Finland has been pretty quiet about recent US actions in Greenland, Hungary, and Iran, opposition parties say.
This week, the Finnish government updated its foreign and security stance to reflect the US administration’s changing foreign policy.
“Political change in the US puts allies in a new situation,” Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen (NCP) told Parliament on Tuesday when presenting the governemnt’s updated foreign policy report.
The report described the United States as “unpredictable” and its rhetoric “harsh,” leading the report to conclude that Finland should work to develop Nato in a European direction.
The governement began updating the report, which serves as a foreign policy blueprint, when the US threatened to acquire Greenland. Valtonen, however, noted that despite the harsher rhetoric, the US remains an important ally for Finland.
Avoiding confrontation?
Opposition parties in the legislature did not mince their words, accusing Finland’s foreign policy leadership of tiptoeing around the US.
“Our foreign policy leadership has been quiet as a mouse, just as Finns have long been accustomed to behaving,” said Anne Kalmari of the Centre Party, referring to US actions concerning Greenland, Hungary and Iran.
Left Alliance leader Minja Koskela was on the same page, saying, “this report is a pure whitewash.”
The report concludes that Finnish–US relations are closer than ever.
According to Koskela, however, Donald Trump‘s rhetoric has carried echoes of Finland’s Cold War-era Finlandisation, when the country avoided conflict with the Soviet Union.
Valtonen countered these claims, saying Finland remained ‘realistic’ and that political, defence and commercial cooperation with the US was working well.
