Experts Doubts NATO Membership a Risk Factor
Image: YLE, source: Pertti Ahvera / YLE
Last weekend, National Coalition Chairman Jyrki Kaitainen told the newspaper Savon Sanomat on Saturday that terrorism had opened a security deficiency also in Finland, and on Tuesday Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen responded by pointing out that the worst terrrorist atrocities had been staged in NATO member states.
Researchers say that that membership in the alliance probably doesn't make a difference one way or the other.
A British researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Toby Archer, says that he sees no link between NATO membership and recent terrorist attacks, nor does NATO membership seem to offer any more protection or any greater risk.
While Prime Minister Vanhanen, writing in the newspaper Huvudstadsbladet implied that terrorist attacks are now being aimed against NATO member countries, Archer says he has his doubts that terrorists such as the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden are even aware of the existence of the alliance.
Professor of Strategic and Defence Studies at the National Defence College, Pekka Sivonen, sees a closer link between the Iraq war and terrorist attacks. In Europe, bombings have been carried out in Madrid and London, the capitals of two countries with troops in Iraq.
Sivonen's view is that the most crucial factors in the fight against terrorism are law enforcement cooperation and surveillance of both borders and money flows. He does concede, however, that intelligence from within the NATO community could be useful and that as a NATO member, Finland would have better access to that information.
For his part, the Executive Secretary of the Tampere Peace Research Institute Unto Vesa says he hasn't seen any convincing evidence that NATO membership is any protection against terrorism. He speculates that if probabilities had to be calculated, NATO members may perhaps be at greater risk than non-members.
And Tuomas Forsberg, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, says he has not notices any major security deficiency in Finland. He points out that the significance of NATO lies elsewhere than in anti-terrorism. Furthermore, Forsberg doesn't believe that NATO membership would increase the threat of terrorism in Finland.