Tag Archive for: Finland

Baltic subsea sabotage: China gets away with non-cooperation

On Christmas Day, one of two cables connecting Finland’s electricity grid to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was cut. Four data cables—three linking Finland and Estonia and one between Finland and Germany—were broken at the same time.

This and two earlier instances have heightened concerns about the vulnerability of Europe’s undersea infrastructure, prompting calls for enhanced security measures and international cooperation to safeguard critical communication and energy links.

It’s also a timely reminder to Indo-Pacific countries to think about how their region is similarly vulnerable to subsea sabotage.

Once could be an accident, and twice might be a coincidence. But three instances look like a trend that we shouldn’t ignore or tolerate, especially since we know malign actors like Beijing and Moscow also have the capability to disrupt our critical infrastructure through prepositioned malware.

Finnish authorities are investigating the outage. On 26 December, Finland used heavily armed elite units to board and forcibly detain a tanker, registered in the Cook Islands but in fact Russian, suspecting its crew had deliberately severed the cables. Finnish authorities say the tanker, which was carrying oil, is part of Russia’s effort to avoid international trade sanctions. The ship is also reported to have been equipped for listening to radio transmissions as an intelligence gatherer.

Finnish authorities could board the ship and arrest its crew without the consent of its owner or the country of registration only because it was in Finnish waters. But doing so still required Finland to have the political will to take bold action.

Several data cables and a pipeline connecting Finland and other Nordic countries to the European mainland have been severed in the past year in suspected deliberate anchor-dragging incidents. Jukka Savolainen, a Finnish navy officer and director of the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a body established by NATO and the European Union, has suggested publicly the high number of similar cable breaks shows that the perpetrators are testing whether cheap civilian ships can cause disruptions of critical infrastructure.

The latest Finnish incident follows the simultaneous severing of two undersea data cables in mid-November. The BCS East-West Interlink cable, connecting Gotland to Lithuania, was severed around 17 November, causing substantial disruptions to telecommunications services.

The next day, the C-Lion 1 submarine telecommunications cable, linking Helsinki to Rostock, Germany, was also cut. The damage was detected near the southern tip of Sweden’s Oland Island. The operator, Cinia Oy, said an external force had severed the cable.

Both cables were restored by 28 November. Investigations are ongoing, involving authorities from Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Germany. A China-flagged ship, Yi Peng 3, which was present near the disruption sites, has been a focus.

On 23 December Swedish authorities said China had denied a request for prosecutors to conduct an investigation on the ship. It left the area soon after. If, as seems very probable, the crew were saboteurs, investigators cannot now hold them accountable. Swedish authorities have criticised China for withholding full access to the vessel.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China, as the home state of the vessel, is not obliged to give other countries access to it. And only China holds the sole authority to prosecute. The ship was detained in international waters, so Swedish police could only observe the situation; they could not investigate. An accident commission could separately interview the crew and examine the anchor but could not prosecute. Legally, Sweden has limited options beyond seeking economic compensation from the ship’s owner.

Since China has persistently breached the same convention in the South China Sea, its disregard for the interests of other countries in the Yi Peng 3 case comes as no surprise.

The key point is the rest of the world, which does care about such rules, can’t afford to let malign actors continue to get away with it.

Beijing’s refusal to cooperate fully with investigations erodes trust and transparency. These are particularly crucial in incidents involving shared resources, such as undersea cables, which serve as critical infrastructure for multiple nations. A refusal to comply with international investigative norms also encourages other states to act similarly.

China is also ignoring its responsibility to assist in uncovering the truth and ensuring accountability, undermining cooperative norms that underpin a global rules-based order. Under international law, states must prevent and address harm caused by their vessels in foreign or international waters.

Furthermore, disruption of undersea cables not only affects regional communications; it also has significant economic implications and poses risks to broader economic stability. So, China’s non-cooperation exacerbates tensions in Europe and raises concerns about its commitment to preserving the stability of global infrastructure.

Good international citizenship requires states to act in a manner that supports global security. They should be transparent and accountable. China’s refusal to cooperate fully and Russia’s continued effort to break sanctions are at odds with these principles. These incidents show how the Russia-China axis is increasingly working in sync to the peril of the rules-based liberal order. Political will, and unity of purpose, is needed to make clear this is intolerable.

Russia, a Chinese cargo ship and the sabotage of subsea cables in the Baltic Sea

Earlier this month, as the world’s attention was focused on the horror unfolding in Israel and Gaza, it was easy to miss the news that two subsea telecommunications cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea had been damaged.

