Ala Satu-Könni settles in behind her .338-caliber high-powered sniper rifle, traces of pink in her short hair just to let the world know she’s not taking herself too seriously.
But looking squint-eyed through the rifle’s telescopic sight, she is all business. The target, even from a distance of 500 feet, looks as big as a highway billboard.
She squeezes the trigger – gently, not rushed. The rifle responds with a low, concussive thwump that fills the shooting range, more felt than heard.
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National security in Finland is a society-wide effort that goes beyond a focus on military hardware. Under the shadow of Russian aggression, Europe is taking a look.
The target falls. It is no match for Finland’s newest sharpshooter.
Ms. Satu-Könni is not an active-duty soldier. She is not a reservist. In fact, she is not in the military at all. She is an environmental impact assessor for a nearby town. Yet on an early summer weekend this June, she has voluntarily come to this military facility in Parolannummi, an area amid Finland’s sweeping pine forests and long known as a place for military training. She has come with 15 mostly middle-aged women to make sure of one thing: If Russia attacks, they will be ready to do their part.
Today, the group is attending a course on shooting pistols, semiautomatic rifles – and those sniper rifles that have been known to hit a target more than a mile away. Many of the women have taken other courses, too. One happily tells of the time she learned to drive trucks to support military logistics. Several others took a survival course that involves spending two nights in the woods with nothing but their wits. Ms. Satu-Könni has learned how to close off the air ducts and sewers in an emergency shelter and how to recognize disinformation campaigns online.
This is national security, Finland-style.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
For an awakening Europe, and a world seemingly stuck in chronic crises, the Finnish approach to security holds potentially transformational lessons. This year, a great rearming of the continent is underway as European officials conclude they can no longer depend on the United States to help defend them from potential Russian aggression.
Finland offers a model for no-nonsense self-sufficiency. After all, the great shadow now over Ukraine never left Finland – as its 800-mile border with Russia has been one constant reminder. Another are the stories still told around family hearths and in schoolrooms about how close Russia came to conquering Finland in the bitter winters of World War II.
This model is much more than tanks, artillery, and air defense systems. Instead, security is grounded by a certain Finnish mindset. Officials call it “comprehensive security,” but it is also known as henkinen maanpuolustus, which is perhaps best translated as “spiritual national defense.”
The idea is that defense is not a military task, but a responsibility for all of Finnish society, from businesses stockpiling fuel and grain to environmental impact assessors learning how to shoot a sniper rifle on weekends.
“Europe is mostly focused on acquiring military capability, but having a capable defense is not only about that,” says Matti Pesu, a security analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “It is about support from society, and that’s the hardest part to emulate. It is a mindset, and it permeates society at different levels from the national government to municipalities and, to a certain extent, companies and the private sector. It is a whole-of-society effort to protect the country.”
What has emerged is more than mere preparedness. It is a changed sense of what security is, and it is felt deeply among many Finns. It is the agency that comes from participation, and the knowledge that you have done what you can to defend your country. It is a trust born of knowing that many of those around you are doing likewise.
It is also a bedrock resilience. Finns call this sisu, an understanding that, in pushing calmly past the limits of fear and doubt, you find within yourself a reserve that can redefine how much you think you can do.
In Ukraine, Russia is probing the boundaries of divisive strength – the power to conquer those in opposition. Finland is exploring the boundaries of a small nation’s ability to stand up to such brute force through a unique sense of unity.
“This is very important,” says Jarno Metso, an instructor for Finland’s National Defence Training Association, which organized the weekend shooting class in Parolannummi. “We’re such a small country with not that many people,” about 5.5 million.
“This is everyone’s business,” Mr. Metso continues. “If Russia attacks Finland, everybody needs to take part. There is no other possibility.”
Roni Rekomaa/Lehtikuva/SIPA USA/AP
Finland’s security as a model for Europe
Europe is taking notice. Last year, the head of the European Commission in Brussels asked the former president of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, to deliver a report on the needs of European Union security.
“A prerequisite for preparedness is to understand that security is the foundation of everything we hold dear,” Mr. Niinistö wrote in the report, “Preparing Europe for a More Dangerous World.”
