Fighting For Your Country

In this week’s Europe Dispatch, Minna Ålander continues on a topic related to last week’s discussion on conscription: what makes people willing to defend their country, and why that matters.

Hi Everyone,

So the US did end up bombing Iran, but that was whole 3 days ago, so barely news anymore, right? In any case, I wrote on what I promised last week: willingness to defend. It is an important issue especially with regard to the conscription question. Germany is now apparently seriously considering the reactivation of the male conscription system they paused in 2011 if the voluntary model fails, which I have been arguing against for two years now... Perhaps that is the topic for next week: why I think that conscription, as it is proposed at the moment, might not work in the German context (I briefly mentioned some potential issues last week).

Anyways, this time I focused on Finland as an example of a country where the conscription system enjoys wide societal acceptance and willingness to defend the country is high. The Finnish defence system has many quite unique features that would be hard to replicate in other contexts and therefore aren’t directly exportable. However, the basics of what generally makes people want to defend their country apply quite universally: a combination of a clear threat perception and the feeling that the country is worth defending.

Best,
Minna

The Finns Seem Willing To Fight To Defend Themselves—Will Others?

What Is Willingness To Defend Made Of?

When Russia initiated its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many Finns worried that Russian tanks might roll over the Finnish border next – Finland was, like Ukraine, not a NATO member, after all. Anecdotally, in February and March 2022, I had the same conversation with all my Finnish friends: what would each of us be able to contribute to the defence effort if the worst happened? My artist friends were wondering whether they had any useful skills, my architect friends were ready for anything with even a portable toilet in their basement, and my hotel manager friends had a plan for guerrilla action with their team (they were only half joking). The moment was deeply intense – and willingness to defend against potential Russian aggression at a record high, 83 percent.

In Finland, the willingness to defend is measured in an annual poll conducted by a parliamentary committee, the Advisory Board for Defence Information. In the latest poll, published in December 2024, 78 percent (slightly down from the above-mentioned 83 percent in 2022) of respondents agreed with the question “If Finland were attacked, should Finns, in your opinion, take up arms to defend themselves in all situations, even if the outcome seemed uncertain?” I added the emphasis on the last part, as it is relevant for assessing the responses how these questions are phrased. Given the “even if the outcome seemed uncertain” part, the implication is pretty strong: a vast majority of Finns is ready to defend their country, regardless of the odds of success.

The duty to participate or assist in national defence is enshrined in the Finnish constitution, in section 127. For male citizens between the ages of 18-60, with plans to raise the upper limit to 65, the national defence obligation means military service (voluntary for women). Another important question in the annual poll is therefore on personal willingness to defend: “If Finland were attacked, would you personally be willing to participate in various national defence duties according to your abilities and skills?” In 2024, 80 percent responded affirmatively (83 percent of male respondents and 78 percent of female). At the all-time peak in willingness to defend in 2022, 89 percent of male respondents answered “yes” to this question, which is significant given that it is the male population that is subjected to conscription. The current conscription system also enjoys high support (80 percent) and many reservists are eager to participate in voluntary repetition practice.

What, then, makes Finns so particularly eager to defend their country ? The answer has two sides. On the negative side, the threat perception of Russia is widely internalised in the Finnish population. In 2021, 59 percent of respondents in a poll considered Russia a military threat, whereas the share of respondents who thought so jumped up to 79 percent in 2022 (or, even 85 percent in a poll later in 2022).

Finland’s geographical location is slightly schizophrenic: in the West, the nicest possible neighbour Sweden, but in the East, Russia with a persistently aggressive policy towards its neighbours and a historical memory of Russian invasions of Finland. Norway in the North and Estonia in the South count to the nice neighbours – in short, no other neighbour poses a potential threat to Finland, except Russia. That makes the threat environment in some ways very straightforward and there is no lack of clarity about measures that need to be taken to prevent and, if needed, defend against potential aggression. As I have sometimes joked, not everyone is as lucky as Finland, with a neighbour like Russia that keeps your eyes wide open. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb recently said in a speech, “the world is not Sweden”, implying that Finland needs to be prepared for the nastier habits of other neighbours.

However, just having a strong threat perception is not sufficient alone to inspire willingness to defend. On the contrary, if people perceive a threat but have no sense of what is worth defending, they will likely just leave the country. Therefore, the positive side is at least equally important: that citizens feel that their country is worth defending, or enables a way of life that is worth defending.

In Finland, social equality and the welfare state have traditionally built the basis for the positive part of the social contract (which I wrote about last week in the context of conscription). On average, Finns have quite a good standard of living, social inequality is comparatively low, and Finns experience the investment the state of Finland makes in its citizens quite concretely: by supporting families with children, students, offering unemployment support and a (still fairly well-working) public healthcare system, the Finnish state enables its citizens to enjoy equality of opportunity that is not constrained by individual social-economic background.* For 5.5 million people, there are about half a million holiday cottages, many of them located at the 168 000 lakes, and 3.3 million saunas – to name but two factors that contribute to Finland’s ranking as the happiest country in the world for the 8^th time in a row. So Finns have both a stake and a feeling of ownership in their country that keeps willingness to defend on a high level.

As with conscription, there is not one single solution to solve the question of how to motivate citizens to contribute to national defence. But these two elements apply to all contexts: a threat perception on the negative side, and the feeling that the country is worth defending on the positive side. What both the negative and positive narratives entail varies from country to country. The challenge to political leaders is therefore to communicate to the population not only the threat, but also a positive narrative about what is worth defending.

*Finns will now tell you that everything is actually going in a very bad direction. While some of it is true – the current government is implementing policies that weaken the social equality and thereby threaten to undermine this very basis of the state-citizen social contract – it is this productive inferiority complex, the feeling that things can and must be constantly improved, that is a strong driver for progress in Finland.