On the night of 7 October, the 77-kilometre Balticconnector gas pipeline and a separate but close-by subsea telecommunications cable stretching between Finland and Estonia were damaged in the Gulf of Finland. A week later, it emerged that, on the same night, another subsea telecommunications cable—connecting Estonia and Sweden—had also been damaged.

That might not seem particularly newsworthy. After all, subsea cables—despite facilitating around 95% of internet traffic, making them the physical backbone of our digital world—are notoriously vulnerable to damage. These fibre optic cables, often only the diameter of a garden hose, along with gas pipelines, zigzag all across the ocean floor, where they can suffer damage from storms, marine life, waves, earthquakes and accidental maritime vehicle activity. There are hundreds of such incidents each year.

This case, however, appears to have been no accident.

Finland, Estonia and Sweden soon announced that the gas pipeline and cables had likely been deliberately damaged and were being investigated as related incidents.

At the centre of the investigation was a Russian state-owned nuclear-powered cargo ship, the Sevmorput. Russia has long posed a threat to vital subsea cables in the region, particularly since the start of the Ukraine war. The threat has escalated since the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022. Indeed, earlier this year Russia announced that it could damage subsea cables in retaliation for Nord Stream and European countries’ support for Ukraine. In June NATO even set up a subsea cable taskforce because of the high threat of Russian sabotage in the region. And with Finland recently joining NATO—and Sweden in the process of joining—it’s highly likely that Russia damaged the cables in retaliation.

However, another vessel was also reported to be under investigation—a Hong Kong–registered cargo ship, the NewNew Polar Bear, that had been travelling with the Russian vessel.

Open-source tracking showed that both the Russian and Chinese vessels had been in the exact location at the exact time when each of three lines—the two subsea telecoms cables and the gas pipeline—was damaged.

This is where the mystery starts to get stranger.

On 20 October, Finland announced that the Chinese ship—not the Russian vessel—was the prime suspect for damaging the Balticconnector pipeline. Estonia and Sweden followed by saying that the Chinese vessel was also the prime suspect in both subsea cable incidents.

An investigation by Finland into the gas pipeline has since determined that the damage was indeed caused by the Chinese vessel. Finnish authorities have recovered its anchor from the site. The next phase of the investigation will be to determine—somehow—whether the damage was done intentionally, accidentally or as a result of poor maritime activity, and what the motivation was. After the revelation that the Chinese vessel was at fault for the gas pipeline damage, Estonia and Sweden reaffirmed that the subsea cable incidents were linked to the gas pipeline attack.

Unsurprisingly, both Russia and China have vehemently denied any involvement in damaging the cables. Russia, despite its history of threats to sabotage European subsea cables and its recent sabre-rattling over NATO expansion, has dismissed the accusations as ‘rubbish’. China, for its part, has agreed to provide information and called for an ‘objective, fair, and professional’ investigation, emphasising the Chinese vessel’s routine maritime activities. Central to this mystery is why a Chinese vessel would even be involved in damaging subsea cables in the Baltic Sea in the first place. Would China really take its ‘no-limits partnership’ with Russia to a whole new level?

Indeed, this is where the situation gets murkier still.

While initially the NewNew Polar Bear was reported to be operated by China’s Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Company, an update to the ship’s paperwork while still in transit a few days ago has changed its operator’s name to Torgmoll, a Russian company specialising in maritime trade with China. Marine ownership and control are often opaque, and in some instances, downright shady. It’s possible that Russia chartered the vessel to conduct the sabotage, knowing it would test and complicate any European response if the vessel was registered in Hong Kong. Russia may have undertaken the sabotage with or without the knowledge of Beijing. Indeed, China may be involved, knowing that the murkiness of the situation makes it difficult to figure out who was responsible for what.

Attribution of responsibility for this kind of incident is extremely difficult, and it’s unlikely we will ever find out exactly what happened. And that of course, is exactly why Russia—or China—has done it. The deliberate targeting of subsea cables and gas pipelines during peacetime is a tactic that falls in the grey zone—actions that are coercive, effective and aggressive, yet fall below the threshold of armed conflict—even if it can be proved.

It’s not clear how this story will play out. What is clear, however, is that the world should be watching it closely, because it’s likely that the ripples from these attacks in the Baltic Sea will extend far beyond its waters.

