Militarism and National Defence [Not Finished]

Thoughts of the conscientious objector Aki Greus on militarism, armed forces, crisis management and proper organization of the Finnish Armed Forces.

I know I’m just a civilian and a conscientious objector and as such have no right to question the wisdom of the present military machine of Finland. The all encompassing wisdom of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on buying armaments that in a real war against Russia would be next to useless. When I say that and voice my opposition to the present military architecture I am often greeted with the same three responses. Either I don’t know the situation as I have not been in the army, I advocate disarming Finland completely or that the present military leadership knows what’s best.

I absolutely do not advocate complete disarmament of Finland, I only advocate a more reasonable level of spending and readiness. We have to face the fact that in modern warfare the attacker has a massive superiority in the early days of war while the defender has an advantage in close quarters combat. I’m going to approach the military problem from the traditional setting of Finland versus Russia. It is clear that from an equipment standpoint Finland has no reasonable comparison with Russia. A country as small Finland does not have the industrial or resource base to establish the same level of military machine as Russia has. The very fact that Russia is a nuclear superpower with one of the largest nuclear weapons stockpiles in the world is a good indication of the kind of military might Finland could be up against and against such a power a level playing field would be impossible to establish or maintain for any meaningful time. For the sake of argument I’ll rule out the use of nuclear weapons or other WMD’s aimed at civilians simply because if Russia is willing to engage Finland with nuclear weapons any defensive preparations Finland undertakes are moot anyway. I’m also going to assume that any Russian declaration of war would elicit a Europe wide war that to keep this thought process going would tie down a substantial portion of Russian military and somewhat limit their military options. It is clear that a wide scale 2nd world war style invasion is not going to happen in a 21st century world unless preceded by a long preparatory stage beginning either with an act of war or by an obvious act of troop movement which would cause Finland to mobilize. The start of the war would have Finland mobilized fully as well as Russia in a position to strike against Finland.

First task of an invading army as made obvious by every minor and major war in the past 60 years is to gain air superiority, Finland’s only reasonable air defence are our fighter jets which by modern military standards are outdated and out gunned. In many cases we would also face an enemy that has had years of training in ground warfare against a well motivated guerrilla army and an air force that maintains enough state-of-the-art airpower to deter any potential adversary from attacking. This would put our air force in a situation where it would face 10:1 odds against a superpower 20-30 years ahead of us in technology which has fought in countless minor wars over the past 60 years. Even if our air force by some twist of fate manages to keep its planes from being shot down the airfields they launched from will be destroyed by long range missile barrages we have no hope of stopping. After our airplanes have expended their fuel they need to land and rearm. At which point the military intelligence will be able to easily and efficiently pinpoint their location on the ground as they land and destroy them from bombers outside our reach, effectively destroying the entire Finnish air force within a day of the onset of the war.

After Russia has destroyed our fighter cover the rest of our air defence is limited in its functionality and would not be able to do anything to high altitude bombardment. At which point they could destroy all civilian infrastructure at will as they have done in previous wars and prepare for any ground invasion for as long as they would require from a day to a few months. During that time any troop movement could be detected and intercepted as they would have to work under constantly diminishing safety. As large scale destruction of Finland’s civilian infrastructure begins civilian traffic will slowly grind to a halt and massive civilian casualties will begin to mount as modern bunker buster weapons would be used against the civilian population effectively making sheltered civilians prime picking for an invading army. After several weeks of near constant bombardment and civilian casualties approaching the 100.000 range, the supply and fighting ability of the Finnish army would quickly begin to deteriorate. An army marches on its belly and an army unsupplied is not an army. Any attempt to supply quarter of a million men in the field would be easy to detect and destroying bridges and roads and supply depots would not be a difficult task for an opponent who at that point would have uncontested aerial superiority. A few weeks after that the Finnish armed forces would be at a point where they have yet to fire more than a few shots but are suffering from horrible moral and worsening supply shortages. The desire to fight the enemy but lack of any meaningful way to do so as the enemy would not be inclined to make themselves visible would have an deleterious effect on the fighting morale, combined with the increasing news and rumour of all major cities in Finland being systematically reduced to little more than 19th century towns with no electricity, no running water, no fire department to speak of, no food transportation, no gas and nothing but a few AA guns and a popgun to defend against air raids from 10-15 miles high could prove devastating.