“Security is a public good – the most important thing that everyone needs,” he wrote. “It is the precondition for maintaining our values, as well as being a necessity for our economic success and competitiveness. If we lose security, it takes with it our well-being and our plans for the future. … A change in mindset is needed to build the trust that allows us to do this as the whole of society.”
Finland’s Security Committee, a specialist body in connection with the Ministry of Defence, coordinates and facilitates “comprehensive security” across government ministries, the business community, and civil society.
Recently, it has been doing a lot more presentations for its European allies. Secretary-General Petteri Korvala says the secretariat has given about 100 in the past six months – already more than in the previous year, which was then the committee’s high-water mark.
“It belongs to the Finnish mentality that we are not pushing our solution,” Mr. Korvala says. “But we have an approach where we are willing to talk about our solutions, and there’s a lot of interest internationally at the moment.”
The Finnish model includes conscription for all 18-year-old males – though community service is also an option. All conscripts then become part of an 870,000-strong reserve, which is kept sharp with regular training.
More unusual is what is happening at the military base at Parolannummi, which is about an hour north of Helsinki. The National Defence Training Association is using the base for its volunteer courses.
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Not far from the shooting range, Mr. Metso stands in the half-light of sun-dappled trees surrounded by a dozen or so young men and one woman. The men have all gone through basic training and are now in the reserves.
They look the part of soldiers, standing in full camouflage, their rifles slung over their shoulders with an air of casual confidence. As reservists, they will have state-mandated military training.
But they’ve come here of their own accord to further hone their skills. In this class, they are learning guerrilla warfare techniques. Today’s task: learning how to set up a roadside bomb.
Mr. Metso and his fellow instructors demonstrate the best places to hide them and how to evade detection. Then they send off small groups to practice.
In one group is Mikael Köngäs. His workaday Clark Kent identity is being a cybersecurity specialist for Finland’s health care system. Here at the base, he’s working on his superpower: stealth.
“When I was in the military, I enjoyed getting the intel,” Mr. Köngäs says. He pauses, and then adds with a grin, more bluntly, “I enjoyed sneaking up on people, the excitement of that.”
He could hardly have a better teacher.
Mr. Metso tells of the time he learned about “stealth tracking.” He practiced the techniques he learned by walking through the front door of his house, taking off his shoes and jacket, and then proceeding to walk into the living room, where his wife was on the computer. She had no idea he was behind her until he said, “Hello, honey.”
His stories from the field sound like tales from the wildest fantasies of Hollywood spy movies. He once sneaked up on a group of trainees standing at the center of a frozen lake, moving so slowly they never saw him. They dubbed him “White Death.”
During walks in the woods, Mr. Metso says, “I wanted to see every animal before it saw me.” He gave up hunting because he could routinely get to within 15 feet of moose, bears, and lynx. “I preferred just to watch them.”
The stories are more than entertaining. They point to crucial aspects of Finland’s comprehensive security mindset. For one, they show Finland’s curious ability to be militarily prepared without tipping into militarism.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
“People who want to play war, they don’t stay long,” Mr. Metso says. “The attitude is wrong. Our job is not to fight; it is to prevent fighting.”
In some respects, this makes Finland more a nation of Eagle Scouts than of soldiers. “We’re taught from the time we’re kids that the forest is not a scary place; it’s a familiar place,” says Toni Tyrmi, a local coordinator for the National Defence Training Association. “I don’t have to worry about getting lost. If I have to stay there, I can do that.”
In military terms, you could call this the ultimate home-field advantage. Yet Finns’ connection to nature has also forged a key element of its approach to security. Nature teaches confidence amid discomfort.
“If you teach the uncomfortable, then times of crisis are much easier,” says Mr. Metso, referencing the Finnish concept of resilience. “Sisu means that in difficult situations you don’t have to push; you keep your calmness and do the right things. You don’t go over your limits; you go over what you think your limits are.”
“We don’t doubt we can defend the country.”
Back at the shooting range, Ms. Satu-Könni says she began testing her limits after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The National Defence Training Association says enrollment in its courses has spiked since 2022. One instructor recalls a local event where the speaker thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin as their greatest recruiter.