Lessons from Finland for the Indo-Pacific

I recently visited Finland, for the first time, to attend the Helsinki Security Forum, organised by the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, on the theme ‘Deter, defend and secure—Europe in the era of radical uncertainty’. This year’s edition, the second iteration of the forum, included a panel on Indo-Pacific security—a sign that Finland’s strategic attentions are not entirely fixated on Russia, or distracted by the policy adjustments required by NATO membership since the former neutral nation formally joined the alliance in April. Finland’s focus is likely to remain on NATO’s expanded Nordic–Baltic front for the foreseeable future, but Indo-Pacific countries, including Australia and New Zealand, can still learn a lot from its example, in terms of continuity and change.

Finland combines a Scandinavian aura of self-assurance with the edginess of a frontline state. Helsinki is closer to Saint Petersburg than it is to Stockholm. With a 1,300-kilometre border with Russia, Finland harbours no doubts about the direction from which potential threats are likely to come. The memory of Russian aggression in World War II is still present—including scars from Soviet air raids in downtown Helsinki. More than a 10th of Finland’s territory was annexed by the Soviet Union, including the second-largest city, Vyborg. This manifests in a popular defence consciousness and willingness to protect the homeland that is absent in much of western Europe.

If an acute military threat were to materialise, Finland’s relatively small peacetime armed forces can mobilise a conscript-based reserve of 280,000 personnel. Theoretically, a total of 870,000 Finns, aged 18–60, can be called on for military service. This is a remarkable scale of mobilisation for a nation of just 5.5 million people, a population similar to that of New Zealand. Conscription has always enjoyed widespread support in Finland, but public approval ratings have surged since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Finland’s concept of ‘total defence’ finds some resonance with Singapore, a city-state with a similar-sized population. Both countries demonstrate that limited manpower is no barrier to a self-reliant defence posture, or to the attainment in parallel of an enviable standard of living.

Finland acquired a reputation during the Cold War for having a foot in both camps, giving rise to the unflattering label ‘Finlandisation’. For over a century, until 1917, Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, though it was never settled by Russians en masse. Maintaining neutrality in the Cold War was a geopolitically precarious juggling act, yet the country’s basic identity remained Western-oriented, paving the way for eventual accession to the European Union in 1995.

During the Helsinki Security Forum, Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen referred to a ‘new Iron Curtain’ on Finland’s eastern border. Every Finn I spoke to expects Russia’s isolation from Europe to be long-lasting, regardless of the military outcome in Ukraine. By joining NATO, Finland has thrown off any remaining ambiguity about its allegiances.

Finland’s entry into NATO has shone a spotlight on the impressive capabilities and practices it brings to Europe’s collective defence and security table, particularly under Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty. In the 1990s, as other European countries cashed in the post–Cold War peace dividend, Finland never dropped its guard, maintaining its conscription-based model. In contrast with most European NATO members, Finland has maintained a deep arsenal, a lesson in self-reliance retained from the Winter War in 1939–40, now having to be relearned more widely in Europe in the light of battlefield experience from Ukraine. After significant defence spending increases since 2020, Finland entered NATO committing well above 2% of its GDP to defence, including a US$10 billion pledge to acquire 64 F-35A fighter jets—not far off Australia’s inventory. Its navy is replacing patrol boats and minelayers with new corvettes.

While Finland has good reason to be confident in its ability to fend off conventional military probes from Russia, especially given Russia’s poor offensive performance against Ukraine, the longest-standing lacuna in its deterrence toolkit has been in the nuclear domain. Access to NATO’s nuclear umbrella was an important driver behind Helsinki’s decision to enter the alliance, given Vladimir Putin’s willingness to issue nuclear threats and Russia’s lowered doctrinal threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.

Finland and Sweden, which is on course to join NATO later this year and is also heavily reinvesting in defence, can exploit their geography in ways that constrain Russia’s offensive options in the Baltic and High North. In short order, the Baltic has been transformed into a ‘NATO lake’, raising the risks for Russia’s Baltic fleet and Kaliningrad if hostilities with NATO were ever seriously in prospect (notwithstanding the suspected sabotage of seabed infrastructure in peacetime). Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said at the forum that Helsinki’s membership of NATO wouldn’t be complete until Sweden joined, underlining the closeness of Finland’s relationship with its neighbour to the west.

Finnish authorities’ recent identification of a Hong Kong–registered container ship, along with a Russian vessel, as potentially being involved in damaging a gas pipeline and separate communications cables running across the Gulf of Finland could—if the investigation finds evidence of state involvement—prompt a reassessment of China’s intentions and the risks posed by its deepening security partnership with Russia. Until now, Helsinki has tended to resist the proposition that Beijing and Moscow pose a concerted challenge. NATO membership bolsters Finland’s defence and security, but it could also make the country a target for retaliation below the threshold of armed conflict on a wider international stage. Paying more attention to the Indo-Pacific is therefore prudent.

Between them, the Nordic and Baltic countries have added significant aggregate to the balance of military power and political resolve in Europe as a whole. Finland’s and Sweden’s entries into NATO bring a cohesion to Europe’s defence and deterrence posture that had been missing, even during the Cold War. The abandonment of decades-long neutrality was a bold and unexpected step for Finland to take, adapting to a fundamental change in its strategic circumstances. That ought to be the new definition of Finlandisation.

How Putin saved NATO

When Finland cleared the last hurdle for NATO membership last week, major Western newspapers buried the story. Yet Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto justly celebrated ‘these historic days’—the end of 75 years of neutrality. As of this week, Finland is formally in, and Sweden, another eternal neutral, will soon follow, once Turkey stops blocking its membership.

Why would these two countries throng into an alliance that French President Emmanuel Macron diagnosed as being ‘brain dead’ only four years ago, and which former US President Donald Trump saw as ‘obsolete’ in 2017? The wisdom of the 18th-century British wit Samuel Johnson offers a broad answer here: ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’

But there is an even pithier answer to this question: Vladimir Putin. The man who would be king of Europe has given NATO a new brain and a new lease on life.

What an irony! One of Putin’s many pretexts for subduing Ukraine was to stop NATO enlargement once and for all. Instead, by pushing two neutral Nordic countries into the alliance, he has achieved the opposite. NATO, now, has not been in better health for decades.

Yet Putin doesn’t deserve all the credit. NATO was never as sclerotic as Macron and Trump presumed. It is the oldest alliance of free countries, and longevity bespeaks functionality. In past centuries, royals changed coalitions more often than their wigs. As Lord Palmerston famously said, ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies.’

NATO is unique in the annals of nation-states. When Napoleon was beaten for good, the coalition arrayed against him was history. NATO, by contrast, was never a temporary marriage of convenience that would fall apart after victory or defeat. Its forces are integrated under a supreme commander and benefit from hardware compatibility, common communications and constant training. Such synergies make it costly to renationalise defence, and no member has ever defected.

And the alliance keeps growing. It started with 12 states in 1949. Greece, Turkey and West Germany joined in the 1950s, followed by Spain in the 1980s, three former Soviet satrapies in 1999, and seven more in 2004. Albania and Croatia were admitted in 2009; then Montenegro joined in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. Once Finland and Sweden are in, the original 12 will have expanded to 32. Growth does not imply obsolescence.

The most critical reason for longevity is the United States, which had to overcome its long aversion to what Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address in 1801, called ‘entangling alliances’. In fact, the US didn’t commit to Europe in the early years of World War I or World War II. The turn from self-isolation to permanent alliance with Europe had to await the Cold War, when those ex-isolationists provided Western Europe with that most precious gift: a security umbrella made in the USA, including more than 350,000 US troops and thousands of tactical nuclear weapons at the peak that kept Stalin’s heirs on their best behaviour.

Moreover, the US acted not only as a protector, but also as a pacifier. With their common security assured, age-old enemies like Britain, France and Germany could safely dispense with arms races and strategic rivalry in favour of trust and community.

This is why the European Defence Community (without the US) died in the cradle in 1954, why NATO has reached the age of 74, and why a purely European strategic player remains a noble dream—even if the EU plus Britain add up to the world’s second-largest economy (after the US and ahead of China). The US is the not-so-secret ingredient. It spares the Europeans the necessity of mounting a divisive autonomous defence.

Putin’s war of conquest against Ukraine proves the point. When US President Joe Biden committed in earnest after Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, the hesitant Europeans could feel safe enough to engage. With Mr Big there to deter the Kremlin’s nuclearised war machine, would-be mediators like France and Germany have curbed their classic reflexes. Germany abandoned the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia while providing a steady stream of equipment to Ukraine, even Leopard 2 tanks, but only after the US had gone first with its Abrams tanks.

Thus, the ‘brain dead’ alliance has bounced back—nothing like an impending hanging to concentrate the mind. NATO, give or take Hungary or Turkey, has grasped the obvious. The war on its doorsteps is not just about Ukraine, but also about a precious European order that has delegitimised conquest. The stakes could not be higher. As in Stalin’s days, Putin’s lunge has reintroduced the spectre of Russian hegemony over Europe. Putin wants a certified sphere of influence, preferably a back-to-the-future restoration of the old Soviet empire.

