The US government announced that it’s sending half a billion dollars worth of guided multiple launch rocket systems near Finland’s border with Russia. The escalation and out-of-control spending continues. The Pentagon argues that the move will “support the foreign policy and national security of the United States.” Also today, US HIMARS missiles are said to have hit a major dam in Ukraine and US progressives have found a new foreign policy home…with the neocons!
The republic’s public finances were dire, Mexico continued to pose a looming military threat, and major European countries all eyed the infant country as a possible geopolitical pawn. Nevertheless, the decision to join the Union soon proved to be disastrous, since Texas did so just in time to become part of America’s slide into civil war. The Swedes and Finns must now hope that opting for NATO membership does not lead to a similar calamitous outcome.
US and other Western leaders are beaming at the impending addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO, although there still is an outside chance that Turkey might block their admission to the Alliance. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hinted darkly that he may do so, unless the two candidate countries make certain concessions. He professes to be especially concerned about Sweden’s reluctance to extradite Kurdish “terrorists.” Given Erdogan’s long record of cynical opportunism on other issues, it is more likely that his threat is merely a bargaining tactic to show Ankara’s clout.
In addition to wanting policy concessions from Stockholm and Helsinki, he has sought concessions from the United States as NATO’s leader. His diplomatic hardball has already produced one benefit: Biden’s decision to approve a major sale of F-16 fighters to Turkey, a sale that had been on extended hold. Biden denied that there was any connection to Ankara’s position on NATO’s Nordic expansion, saying that “there was no quid pro quo with that; it was just that we should sell.” The timing of the White House approval, however, suggested otherwise. In any case, once Erdogan finishes with his diplomatic drama, NATO will have two new members.
Both countries bring significant military assets to the Alliance. Sweden, in particular, has a very capable, modern military, including a first-class air force. Finland possesses a smaller, less significant military force, but it has an 830-mile border with Russia. For NATO hawks, that situation is considered a major benefit, rather than another dangerous provocation toward Moscow. One might think that seeing the disastrous results of the West’s policy of making Ukraine a NATO military pawn would inhibit such recklessness with regard to Finland. Clearly, that is not the case, however.
The Kremlin’s reaction to the latest phase of NATO’s expansion has thus far been surprisingly mild. Moscow did inform both countries that if they joined the Alliance, Russia would be compelled to reposition its nuclear forces to focus more on Scandinavia, but there have not yet been any warnings that adding Sweden or even Finland crosses a “red line”—a warning that Vladimir Putin and other officials issued on several occasions with respect to Ukraine. One can hope that such restraint continues.
At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?
If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.
What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?
If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.
To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.
Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.
Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.
While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.
Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.
Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.
All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.
Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.
Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.
To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.
It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.
In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.
Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.
We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.
Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?
Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?
We take a look at how media outlets in the UK – and in Europe, Asia, Australia and USA – were all caught out by a Finland story that was just too good to be true. Because it wasn’t.
Have you heard the news? Prime Minister Sanna Marin (SDP) is doing something radical.
“Finland’s new prime minister, 34-year-old Sanna Marin, has announced plans to introduce a four-day week” says the Guardian, underneath the statement that Marin has “promised” a short working week.
“Finland’s new prime minister calls for four-day working week” says the Independent.
Britain’s commercial television channel ITV writes that “Finland PM calls for four-day working week and six-hour days.”
“Four-day working week and six-hour shifts to be introduced in Finland” trumpets Metro.
Meanwhile in the Daily Mail, with millions of readers every day, the headline is “Finland to introduce a four-day working week and SIX-HOUR days under plans drawn up by 34-year-old prime minister Sanna Marin.”
The story is not just confined to UK media outlets either: over the course of 12 hours on Monday it’s been repeated in a Belgian media website; and been the topic of a call-in during an Irish radio programme. It’s been published in Australia, India and the USA as well.
And it’s not true.
Not only are these proposals not included in the Finnish government’s policy programme, multiple government sources told News Now Finland on Monday evening that it’s not even on the horizon.
