The man places two cans on the table. “There are still some left, but they are less easy to find,” he explains. There is no ambiguity here: Olaf Brewing’s beer, produced 130 kilometers from here, is sometimes sold in yellow and blue containers decorated with the logo of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). , whose name they bear (it is very aptly called “ NATO », “I take” in suomi).
In this peaceful region of Eastern Finland, Eastern Karelia, the forest bears a striking resemblance to the Quebec forest. The maple trees have begun to drape themselves in red under a white sun that skims the horizon. However, since the spring of 2022, the calm has more to do with the calmness of residents than with geopolitical reality.
Because the Russian neighbor is very present in the discussions.
However, it is further away than it has ever been since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not so long ago, cross-border traffic was estimated in millions of passages per year: regional integration appeared to be a reliable and logical avenue for the isolated region of Joensuu, closer to its Russian neighbor than to its own capital. . As the city was barely recovering from the pandemic, the land border was again closed to non-essential travel in the fall of 2022. Then, the following year, it was closed completely, but on a monthly basis. And, in 2024, permanently.
There are no more daily interactions, there is no longer this feeling of sharing a border space, of knowing the other side — a feeling that prevailed across Karelia long before the European Union came into being. in mind to promote this type of project. Businesses that made a living from trade with Russia closed their doors one after the other; the gleaming buildings built in a burst of optimism to welcome tourists from the east are struggling to regain their momentum.
Of course, there are still some links left. And Colonel Matti Pitkäniitty, the region’s border guard commander, believes it should stay that way. Because his objective, each time there is a border “incident”, he explains to me, is to resolve the problem at the local level before it becomes political – and therefore less manageable. Even if, with this increased distancing, the risk of unexpected complications increases.
The reason for this is the development of this “hybrid war”, the effects of which the Finns have felt more acutely since they chose to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. .
Professor Jopi Nyman, from the University of Eastern Finland, points out that it is not uncommon for the Internet to be interrupted on the train heading towards the capital as it approaches the border, that a bank has to temporarily halt its operations due to a cyberattack (as happened this week) or a plane has to circle for a long time over the local airport without being able to land due to interference with its GPS.
In a few years, after going so far as to dream of regional integration, Finland – like Norway, moreover, which seems to want to follow suit this week – has come to build border walls at the expense of ecosystems. whole, both economic and ecological.
Because one of the weapons of massive disruption of this hybrid war is the exploitation of migrants. Like what others have done elsewhere — Belarus with Poland, for example, but American internal politics also attests to this — the act of letting go or knowingly moving migrants to the territory of a An annoying neighbor is a formidable way of putting pressure on public opinion and forcing a government to bend. We are talking about the “weaponization” of migrants, an instrumentalization which has resulted here in the militarization of the border through the erection of a border barrier.
However, these border games are part of a “war of disruption” which constantly remains below the threshold of direct confrontation, but which fuels dysfunctions and costly disruptions. This homeopathic destabilization normalizes a constant state of instability, sprinkling salt on the pre-existing wounds of democratic societies, more unequal and less functional since the pandemic.
Researchers from Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and Scandinavia gathered this week around the same table at the University of Eastern Finland formulate the same diagnosis regarding the almost pathological state of democratic societies: we talk about resilience more than resistance, deterrence more than conviction. However, this strategy of gradual cracking is even more effective in peripheral spaces, in the economic or geographical margins, they note. It follows the lines of borders, which have become formidable electoral instruments, interfering in the interstices of political polarization.
In this small town in eastern Karelia, while the morning fog that runs over the Pielisjoki River is a little more biting at the beginning of October, there is a certain fatalism. A feeling of inevitability. However, this is not defeatism, the University researchers explain to me: according to them, everything is based on the fact that “without the whole, we are nothing”.
This is the basis of this famous Finnish happiness: this almost visceral belief in the social contract. This generalized trust (in institutions, in the media, in science) to which the discussion always seems to return. This desire to reduce inequalities, if not to eliminate them. This seems to be one of the greatest defenses against the erosion of democracy. A sort of process of conciliation, even reconciliation, where many countries still have work to do, skillfully raises Maarten ten Wolde, from the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, turning to me.
If the agents of mass disruption are at our doorstep, Finnish happiness may not be quite within reach.
Professor of international studies at CMR Saint-Jean and essayist, Élisabeth Vallet is director of the Geopolitics Observatory of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair.