“The numbers are wild” – This was Finland’s most important message to Trump’s NATO representative

Defense secretary Antti Häkkänen (kok) reported that the NATO allies were addressed by the US’s new defense strategy at the NATO defense ministers’ meeting held on Thursday.

The United States was represented at the meeting by the president Donald Trump’s undersecretary of state for the Ministry of War Elbridge Colby.

He is responsible for drafting the defense strategy published in January. It requires European allies to bear more responsibility for their own defense, allowing the United States to focus on the military threat posed by China.

According to Häkkänen, it is a big change of focus in NATO, but according to the minister, the discussion that started already a year ago is now “winding down”.

However, the irritation of the allies towards the United States has recently been increased by Trump’s threat to forcibly take over Greenland, which belongs to another allied country, namely Denmark, and the related threat of trade tariffs.

According to Häkkänen, the Americans stressed that the transfer of the defense burden is not about ideology, but is based on China’s massive military rise, which threatens the order of the entire Western society.

“Of course, the use of words has been so colorful that it has also been interpreted as strongly ideological,” Häkkänen admits.

According to the Minister of Defense, however, the NATO allies understand that China is a big challenge for the Americans, and that is why they have to shift the focus to some extent from the Middle East and Europe to China.

“We’re seeing Chinese and Russian numbers in the defense industry. They’re wild.”

Häkkänen lists the entities related to countries’ nuclear deterrence, high technology, munitions production and raw material flows, which are “very tough in China and Russia”.

“This is also a strong message from the Americans: Europe and Pacific partners are critically needed for this global western industrial production pool and technology development entity,” says Häkkänen.

Binding Americans

Häkkänen considers it essential that the Americans be tied to the defense planning process carried out in NATO, where it is looked at in detail in which schedule any equipment or troop will move, so that the Europeans have time to develop replacement capabilities.

According to Häkkänen, the “corner bolts” for creating Europe’s growing defense responsibility are in order. He points to the 5 percent defense spending targets that were locked in last year, as well as the NDPP targets, which defined for each NATO country what kind of military and non-military capabilities the alliance needs to carry out all its missions.

According to Häkkänen, the meeting revealed that defense spending is moving in the right direction and now NATO is taking defense matters seriously.

“Less speeches, more actions,” says the minister.

“It is exactly the position that the Americans and Finland have been hoping for.”

According to Häkkänen, the meeting made it clear that the United States is committed to NATO’s collective defense, i.e. Article 5, as well as to NATO’s processes and the controlled transfer of the defense burden, as well as nuclear deterrence.

Colby said in Brussels that he believes the allies “have a really strong basis for cooperation” as long as it is done fairly.

“It will be done by creating a kind of NATO 3.0 based on partnership rather than dependence,” Colby said.

A long meeting

In his own words, Häkkänen had a long bilateral meeting with Colby at the NATO meeting.

Kauppalehti asked the minister what was Finland’s most important message to Colby?

Häkkänen said that it is important for Finland that the Americans approach the Russian threat realistically.

“It may be that the Americans see China as number one or their neighborhood, but when the Americans are active in NATO, then the Russian threat is highlighted. This was our message.”

Another thing that Häkkänen emphasized to Colby was that Article 5, i.e. NATO’s collective protection, and NATO-related matters will also apply in the future.

“Now we are on a good track: we discuss things confidentially, we commit to processes and after that we do the agreed things together – that was good,” Häkkänen said.

According to Häkkänen, the third issue in the discussion with Colby was bilateral issues between Finland and the United States.

“It’s going at an excellent level, everything is going very well at the moment,” Häkkänen described.

Other successes

Häkkänen was happy about the results of the NATO meeting, especially that after several months of lobbying, the allies accepted on Thursday that Finland will have a command system unit for NATO forces.

The task of the unit is to provide telecommunication and information system services to support the management of NATO forces in Finland and, if necessary, also throughout NATO.

“It is our fourth NATO goal that was achieved,” Häkkänen said.

He was also satisfied with the fact that, in accordance with its goals, Finland was once again able to strengthen the structure of the NATO FLF forces stationed in Lapland, i.e. the front-line ground forces.

Strengthening the structure will provide Finland with security in such a situation, if Finland were to be militarily threatened, because at that time there are allied forces supporting Finland.