Finland is destroying her national defense

Last week, the Finnish parliament announced sweeping cuts to the armed forces. Over the next two years, five bases will be closed and several units combined. Savings of up to 10% of the current defense budget are sought.

In and of itself, closing some bases doesn't materially affect Finland's national defense. The problem is that these closures are part of a longer trend of gutting the armed forces to save money. Finland is not a member of NATO, and is committed to maintaining an independent national defense. However, back in 2009, the chief of staff of the Finnish Army publicly stated that Finland is no longer capable of defending her territory. Since then, more cuts have followed.

The Finnish Army maintains practically no standing forces, instead relying on conscription to create a large reserve army. This wartime army, however, has been slashed to a third of its size over the last decade, and the current round of cuts will have a heavy impact on reservists' refresher training. Funding for materiel is basically non-existent, leading to the effective disbanding of Finland's mechanized forces, with the remaining tanks and IFVs divided between three "readiness brigades" mostly lacking tracked mobility.

It was of course inevitable that the end of the cold war brought pressure to re-examine Finland's security and defense policy. In fact, no reorienting has happened; Finland has chosen to maintain the facade of her cold war armed forces while in fact cutting their funding to the point where they are little more than a paper army. The process is dictated by party-political expediency: a comprehensive defense review would be politically risky, especially since the political left has successfully demonized NATO, and conscription had been enshrined as a sacred guarantor of the nation's security and manhood. Estimates of the actual costs of conscription to the national economy are simply ignored, and although some 30,000 conscripts are trained annually, neither the refresher training nor the equipment exists to create a capable wartime army from this vast reserve.

In short, Finland continues to operate a massively wasteful system of conscription which fails to produce a viable national defense. There is no political pressure or desire to address these issues; instead, defense policy is mined for populist talking points while the "big picture" is studiously ignored. Over the last few years, the Ottawa land mine ban treaty was acrimoniously debated, which in the current situation is like fighting over deck chairs on the Titanic. Similarly, when the current base closures were debated, several politicians made a great point of the fact that Finland's only Swedish-language unit, a marine brigade, was not disbanded. The marine brigade in question has a vital role in Finland's wartime planning, which is cheerfully ignored by politicians trying to turn the debate into a language-political one.

The net result is that Finland is currently unable to defend her territory or airspace, and unwilling to take any steps to change this state of affairs or even admit that it exists. Instead, most Finns either profess a blind faith in a non-existent national defense or deny the possibility of war altogether. Finland is currently defenseless in the face of potential military pressure from Vladimir Putin's Russia, and should Europe be re-divided into opposing power blocs, Finland will be re-Finlandized and return to the state of quasi-independence under Russian domination she was in during the cold war.

In destroying her national defense and refusing any international security arrangements, Finland is gambling heavily on peace in our time. At stake is her independence as a nation and the lives of her citizens. Despite paying a heavy economic price for maintaining an obsolete and ineffective system of conscription, she is more vulnerable today than at any other time in her history, and is constantly becoming more vulnerable. This gamble is not a policy consciously decided on, but an emergent property of her dysfunctional nationalism and political culture. Defense policy is subordinated to cheap populist point-scoring and the myth of inherent Finnish military prowess, which prevent any reasonable public debate.

Our current national defense consists of hoping no-one will attack us. If they do, we can't defend ourselves.

Going to jail in October

After a month of waiting I finally know: I'm going to start serving my prison sentence on October 15, at Jokela prison.

To give you an idea of how long this process takes, I refused my service in February. The court decision came in late June, and I had to wait for three months to find out when I'm going to prison. Ever since June, I've been unable to plan my life ahead for more than a few weeks as I've never known when I'm going away. So yeah, not feeling so good this fall. But at least now I know.

Black steel in the hour of chaos

I got a letter from the government the other day
Opened it and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me giving a damn, I said never.
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like myself
Because I never did
I wasn't with it but just that very minute
It occurred to me the suckers had authority.

**

I did, in fact, get a letter from the government today. In very archaic and plain weird terms, it said they were suckers, but they did have authority. I've been sentenced to 114 days in prison, effective July 3rd, for refusing to complete my "civilian service". Finnish legalese, by the way, is only slightly confusing, but it is very linguistically strange.

