Finland’s Sanna Marin leaves office with America’s thanks
Tom Rogan
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Losing an election on Sunday and thus set to depart office, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin deserves American salutations. Her tenure ends with Finland set to join NATO on Tuesday. Marin has established herself as one of America’s most reliable European allies.
The contrast between Marin and European leaders such as Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, for example, is stark. Sanchez prostrates himself to China and uses NATO as a piggy bank to avoid defense burden sharing. Many European Union leaders have similarly offered China a hall pass to support Russia even as the Kremlin wages the biggest land war in Europe since 1945. These leaders like to equivocate in face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brinkmanship and dangling of nuclear annihilation. Not so Marin.
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Responding to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Marin robustly condemned the attack on Europe’s democratic sovereignty. She then moved quickly to formalize Finland’s close relationship with NATO by applying for membership in the alliance. Her diplomacy and Finland’s nearly 2% of GDP military spending made its case strong. Moreover, Marin’s government introduced plans last September to boost defense spending above the 2% of GDP NATO target. Marin has also stood firm alongside other European nations, such as Poland and the Baltic States, even where other EU leaders have undermined their security.
On China, also, Marin has put democratic security first.
In a keynote speech in Australia last December, the prime minister called for greater EU supply chain protections, warning European leaders to “stop being naive” about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s agenda. Marin added that Europe “would be in a lot of trouble without the U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine.” While such honest rhetoric surely rankles leaders such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz, it carries the benefit of truth. Marin recognizes that if the EU is to establish true foreign policy credibility or some version of Macron’s “strategic autonomy” agenda, at least of a kind that means more than simply bowing to Beijing, it must first invest economic, security, and political capital toward defending its members and its values.
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Facing adversaries such as Putin and Xi, wishy-washy rhetoric is a very cheap and very weak foundation for European security.
Fortunately, Petteri Orpo, Marin’s presumptive replacement, is likely to continue with much of her foreign policy. While the U.S. will have to be wary of Beijing’s efforts to tempt Orpo into lucrative trade deals in return for political appeasement, he inherits a foundation of renewed Finnish strength and political courage. Marin deserves America’s thanks.