Women are exempt from Finland’s conscription system, but can still volunteer for military service.

Geographically, Finland is situated in the northeastern corner of Europe. On its eastern side, it has a 1340 km (830 mile) land border with Russia. To the west, it is surrounded by the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Bothnia except for the northern part of the country. For the most part separated from Sweden by a body of water, Finland equals an island in terms of supply chains. Around 90 percent of Finland’s imports and exports are transported via the Baltic Sea, which underlines the importance of forward-looking planning.^[2] Security of supply is an important part of Finland’s comprehensive security approach, and Finland has a specialized agency for the task, the National Emergency Supply Agency. Its primary tasks are to maintain national emergency stockpiles of critical goods and ensure the functionality of critical systems, as well as coordinate preparedness cooperation between the private and public sectors to ensure national preparedness.

Ultimately, however, geography and demographic challenges would be irrelevant, had Finland not experienced war with its eastern neighbor Russia multiple times in its history. As part of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1809, Finland was involved in a war against a Russian state at least once every century. Finland fought its most recent wars against the Soviet Union during the Second World War, and the experience has left a lasting mark on the country.

Necessity makes creative

In late November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland without declaring war and began bombing Finnish towns and villages on a large scale. The reason given for the Soviet invasion was that shots had allegedly been fired from the Finnish side into a border town called Mainila, killing Soviet soldiers – Russia later admitted this was a lie.^[3] The invasion had been preceded by Soviet demands on Finland to cede territory; under the Secret Protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland and the Baltic States had been assigned to the Soviet Union’s sphere of interest. Finland rejected the demands.^[4] At the same time, the Soviet Union recognized an illegitimate puppet government of Finnish communists. They had fled to the Soviet Union after the Finnish civil war between the conservative Whites and communist Reds in 1918. The aim was to bring the communists to power in an occupied Finland.

Finland seemed to be hopelessly outnumbered by the Soviet Union. Only about 300,000 Finnish soldiers faced around a million on the Soviet side. Finland was also not particularly well equipped, and its air force in particular left much to be desired. Against thousands of Soviet armored vehicles, the Finns had to resort to a homemade weapon: an incendiary bottle, named after the then Soviet foreign minister Vyachelslav Molotov – the “Molotov cocktail”. Molotov had claimed on radio that the Soviet Union was dropping not bombs but bread baskets for its poor Finnish neighbors. In Finnish wartime humor, the Molotov cocktail was the drink to go with his food parcels.^[5]

As if by a miracle, the winter of 1939/40 was especially cold, and the Soviet troops were poorly equipped and supplied. Due to the harsh weather conditions, and with many tactical and strategic errors on the opposing side, the numerically inferior Finns were able to maintain their independence and sovereignty against the invading force. The experience became a foundation for the identity of the young Finnish nation, which had gained its independence only in 1917. It was an important lesson from the war that Finland must always be able to defend itself, as it was evident that it could not rely on the support of other countries. Finland had received a lot of sympathy, but no significant military support from abroad. Since then, the consensus in Finland has been to invest in its own defense capability.

War-fighting capability: a task for the society as a whole

Following the end of the Cold War, the Finnish Defense Forces (Puolustusvoimat) continued to focus on national defense capability instead of introducing the expeditionary force model, i.e. smaller, mobile armed forces for far away, out-of-area crisis management operations. As a result, the Finnish Defense Forces can quickly mobilize 280,000 soldiers in the event of war, and the total reserve is 870,000. Compulsory military service means that national defense personally affects all Finnish citizens. Many men would have to go to the front in case of a mobilization, and the vast majority of women would have family members and friends defending the country – or they would do so at the frontlines themselves, if they had volunteered for military service and were in the reserve.