But the volunteer team leader at the shooting range, Eija Eriksson, a middle school English and Swedish teacher, got her start during the pandemic.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
“At the beginning of COVID, the schools had closed, and I had these four walls around me and was thinking that everything was miserable, and I started thinking, how would I make it if the situation were really severe?” she says.
Ms. Eriksson found the training association website and has been taking courses ever since, from administering first aid to interpreting maps. Her son, who did his military service at 18, jokes that she’s catching up to him one weekend at a time. She says she tries to limit herself to one course a month. She is not always successful.
At the range, there is laughter and no small number of selfies. Many of these women have become friends after taking many courses together. But each says there has been another benefit: a greater sense of mental peace amid the uncertainty across the border.
“I don’t want to be in a position that I need to use a gun, but if that happens, I want to be sure I am able to use one,” Ms. Eriksson says. “I’m more comfortable that I could survive and help others. There’s a sense of being useful.”
Mr. Metso put it this way, not boastfully, but with a note of steel: “We don’t doubt we can defend the country.”
Preparing citizens to fight: The key is cooperation
As the director of UN Women Finland, Jaana Hirsikangas could not have been further from the world of mess halls and military formations. Finnish women are not subject to conscription, and Ms. Hirsikangas had never much considered the military.
Then she was invited to attend the National Defence Course.
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Held four times a year in four-week sessions, the National Defence Course is by invitation only. Those invited are people who work in important roles at organizations that are influential at the national level. They are Finland’s leaders, from members of Parliament to corporate CEOs to university professors. That gives the course national prestige.
“It is a great, great honor to get in, and not everyone gets it,” says Ms. Hirsikangas, chatting in a café on a rainy Helsinki day.
The doors to Finland’s national security structure are thrown wide open for those in the course. Top officials from security agencies are brought in, and the class is expected to grill them.
Participants take trips to military installations and are free to talk to personnel to get their views. And throughout the course, the class works through a hypothetical security crisis, with each participant assigned a pretend role in a government agency. By the end, the groups present their solutions to the (pretend) prime minister, who decides what action to take.
The key is cooperation, says Col. Jussi Kosonen, who runs the course.
“We set up problems that can’t be solved by an individual actor,” he says. “Cooperation is always difficult. People want to cooperate within their silos. But comprehensive security requires cooperation between different actors.”
The course also has a tendency to choose scenarios that later come true. Last Christmas Day, a Russia-linked oil tanker dragged its anchor more than 60 miles across the Baltic Sea floor, eventually severing crucial power and communication cables between Finland and Estonia. The National Defence Course had previously gamed out that scenario almost exactly.
In that light, perhaps Finland’s response was not surprising. Summing up the effectiveness of the Finnish action, a Swiss newspaper wrote, “The Finnish authorities reacted quickly and decisively after the suspected sabotage of undersea cables, boarding a suspicious ship in the Baltic Sea. Europe must be prepared to follow this example.”
“Nothing I knew beforehand could prepare me for what I experienced” in the course, says Ms. Hirsikangas. “I was learning about facts that I wasn’t able to comprehend before, like how well society is prepared. It shakes your mind to understand.”
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
Talking to soldiers and police and firefighters, she was struck by how little she understood about Finland’s security – and the people behind it. “All these people do it with all their heart, I got so emotional,” she says. “The honor and the commitment – I never knew how much they give of themselves for us. So often I had tears in my eyes. I did not expect that.”
But what she took most from the course was what she learned from her fellow classmates. “There is such a variety of perspectives,” she says. “We kept challenging the instructors and asking questions.”
Sociologists speak of the importance of building trust across boundaries. Societies tend to separate into silos of profession, race, religion, age, and so on. The healthiest societies are those that build trust across these boundaries. Colonel Kosonen says this is an explicit goal of the National Defence Courses – intentionally choosing participants from a range of fields, locations, and backgrounds and making sure they are forced to work together.