After about a month of this the enemy could stroll in at their leisure and occupy any target they so choose while the Finnish armed force would be able to put up at best, nominal resistance. When any major artillery or armoured vehicle movement would be immediately detected and destroyed the only method left would be small uncoordinated squads faced with up to a month of in the forest with low supplies against a well supplied and coordinated enemy with air superiority and vast long bombardment capability. This would be the first point in the war when the Finnish armed forces would get close contact with the enemy and have the ability to inflict damage on them but by this point most of our preparatory planning would have been for nothing and a vast majority of Finland’s military might would have been destroyed. After the initial stage of bombardment and war has concluded the only remnants of the Finnish armed forces would be small units separated from their proper chains of command due to the destruction of any communication networks as one of the first targets in an invasion. These small units would have to organize some form of guerrilla warfare against the now occupying Russian army in the hopes of causing as much damage as possible and driving the invading army back. This has however proven ineffective and vastly destructive to the civilian population as any invading army would certainly retaliate against the civilian population after any strike against their units, even if ordered not to do so. The civilian population which at this point would be unable to defend itself as they have neither the arms or the training to do so as most of the men capable of defending Finland would have either died in the first month of the war in the aerial bombardment or captured in the early stages of the occupation.

Finland would then be in a bad situation that simply keeps getting worse as days go by. The occupation would slowly turn into escalating guerrilla warfare and most of what remains of Finland’s infrastructure would be destroyed similarly to how every invading army in the history of the world has dealt with guerrilla warfare, by indiscriminate killings and destruction. After the weeks turn into months the occupying army would, depending on its goals in the war slowly begin to crush the resistance and start to turn Finland into what ever suited their interests best. Total Finnish casualties would be in the 500.000-1.000.000 range or more. And any realistic hope of pushing the Russian army out of Finland would have to be done either with massive EU/NATO backing or through decades of guerrilla warfare which would result in a Finland reduced to the dark ages in technological development facing a reconstruction effort that would take decades or more. The centralised system where all the water is supplied by one point, heat by another and electricity by a third one is extremely vulnerable. A single cruise missile against a power plant and the entire power grid shuts down. One shot at a water purification facility and everyone is without clean water. And we are not facing an enemy with one cruise missile or one bomber, we are facing an enemy that can launch a thousand cruise missiles and not even break a sweat. The only way we can realistically defend against an enemy that has such crushing superiority is not by trying to match them in a level playing field but by using the most force where they are the weakest.


The Alternative


The alternative I propose is cheaper, better able to maintain cohesion during war and more useful in peacetime. Our defence policy should be focused on small self contained units working with their own guidance to do maximum damage to any invader while taking minimum losses and causing no collateral damage to civilians. Towards this end I emphasise survivability of civilian population during wartime even if major infrastructure is destroyed. As a comparison I will use the Finnish Defence Force budget estimates against market rate estimates for the various items I would suggest we use. The Finnish military budget for 2007 is roughly 2 billion euros, of which roughly 50% are spent on wages for personnel. I will aim to maintain the 2 billion euros level and slowly reduce it over the next 20 years to its peacetime level.

To start off with Finland should sell all the military hardware that can’t be moved by hand in a hurry as they are too bulky and easily detected by satellites and various other methods of spying and too vulnerable to bombardment and air strikes. Such equipment would be either sold in the market or where such is not feasible would be returned to the seller as time and contracts permit. The money gained would be spent on modernizing squad equipment starting from the weapons and moving up towards individual armour and survival gear. As squad level organization permits the aim of the modernization would be to form squads of no more than 10 people who live in the same geographic area and would work as a war time unit that would be able to survive in their local environment without support from the community at large. The squad would also be expected to operate without orders from command and be able to survive in occupied territory while maintaining strike potential and unit cohesion. Towards that end optimal squad armament would be predominately light weapons, long distance weapons. Explosives would also be supplied. Basic operation of the squad would be loosely modelled after the various special force units in the world with a strong emphasis on guerrilla and harassment operations. Realistically not everyone presently serving in the Finnish Armed Forces would be capable of the type of service proposed here. Under this model they would be better suited for civilian crisis management while in service and would not be called for permanent service.