Willingness to defend the country has been at a record high in Finland since the start of the Russian full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine. In an annual survey, the willingness to defend the country militarily – even if the outcome is uncertain – was at 78% in 2024, slightly down from an all-time high of 83% in 2022. Compulsory military service also enjoys broad support in Finland. 80% of respondents favor the current model, whereby military service is compulsory for male citizens and voluntary for female citizens, while 28% are in favor of a gender-neutral conscription model.^[6] In addition, more than 300 reservists’ associations are active in Finland and a special training organization offers voluntary national defense courses. The popularity of the voluntary courses has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – especially among women.^[7]

In addition to the military component, civil defense is an important part of Finland’s comprehensive defense model. One element of civil defense are the legally compulsory civil shelters in residential buildings and commercial and industrial facilities. In the capital Helsinki, with a population of around 670,000, there are 5,500 shelters with space for 900,000 people.^[8] Not only is the whole-of-society approach important but also the whole-of-government principle: Cooperation and coordination both within the government and between different levels of authority is vital in a crisis situation. To work in a real crisis, the procedures have to be exercised in advance. Such exercises are provided by the national and regional defense courses that bring together all key stakeholders in society for several weeks. Participants representing national and local government, the media, civil society, business, industry and providers of critical infrastructure play out various crisis scenarios (including war) in order to learn how to keep society functioning. The aim is to familiarize these key stakeholders in Finnish society with national security and defense, and with each other. Furthermore, many citizens follow the advice of the national emergency service to have 72 hours’ worth of supplies at home in case of a crisis.

“Pragmatic pessimism” – the path to happiness

However, the high mobilization potential and the seemingly almost paranoid preparedness culture do not mean that Finland is a particularly militarized society. As the Finnish mentality is purely defensive, military capability is geared toward an attack on Finland, not offensive purposes. Knowing that they can rely on the country’s leadership in a crisis also reassures citizens. For example, the requirement that civil defense shelters must be able to withstand nuclear radiation is not about any realistic chance of surviving a nuclear apocalypse. But it does have the psychological effect of demonstrating to citizens that someone has thought about even such a highly unlikely possibility and prepared accordingly.

The Finnish society is characterized by a strong consensus culture in security and defense matters. Most citizens have a good understanding of the threat environment, based on the still present memory of war and maintained through socialization during military service.^[9] Moreover, climatic conditions in Finland have often in history resulted in poor harvests and a difficult existence. This has shaped a special resilience in the population, called sisu in Finnish. Today, Finland often scores high in various rankings, based on structural factors such as low corruption and high transparency, stability, good governance, gender equality (except in military service) and an inclusive, high-quality education system. The World Happiness Report has ranked Finland the happiest country in the world for the seventh time in a row.^[10] The pragmatically pessimistic mentality has contributed to Finland’s high ranking: Pragmatic pessimism acts as a driving force, leading to a constant process of improvement. Hoping for the best, but always preparing for the worst.

The high happiness level in Finnish society is also important for its war-fighting capability. Equal opportunity in society is an important value and a constant goal in Finland, enabling the majority of the population to have a good life. Hence, the willingness to defend the country has two sides. The negative side is the constant perception of Russia as a potentially existential threat, whereas the positive side is the feeling that Finland is worth defending.

The Finnish model: limited applicability, but highly valuable

Some aspects of the Finnish model are only applicable to other countries that have a similar population size. Countries with a large population do not necessarily need compulsory military service, for example, if a sufficient military force can be recruited voluntarily. Within NATO, member states also have different profiles depending on their geographical location. Not every NATO country is a frontline state that needs an according territorial defense concept. The threat perception in Finland – based on historical and geographic factors – is also not universally applicable.

However, the civil defense component of the Finnish comprehensive defense system contains elements from which all European countries could benefit. Regardless of the national context, cooperation and coordination between different governance levels, well-practiced in peacetime, is beneficial in crisis situations. Hybrid attacks by malicious actors have recently surged in Europe, with various targets ranging from critical infrastructure to the information space. The multi-faceted threat highlights an urgent need to improve societal resilience. Steps are being taken: the EU recently introduced hybrid sanctions.^[11] The European Commission also recently tasked the former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö to write a report on EU-wide civilian and military preparedness. The report includes many recommendations familiar from the Finnish model, including strategic foresight on future risks and threats, increased capacity and speed of action with improved structures that are fit for the purpose, empowerment of European citizens as the backbone of societal resilience, effective cooperation between the public sector and private businesses, and deterring hybrid attacks.

