Last time the Kremlin attacked Finland, it used tanks and fighter planes. Eighty years later, it just needs a minibus. The Russian authorities are taking 55 asylum-seekers from the now-closed border crossing at Salla to the last remaining open checkpoint at Lotta in the far north, near Murmansk.
The pictures are heartbreaking: desperate people from Somalia, Iraq, and Syria standing in sub-zero temperatures, just a few hundred meters away from one of the safest and best-run countries in the world. But the plot is cynical. Russia (and its satrapy Belarus) use them as human pawns in a geopolitical game that they have played against Finland, Norway, the Baltic states, and Poland for years.
The aim is first to make these countries look cruel and hypocritical for turning away people whose claim for asylum, by law, deserves at least a fair hearing. The second and bigger goal is to create political tension. Warm-hearted campaigners go to the border to help. Harder-hearted voices say that if the targeted countries blink and make an exception on humanitarian grounds, the numbers will rise from dozens to hundreds and then thousands. Confidence in the authorities is undermined. Fears of Russia’s capability to wreak havoc grow.
The Kremlin is taking advantage of two linked factors. One is the refugee-creating chaos and misery in countries to Europe’s south and east, some of which it stokes. The other is the fears of European voters that migration is economically crippling and socially destabilizing. Some of these worries may be attributable to Russian propaganda. But most are not. Whether through bad luck or bad judgment, European governments have done a dreadful job managing these issues over the past decades. From the Sahel to the Middle East, conflict rages, poverty bites, and people move. At home, rising demand stretches public services. Integration in many countries is seen to have failed.
The incompetence is compounded by political failure. Establishment parties told the public not to worry, or dismissed their concerns as racist. But patronizing and insulting the voters eventually backfires.
That is what we have witnessed in the Netherlands, where the anti-immigrant (and Kremlin-friendly) Freedom Party headed by Geert Wilders has just won the most seats in parliament.
What decision-makers have failed to realize is that their voters’ worries are a national security vulnerability. First, hostile state actors can use the dirty tricks arsenal to increase fears, polarization, and mistrust. Second, those sentiments will fuel the rise of anti-establishment parties that decry long-standing multilateral security commitments and may, like Wilders, even flirt with Putinist ideas about family, tradition, and sovereignty (Russian reality is, of course, different, but few of the Kremlin’s foreign fans will bother to find out).
In strong, well-rooted democracies, the damage is limited. Life will go on much as usual in the Netherlands, just as it has in other countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, and Italy, where populist parties have gained a measure of political power.
The real price will be paid in Ukraine, which is losing the external support it needs to beat Russia. European unity, surprisingly strong since the full-scale invasion of 2021, is now fraying. Hungary is blocking the latest tranche of European Union support. Germany seems to be under the misapprehension that handing Vladimir Putin a partial victory will make the world safer. The United States is busy with Israel. Poland is in a protectionist spasm, fuelled by fears about competition from Ukrainian truck drivers. Promised artillery shells are not being delivered. The Dutch election darkens this bleak picture further.
The long-term answer is better governance. The short-term response is better deterrence. Neither is in sight.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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