The present draft model would be completely reworked from the ground up so most of the resources would be utilized for civilian purposes such as crisis management. While a portion of the drafted workforce would not be asked to do any work everyone, both male and female would be called to service for a 3 month period during which they would be instructed in the various skills needed to survive in crisis situations. Teaching such skills in the present school environment would be extremely difficult due to the nature of the topics covered and the average age of school students. During the 3 month period everyone would be instructed in first aid to such a level that they could provide paramedic service if required to, they would also learn how to survive in the Finnish countryside and forage for food and shelter should it be required, proper methods of cleaning contaminated water and any other wilderness survival methods, how to handle and operate a gun, various skills needed to socialize in a group environment and finally a quick but complete overview of the Finnish legislation and its effects on the normal person. In other words various skills required to know and navigate once way in society. This training would have the added benefit that since everyone would be required to spend the 3 months mostly away from previous family and societal ties it would be a practical learning experience in group coordination outside of what can be instructed in a class. After the 3 month learning period everyone would be present with a choice, they could either choose not to do more service at which point they would be given a certificate explaining how well they did in service and what they learned. If they were however willing to do more service they would be present with various alternatives, they could either work for the state in various manual labour tasks such as cleaning environmental damages, constructing highways or state facilities such as airports, they could also work in various low income jobs that would otherwise be difficult to fill such as paramedics, with the caveat that it has to be a state owned firm with no commercial interests, such as a hospital. Or finally they could decide to do military service. If they decide to do military service they would then be given another 3-6-9 months of training depending on their preference and at the end of which they could sign on as training personnel or they could move to the reserves and return to normal life. They would be given their war time equipment to be kept at home under proper guard or asked to keep an up to date address information available which would be used to deliver the weapons should the need arise. Home storage would be strongly recommended due to its advantage in potentially quick deployment.

The supposed citizen training side of the present military infrastructure could be taken out of the military’s hands and placed in the hands of a civilian organization which would oversee that the required training be undertaken. The other supposed use of the present military infrastructure, the crisis management, would also be placed where it properly belongs, to a crisis management agency working side by side with the military. This would leave the military with its one real goal, national defence. The practical effects of this system on Finland’s military capability is that a practical strike against a guerrilla force such as the one described here is near impossible and will elicit massive civilian casualties while doing little damage to the combat ability of the unit. The proposed system would also increase the education and practical skills of all Finns, leading to a point where an appreciation for nature as well as human life can be increased due to the required nature survival and first aid skills. On a societal level outside of the scope of the individual this system would also encourage de-centralised power/water/food and strive to increase local power generation and local water production to maximise peacetime as well as war time performance of a modern society under stress. The recent water crisis in Nokia has proven beyond a doubt how vulnerable a modern western society is to even the smallest malfunctions, luckily there were few fatalities in the crisis. However it could have been a lot worse if no access to clean water was provided as well as the relatively quick medical response. The worst possibility is that as people in western societies have an already declining physical health a pandemic could arise from unclean water due to warfare and quickly incapacitate or kill a great many people. To avoid this and other already proven weaknesses in the Finland I propose giving government tax breaks to renewable locally generated power and water purification as well as local heating in winter. Although this would take a long time the benefits in peace time are apparent to any observer. A systematic breakdown of the power grid as happened in the US northeast some years ago caused vast damages in work slowdowns and lost data and trade, if even one such power outage can be avoided or ameliorated the economic benefits will outweigh the costs. To this end I propose a government tax break to alternative locally generated power such as solar, hydrothermal, wind and anything else that can be locally supplied for a competitive market price. I do not however advocate government subsidies, what I do advocate is a tax break for power generation and similar productions that match the required criteria of local production. The tax cut can be justified by its national security effect of providing Finland with a viable method of environmental home power instead of imported power from either Russia or mid-east.