Kun Pohjois-Atlantin liitto politisoitui

Turvallisuuspoliittinen kamppailu Suomen Nato-jäsenyydestä

Authors

• Eerik Kivilahti Jyväskylän yliopisto

Keywords:

constructivism, Nato-membership, politicization, school of thought, security politics

Abstract

The annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, at the latest, seriously challenged the international rules. This article asks how Nato was politicised in Finland post-2014, i.e. how Nato has been the instrument of politics in Finland since 2014. In order to answer this, the article develops a security policy typology that has its inspiration in activity-conception of politics. By applying this typology, the article parses the Finnish Nato-debate by dividing it into discursive groups that each do their own kind of Nato-politics. The research material consists of the Nato-argumentation of national politicians, scholars, and civil servants. With the help of foreign policy school research, the article identifies four discursive groups from the data, one of which is unknown to previous research, albeit a result theoretically anticipated by earlier theorists. The argument of the article is that this group prevailed in the struggle regarding the direction of Finnish security politics in 2014–2022. However, despite its dominant position, it did not prevent the politicization of Nato during the same time span. Thus, the article recognizes four distinct ways in which Nato was politicized. Along with these empirical results, the article strives to reorganize the research field by bringing conflict-based conceptions of politics to its center more strongly than before.