So, now it's official: I'm going to prison, most likely around the end of July. Under the Finnish system, 114 days translates to about four months real time, so basically I'll spend the fall of 2009 behind bars.

**

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
You must not act the way you were brought up
Who give you work and why should you do it?

Going to jail

I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while this year. Later in June, I'll be receiving a four-month prison sentence from the Porvoo district court for refusing to complete my conscript service.

Finland still has conscription, meaning (nearly) all men have to serve in the army for a period of 6-12 months. Those who refuse armed service must complete 12 months of "civilian service". This civilian service has no function related in any way to the defence forces; it is solely a punishment for those who refuse to serve in the armed forces. Refusal to complete civilian service results in a prison sentence equivalent to half of the remaining service time.

I've refused, and will shortly be receiving a four-month prison sentence.

**

Of course, in Finland, not everyone gets drafted. People living in the demilitarized Ahvenanmaa Islands or belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses religious cult are exempt from service. Similarly, of course, all women are exempt.

Think about that for a moment. If I belonged to a particular religious cult, I wouldn't have to go to prison. Or, indeed, if I had different genitals. This blatant inequality alone is reason enough for me to refuse to participate in the system. It's unbelievable to me that in a 21st century Nordic country, your gender gives you an exemption from service. But this is part of the reality of gender equality in Finland.

**

I'm not refusing service because I'm an antimilitarist as such. I'm a pacifist, yes, and I consider myself an antimilitarist, at least in the sense that I'm strongly opposed to the political ideology of militarism. But I have nothing against the existence of the Finnish army; in fact, I'm positively in favor of it.

I principally oppose conscription because I'm a libertarian. I don't believe the State has any right to force me to serve in the military. Conscription is nothing but forced labor, and that has no place in a free country.

I also oppose conscription because I'm a feminist. I believe firmly in equality in life and especially in equality before the law. However, this summer I'm going to prison because of my gender. If I was a woman and didn't want to serve in the army, I wouldn't have to; because I'm a man and don't want to serve in the army, I'm going to prison.

Also, I'm going to prison because I'm an atheist, more or less. At least in the sense that if I was a Jehovah's Witness, then I wouldn't have to serve. I'm not, so I do.

The blatant inequality of the Finnish conscription system is so abhorrent to me that I can't participate in a system that forces some citizens to serve in the army, but exempts others because of their gender or religion. And for that, I'm going to prison this fall.

**

For additional information, there is a rather poor article on Conscription in Finland on Wikipedia. There's more information at the Union of Conscientious Objectors' website. Note that I'm not a member, nor do I intent to become one.

I'll receive my sentence at the end of June, and will post updates as I know what happens next. Obviously my blog will be on a rather long hiatus this fall because of this. I'll likely be starting my jail term in late June or August, but I don't know that yet.

To be honest, I'm not exactly looking forward to four months in prison. Of course, I'm getting off relatively easily; 70 years ago conscientious objectors in Finland were murdered by the Finnish army. But still, it's not a decision I've made lightly.

However, I firmly believe that conscription is one of the most unjust, tyrannical and simply unacceptable human rights violations taking place in Northern Europe today. I'd like to finish off with a quote from the Anti-Conscription Manifesto of 1926, signed by such renowned communists as Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, among others.

(feminists should take especial note of the penultimate sentence)

It is our belief that conscript armies, with their large corps of professional officers, are a grave menace to peace. Conscription involves the degradation of human personality, and the destruction of liberty. Barrack life, military drill, blind obedience to commands, however unjust and foolish they may be, and deliberate training for slaughter undermine respect for the individual, for democracy and human life.

It is debasing human dignity to force men to give up their life, or to inflict death against their will, or without conviction as to the justice of their action. The State which thinks itself entitled to force its citizens to go to war will never pay proper regard to the value and happiness of their lives in peace. Moreover, by conscription the militarist spirit of aggressiveness is implanted in the whole male population at the most impressionable age. By training for war men come to consider war as unavoidable and even desirable.

I will rather go to prison than in any way give my assent to this system.