Fifteen years of Partnership for Peace with NATO

In October it was fifteen years ago that Finland became a Partner country in the NATO Partnership for Peace programme. Cooperation with NATO has become such a routine element of Finland’s security policy that the anniversary was hardly noted.

Ambassador Jaakko Blomberg took part in the preparation of pivotal policy lines for Finland’s foreign and security policy throughout the 1990s. The Department for Communication and Culture of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs interviewed Ambassador Blomberg about Finland’s early days of cooperation with NATO.

At the outset, Ambassador Blomberg points out that the fifteenth anniversary of cooperation with NATO in fact took place two years ago. Finland established official connections with NATO in spring 1992. Then, Finland differed from the other non-aligned countries of Europe by seeking Observer status of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council created by NATO for former Warsaw Pact countries. The start of cooperation was by no means without complications, Blomberg says.

Finland needed to follow developments in neighbouring areas

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO offered cooperation with its former enemy countries by establishing the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, the NACC. The first NAAC Foreign Ministers Meeting was held in December 1991.

A mere four months later, in April 1992, the Political Department of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs contemplated the possibility, in one way or another, of being able to follow the work done within this new cooperation arrangement. The issue was also discussed with the Swedes, but Sweden was not interested in Observer status. The motivation underlying Finland’s interest was, above all, the need to follow developments in our neighbouring areas of Russia and the Baltic states.

Blomberg, who was then head of the Political Department at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, visited NATO Headquarters in May 1992, the first high-ranking Finnish public servant to do so. Blomberg had talks with Gephardt von Moltke, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs. During the talks, it was hoped that Finland would be able to observe the NACC Foreign Ministers Meeting to take place in Oslo in June.

Surprising events on 4 June 1992 and a hasty invitation to the NACC Foreign Ministers Meeting the next day

A few days after Blomberg’s visit, the NATO Secretariat informed Finland that the request unfortunately could not be granted because of the wish to restrict the NACC only to member countries of NATO and the former Warsaw Pact. It was therefore a great surprise that on 4 June 1992, the NATO countries had decided during their Foreign Ministers Meeting to invite Finland to attend the NACC meeting the following day as an Observer.

According to documents at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Manfred Wörner, then Secretary General of NATO, had proposed that Finland be invited to the meeting as an Observer. Ambassador Blomberg himself thinks it more likely that Norwegian Foreign Minister Torvald Stoltenberg was behind the invitation extended to Finland. In any case, the Final Communiqué of the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting mentions that Finland would be an Observer at the NACC Foreign Ministers Meeting, at the country’s own request. The unexpected invitation to the next day’s meeting arrived in Helsinki so late that only Ambassador Kaarlo Yrjö-Koskinen, Finnish ambassador to Norway based in Oslo, was able to attend.

“En observant iakttagare” (An observant observer) wrote Hufvudstadsbladet in an ironic editorial

Blomberg points out that the climate in the early 1990s was very anti-NATO. Application for Observer status was generally considered a great mistake. It spread quickly in public that Finland had accidentally been approved as an Observer to the NATO cooperation arrangement. This concept can be found, for instance, in Jukka Tarkka’s book Itsenäinen Suomi (Independent Finland). The situation was not helped any by the fact that, owing to NATO’s original refusal, only the foreign policy leadership and senior public servants at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs knew of the attempt to obtain Observer status.

The NACC decision was debated both in the Finnish Parliament and in the media. There was discussion as to what sort of observer status Finland had sought. It was even difficult to translate the Finnish discussion to other languages. Blomberg remembers that the editorial on the issue in the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet had the headline “En observant iakttagare” (An observant observer).

To dispel the fuss, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs issued a press release stating that Observer status in the NACC was not linked with aspirations of membership or any commitments. The Finnish Parliament was assured that Observer status also did not mean a change to Finland’s decision to remain outside military alliances.

The Partnership for Peace initiative to deepen cooperation

Blomberg stresses that at the outset, cooperation was very tenuous. At first it was unclear whether Finland had sought Observer status only for the Oslo meeting or also for other NACC Ministerial Meetings or perhaps also for activities of the NACC. It soon became clear to Finland, however, that participation only in Ministerial Meetings was not enough; instead, there was the wish to take part in working groups dealing with activities in practice. In particular, discussion of peacekeeping issues at the NACC was of interest to Finland.

At its Summit in January 1994, NATO decided to extend the possibility for deeper cooperation to former Warsaw Pact countries as well as the other CSCE countries. For this purpose, the Partnership for Peace initiative was created at the proposal of the Americans. According to Ambassador Blomberg, this new initiative was seen in Finland above all as an answer to security concerns in former Warsaw Pact countries. The Partnership for Peace programme offered these countries the opportunity to develop their potential for NATO membership but without concrete promises of membership. Membership negotiations proper with the first former Warsaw Pact countries – Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – were started only in 1997.

The Partnership for Peace programme was extended to apply to Finland and other non-aligned European nations as well. However, according to Blomberg, the departure point differed. At that time Finland, Sweden and Austria had already applied for membership of the European Union. It was important for us that we, as established peacekeeping nations and Western democracies, were experienced as being on the giving end of Partnership for Peace cooperation in the same way as NATO countries.

A self-interested decision to ensure our own access to information

Blomberg underscores that Finland’s decision to take part in the NATO Partnership for Peace programme was based on three factors:

Firstly, we wanted to participate in peacekeeping, which weighed heavily in the programme. The Yugoslavian crisis shaking up all of Europe was a consideration in the background. Secondly, we felt it was important to develop the military joint action capacity necessary for peacekeeping operations. Already at that time it was clear that joint action capacity was based on NATO standards. Thirdly, our decision was steered by the need to follow the development of relations between NATO, Russia and Eastern European countries.

Our participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace programme was a self-interested decision to ensure our own access to information, Blomberg states.

Membership of NATO or new defence solutions were not the goal

The NATO Partnership for Peace programme and NATO’s expansion were launched at the same time, which in Finland gave rise to questions concerning the objectives of our NATO cooperation. Many thought that EU membership was the first step on the road to integration and that it would be followed by membership of NATO even though the great majority was against this.

Blomberg emphasises that the official departure point, however, was that Finland is not considering NATO membership. Moreover, the first Security Policy Report, presented in 1995, stresses that Finland is not using the Partnership for Peace as a stepping stone to new defence solutions.

According to the Security Policy Report, Finland is on the giving end of Partnership for Peace cooperation, but can also improve the country’s own joint action capacity simultaneously. These policy lines still guide Finland in NATO cooperation, Ambassador Blomberg explains.