The actual response capability of the Finnish comprehensive defense system has been tested several times since the fall of 2023 when Russia began ramping up its hybrid warfare. In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland was damaged by a Chinese ship with murky connections to Russia.^[12] In November, Russia began systematically bringing migrants – mainly from the Middle East and North Africa – to the Finnish border. The Finnish government acted quickly and closed the border crossings to Russia. Such a decisive response was possible because the previous government had amended Finland’s border protection legislation to deal with a crisis of this kind. The Finnish authorities foresaw the possibility that Russia would instrumentalize migration to exert pressure, as it had already once done so in 2015.^[13] Furthermore, a fivefold increase in GPS signal interference was recorded in Finland in 2023, and the Finnish airline Finnair had to suspend a new route to Tartu in Estonia for a month in the spring of 2024 as aircraft were unable to land due to severe GPS interference. The problem was provisionally solved by installing alternative navigation systems, but satellite navigation system interference was also reported in Finland in the summer of 2024.^[14]June-July 2024 saw a series of attempted break-ins at Finnish water supply facilities. So far, the attempts have been unsuccessful, however, thanks to sufficient security precautions. Most recently, in November 2024, two data cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea – one between Finland and Germany, and one between Sweden and Lithuania. A Chinese ship is suspected of sabotage.^[15

Conclusion: a multitude of attack vectors requires creative countermeasures

The (incomplete) list of incidents shows that democratic countries are easy targets by design. The strength of democracies is also their weakness: open societies are vulnerable, and the limits posed by rule of law make it difficult to respond to attacks that rely on illegal methods. However, the immediate and often merciless feedback loops challenge democratic decision-makers to improve a bad system if they want to be re-elected.

Finland offers some good and bad examples on how to respond to the increasing hybrid attacks. In May 2024, a rare opportunity arose to respond symmetrically. For a few hours, a document appeared on the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense, proposing to reassess its maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania. The Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs responded by initiating a review of the Finnish maritime borders– a technical process that is to be carried out every 30 years, the last time having been in 1995.^[16]

Dealing with instrumentalized migration at the Russian border has proven more difficult. As pushbacks are illegal under international law, it is impossible to find a both morally and legally clean solution. In the summer of 2024, Finland introduced an emergency law, aimed at preventing Russia from bringing migrants into Finland over the land border and not only through the official border crossings. The law was ratified by the parliament as a temporary 12-month exception to the Finnish constitution. It is intended to make the impossible possible: to legalize pushbacks, in violation of human rights, EU law and the Finnish constitution itself.^[17]

Finland has also introduced more active defense components. In October 2024, the Finnish government published a new cyber security strategy that enables active countermeasures. According to a member of the defense committee in the Finnish parliament, these include counter-attacks.^[18] The strategy states that “[t]he ability to apply a comprehensive and broad range of methods is particularly highlighted in responding to state-sponsored operations and serious cybercrime.”^[19]In the same month, Finnish authorities began seizing property and real estate owned by the Russian Federation in Finland. Finland had already tried to confiscate a number of properties in 2023, including a Russian science and culture center, but failed because Western sanctions only apply to individual Russian citizens, not the Russian Federation. Now Finland has legally based the confiscation on a lawsuit filed by the Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz, which has been demanding compensation from Russia since 2016 for lost revenue following the annexation of Crimea.^[20] The multi-faceted nature of hybrid attacks demands creative responses, and democratic countries have more scope to act than they currently allow themselves – if only they want to. In the confrontation with Russia, this may prove just as important as purely military readiness.