Bad Neighbours Aren’t Necessarily Bad for You

 I arrived back in Singapore on Wednesday and after a few hours of rest at home, I was off for a networking event at Duane Morris & Selvam LLP, a law firm that my current employer works with. This event that I attended is part of a regular series where they invite the various ambassadors in town to give a talk.

 

 HE Mr. Antti Vänskä, Finland’s Ambassador to Singapore with Mr. Eduardo Romos-Gomez, Partner at Duane Morris

You could say that geopolitical movements and history met at this series. Their last talk was given by the Ukrainian Ambassador, Her Excellency (HE), Ms. Kateryna Zelenko on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I guess it was only logical that the next talk would be from a country that has a history of dealing with Russian aggression – Finland. The talk was given the outgoing Finnish Ambassador His Excellency Mr. Antti Vänskä.

 

 With HE Ms. Kateryna Zelenko, Ukrainian Ambassador to Singapore at Duane Morris & Selvam LLP

The Ambassador’s talk was informative in that he gave the historical context of Finland’s relationship with Russia and the historical move to join NATO. I will leave the topic of Finland’s accession to NATO to educated people and touch on another topic instead, which is the topic of how we’re shaped by our environment, particularly when we live in rough neighbourhood.

This was a topic that I touched on in my final year dissertation. I talked about how National Service had shaped culture in Singapore. The argument was based on Andy Grove’s line of “Only the Paranoid Survive,” and small nations like Singapore had thrived because they were constantly fearful of being eaten by larger, hostile neighbours. Outside Singapore, the examples were Israel, Taiwan and Finland. While the “hostility” that Israel and Taiwan face is well known, Finland made the list because my best friend at the time was a Finn and we bonded over beer and army stories (Had just finished National Service at the time).

What became very clear about our respective war stories, was the fact that he had significantly more pride in his military service than I did in mine. The only “upmanship” I had over him was the fact that I did two and a half years, whilst he did a year. However, he actually had pride in his uniform and talked about how good it felt to walk around town in that uniform. This wasn’t the Singapore experience. My memories of the military were the joy everyone took on weekends when we could book out in civilian clothing.

I believe that difference between us was history. Finland had been part of Russia. The Soviet Union had actually invaded Finland. The Finns had to fight for statehood and whilst there hadn’t been an invasion of one country by another at that time in Europe, the possibility of Russia getting nasty remained a reality.

By contrast, Malaysia and Indonesia have never invaded us. Sure, the threat may have been real in the 1960s but nobody had walked onto our soil by force. I guess its just a case of preparing for a threat that may happen and a threat that has happened before and could well happen again.

So, the Finns and their governments have grown up with a watchful eye on their Eastern border. The Finnish military is well equipped and even before they joined NATO, the Finish military saw to it that its equipment was interchangeable with NATO’s equipment.

 

 Although Finland has only joined NATO recently, the Ambassador made it clear that Finland did not consider itself “neutral.” Accession to the EU in 1995 is seen in Finland is an alignment with the Western World. The Finns have seen to it that they are active members of international alliances and as his Ukrainian counterpart said in the latter discussion “Neutrality is not a luxury you can afford when Russia is your neighbour.”

What makes the Finnish experience interesting is that the “unfriendly” neighbour has been something of a motivating force to get things done. Like its Nordic relative, Finland is run on Social-Democratic principles. The country has a good working social welfare system but at the same time has a functioning market economy. Taxes are outrageously high by Asian or American standards but people get educated and are healthy.

The Finish economy makes up for a lack of size by being innovative, not just in terms of products produced but also in terms of resilience. Take the most prominent Finnish Company – Nokia. This was a company that was the byword for mobile phones. Then management screwed up when it ignored the threat of the iPhone and that business collapsed. However, whilst it lost its mobile business, Nokia as a company remains very healthy and as moved into other areas like building networks.

While everyone outside Finland knows about Nokia, the Finish economy is larger than that. For a highly taxed economy and a society that believes that the rich should feel the pain when they get caught breaking the law, the country does have an entrepreneurial class operating in highly advanced areas like Solar Foods, a company that literally makes protein from thin air.

Finland is what you’d call the hyper achiever in its corner of Europe. According to Transparency International, Finland is the second least corrupt nation on the planet (ahead of Singapore). It ranks as most digitalised country in Europe, first in terms of sustainable development, business environment and political and civil freedom.

 

 All of this has been achieved with a large and “nasty” neighbour. If you look at the general theme of Finish foreign policy, you’ll see three key themes – namely having tight security and economic alliances with Western countries, keeping the Russians calm and at the same time ensuring they are in a position to fight should they need to. Call it a case of needing to build up strength because the other guy is an 800-pound gorilla or in his case a bear.

To its credit, Finland as used paranoia to its benefit. It’s shown that small countries merely need to be constantly thinking ahead if they need to survive. One doesn’t need a heavy hand. One just needs to have trust between the governed and governing classes. There has to be a common objective to survive and thrive.