The dividend is apparent. Each graduate gets a pin. Ms. Hirsikangas makes sure to wear hers any time she goes to Parliament or a government ministry. “Whenever you see someone with the pin, you go up and shake their hand and ask, ‘What class were you in?’” she says. “I can go up to a member of Parliament, and it’s not a big deal. It’s a symbol of unity.”
The course did raise a pressing concern for her. If conscription and military service are such an important part of the nation’s security mindset, then why are women not included?
According to a recent poll by E2 Research, some 70% of Finnish women say they are prepared to defend Finland’s borders – though the sentiment is strongest among women ages 50-59 (83%) but less so among women 18-29 (47%). Ms. Hirsikangas sees not only a double standard, but also a missed opportunity.
For one, data shows sexual violence against women always goes up in times of crisis, she says. Having women more integrated into the defense structure could help alleviate that. “It’s such a waste of the whole-security mindset to exclude half the people,” she says. Comprehensive security “is crucial for society, but it is also a benefit” to those involved.
Juha Harju/Lehtikuva/SIPA USA/AP
For example, her National Defence Course class, like many others, continues to meet and learn.
They recently came together to meet at one member’s office. Weeks later they planned to go to an art exhibition together. They’ve also taken additional trips to Finnish security installations as part of refresher activities. “It’s all volunteer,” says Ms. Hirsikangas. “It’s because we want to be together.”
This is a core tenet of comprehensive security – fueling voluntary commitment.
A network of trust
Mr. Korvala of the Security Committee stresses that the government has a key role, but true security is only possible if it is shared, and not through coercion or even well-intentioned compulsion. Of course there are regulations, but if individuals’ commitment to comprehensive security stopped there, it would not be enough against the most dangerous threats.
“The Security Committee is not a decision-making organization; it is a network of trust,” he says.
Companies are eager to collaborate with the government on security precisely because it acts as a partner, not as a bureaucratic potentate, says Jari Pirhonen, head of security for Tietoevry Tech Services, which provides information technology systems such as data centers and cloud platforms.
“We want to do the voluntary things,” he says. “If there was too much pressure from the government, we would feel that we had our hands full, and we would be less inclined to engage in voluntary efforts.”
On this day, Mr. Pirhonen is sitting in a conference room of the National Emergency Supply Agency, a government office that works with businesses to increase national resilience, talking to Antti Nyqvist. Usually, Mr. Pirhonen is pinging Mr. Nyqvist with some question or concern or idea.
Mark Sappenfield/The Christian Science Monitor
Mr. Nyqvist is the emergency agency’s coordinator for the IT sector, and the way he goes about his role is key. He notes that most of a country’s vital infrastructure is privately owned. So how does the government go about making sure it stays secure?
His job, he says, is to be a friend. “It might be a water supply company that can’t afford the security it needs,” he says. He doesn’t tell it what to do, he says. But “We can engage with the water supply company: ‘What can we do to help you get better coverage?’”
It’s this approach that makes Mr. Nyqvist and his agency valuable to Finnish business, says Mr. Pirhonen. “It creates a personal relationship,” he says. “Businesses don’t share information until it is a familiar face.”
Indeed, the adversarial relationship between government and business so common in many countries is comparatively muted here. To Mr. Pirhonen, it is clear that each side can help the other. For example, the Russian invasion of Ukraine raises questions for his company, too. “Customers say, ‘Are you prepared for this?’ It is expected that we can show the ground is solid,” he says.
With the National Emergency Supply Agency and firms like Tietoevry working together, the security of both can improve. “If I had a problem, I could call Antti and ask, ‘Are you seeing this?’” says Mr. Pirhonen. “I can talk to Antti and trust he is not going to tell that to other businesses.”
Heli Tammivuori helps different emergency networks cooperate, and not too long ago she went to Ukraine. What she saw left an impression. All the work of getting public and private organizations to collaborate, all the legislation needed to enable the country to move quickly and solve crises – Ukraine began that work in 2022. “We already have that in place,” says Ms. Tammivuori.
At the military training facility in Parolannummi, coordinator Mr. Tyrmi sees the same thing. “Ukraine has learned the hard way today the lesson we learned the hard way 80 years ago.”