SDP politicians and party activists gather at 120th anniversary event Turku, 19th August 2019 / Credit: Jukka-Pekka Flander, SDP
Charting the origins of the story
So how did this fake news story begin, and how did the misinformation spread so quickly?
Back in August 2019 some senior Social Democrat politicians and party activists gathered in Turku on Finland’s southwest coast, for an event to mark the organisation’s 120th anniversary.
The weather was warm, the drinks were flowing, and the Turku Workers’ Association brass band – resplendent in their scarlet blazers – played traditional tunes while the guests sang along.
After then-PM Antti Rinne had made a speech, it was time for a panel discussion.
The participants included Sanna Marin – at the time Minister of Transport; Tytti Tuppurainen, Minister for European Affairs; Ville Skinnari, Minister of Development and Trade; and AnttiRönnholm, the SDP’s Party Secretary.
They sat under a canopy on a small raised stage, with a potted ficus and some SDP banners for decoration.
A moderator posed questions and kept everything moving along, but the whole event that day was about a celebration of the party’s history rather than formulating policy – which had anyway already been enshrined in Rinne’s government programme just two months before.
At one point during the discussion Sanna Marin floated the idea that Finland’s productivity could benefit from either a four-day working week, or a six-hour working day (she never suggested both).
Marin also tweeted about it at the time, noting plainly that it was an SDP party goal to reduce working hours – but to be clear, again, this was never official government policy.
The comment got some modest media attention in Finland but the news cycle soon moved on.
Composite picture showing some of the misinformation about PM Sanna Marin
Tracking the spread of the fake news story
Four months after the Turku event, on 16th December 2019, Austrian news outlet Kontrastpicked up the story.
Journalist Patricia Huber quoted Marin as saying that day: “A 4-day week and a 6-hour work day. Why shouldn’t that be our next step? Are eight hours really the last truth? I think people deserve to spend more time with their family, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of their lives – like culture. That could be the next step in our working life.”
It’s the key quote to follow here, and it matches almost exactly to what Finnish media quoted Marin as saying at the time. So in that sense it’s accurate.
The next time the story crops up is 2nd January 2020, when Brussels-based newspaper New Europe published an article by journalist Zoi Didiliwhose headline was “Finnish PM Marin calls for 4-day-week and 6-hours working day in the country.”
It gives the impression that this is an initiative announced after Marin became PM with the opening paragraph “Sanna Marin, Finland’s new Prime Minister since early December has called for the introduction of a flexible working schedule in the country that would foresee a 4-day-week and 6-hours working day.”
It gets several things wrong in that one sentence, and while it does reference the SDP’s Turku event, it doesn’t actually quote Marin saying there should be a four-day week, or six-hour days, and frames the whole context as if it’s a new initiative since Marin became PM.
It’s this article which seems to have sparked other stories especially in the British press, who quote Marin’s comments about people deserving to spend more time with their families, but offer no context or timeline for the original information.
File image of computer, cyber / Credit: iStock
How should the government respond to fake news?
This is not the most damaging piece of fake news, but the way it’s been picked up, adapted, and crucially not fact-checked by so many otherwise credible media outlets is worrying in an era where people are quick to spread information without verifying its provenance.
“If the misinformation is harmful then you should really attempt to address it as soon as possible. But always consider that the misinformation is likely to travel faster than the truth, so you are looking more at damage limitation rather than anything more effective” says Fergus Bell, CEO of Fathm, a consultancy for the news industry with a specific focus on countering misinformation in media.
“It is useful to have a communications team that know how to spot stories that might be surfacing – this is going to be the quickest way to put out a correction as quickly as possible” he advises.
It’s sound advice, and may have been hindered in Finland by Monday’s public holiday with civil servants and politicians trying to enjoy a day off. But Bell says that countering misinformation might anyway have a limited impact.
“Because of the way misinformation can spread a rebuttal might only fan the flames of the misinformation and give it life. Drawing additional attention to it isn’t going to make it go away any faster.”
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