The Nordic Countries and the European Security and Defence Policy

26 THE NORDIC COUNTRIES AND THE ESDPwithin the European system. 69 The consequence is a new paradox: the Nordiccountries have drawn closer in the military sphere where their formal differencesof alignment are greatest, but not on those ‘softer’ policy topics whereshared Nordic values might have been expected to come into play. 70 Suchcontradictions are probably only explainable by the abiding legacy of thenational tradition within Nordic policies discussed in this introduction, added tomore than 50 years of ‘de-securitization’ of both external and internal policydiscourse.The suspicion remains that most Nordic governments have yet to addressfrankly, either with each other or with their own parliaments and publics, thefull scale of the challenges confronting them and the exigencies of policy adaptation.Before any decisive change could become feasible, each nation wouldneed to look again at the choice between autonomy and integration, particularismand European solidarity, and look for some way of getting through this‘pain barrier’ that keeps its national unity and self-belief reasonably intact. 71Perhaps only on the far side of these barriers, and only on condition that eachnation jumps in the same direction, could anything like a true Nordic securitycommunity for the 21st century emerge: not this time as a group apart, but inthe embrace of a European family that both lets the Nordic countries act morestrongly together when they want to and gives them their best ever choice ofalternatives when they do not.69 See chapters 9, 13, 15, 16 and 17 in this volume.70 This is somewhat overstated since the Nordic countries have made reasonable progress on some nonmilitarysecurity topics in sub-regional forums where they work with Russia and other states of the Balticregion (note 18 above). For more on the application of Nordic values see chapters 12 and 18 in this volume.71 This is not to say that mutual influences are absent. It is widely held that neither Finland nor Swedencould move to join NATO without a powerful ‘drag’ effect on the other, and likewise for Iceland andNorway vis-à-vis the EU. If either Finland or Sweden had declared certain recent EU developments (e.g.,the new ‘solidarity’ clauses or participation in battle groups) to be incompatible with non-allied status, theother would at the least have been gravely embarrassed.