If the Ukraine war turns into a blood-drenched stalemate, the voices of accommodation—‘give Putin an offramp’—will grow louder on both sides of the Atlantic, on the left and on the right. Is Europe prepared for its strategic paradigm to shift towards the return of power politics?

Already, Russia’s war of aggression has revealed the price of three decades of European disarmament. The alliance has shrunk not only its munitions stockpiles, but also its arms production lines. High-intensity protracted warfare seemed to have gone the way of the buggy. Yet, whichever way the war goes, it holds a sobering lesson for the West: pile up plenty of gear and ordnance, invest in mobility and train your troops.

‘A conqueror is always a lover of peace,’ taught Clausewitz. They want to move in ‘quite calmly’. Hence, ‘we must prepare for war’ in order to avert it. As the West peers ahead, it should heed the age-old rule: deterrence is better than having to halt aggression. It is also a lot cheaper.

NATO membership an existential imperative for Sweden and Finland

While the likely outcome of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine remains unclear, Russia’s aggression has already changed the European security order in important ways. The only modern European historical comparison is Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. Both cases involved large-scale unprovoked attacks on a neighbouring country with the aim of eliminating it. Hitler refused to accept the existence of an independent Poland; Putin refuses to accept the reality of an independent Ukraine.

Putin’s invasion came as a profound shock to European governments. Most European leaders had played down US warnings about an imminent attack, reasoning that although Putin can be unpredictable, he was unlikely to do anything so irrational. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell had received fairly rough treatment on his first visit to Moscow in early 2021; but most European governments still believed that diplomacy could produce a more stable relationship.

That illusion was shattered on 24 February, which has become Europe’s 9/11: a global and geopolitical wake-up call with two main consequences. First, military spending will increase across Europe. After years of dragging their feet, almost all European NATO members have suddenly aligned with the goal of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. Europe’s largest economy, Germany, will add the equivalent of 0.5% of GDP to its defence spending in a one-off boost this year.

Second, NATO will be strengthened in several ways. In addition to increasing its military presence in member states adjacent to Russia, the alliance is poised to add Finland and Sweden to its ranks. Both have developed their relations with NATO since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine, but now they will take the critical step of applying for formal membership.

Putin’s invasion created an entirely new security situation for Finland and Sweden, because it demonstrated overnight that Russia is in the hands of a regime that will use military force to impose its imperial designs on Europe. Since Finland fought a war with the Soviet Union in 1939–40 and had been a part of the Russian empire for a century before 1917, the invasion of Ukraine immediately convinced its leaders to seek NATO membership.

Finland’s own fragile arrangement with the Soviet Union, and later with Russia, was one of the main reasons why Sweden, too, stayed out of NATO. Following the accession of Norway and Denmark to the alliance in the late 1940s, Sweden pursued a Cold War policy of neutrality supported by strong defence forces.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union in 1995 and gradually deepened their defence cooperation with NATO, and thus with the United States. Full NATO membership was regarded as a potential option for some later date. But although Finnish and Swedish public opinion had become slightly more receptive to the idea, majorities were still sceptical or opposed.

But 24 February tipped the balance. While there are still domestic political processes to work through, it is now virtually certain that both countries will submit applications for membership well before the NATO summit in Madrid in late June. Public opinion has changed dramatically in recent weeks. In Sweden, all major political parties, except for the former communist party and the dwindling Green Party, now favour membership; in Finland, all political parties from the right to the left have signalled their support. We are witnessing a political sea change, all owing to Putin’s imperial delirium.

Finnish and Swedish accession to NATO will alter the European security architecture in two important ways. First, northern Europe will acquire the capacity to coordinate substantial defence forces regionwide. Sweden and Finland will furnish NATO with important new capabilities, as already demonstrated by the regular air force training exercises they hold with Norway. NATO will also have a greater capacity to control the Baltic Sea and thus to support the defence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Second, Swedish and Finnish membership will reinforce the European pillar within NATO. Both countries are proponents of developing the EU’s defence and security dimension, and of strengthening transatlantic ties, including the important security relationship with the United Kingdom. While NATO will remain the primary guarantor of territorial defence, the EU—with its broader policy arsenal—will become an increasingly important security alliance, and coordination between the two will deepen.

An important development to watch will be Denmark’s 1 June referendum to lift restrictions on the country’s participation in EU security and defence policies. These constraints are remnants of controversies from the early 1990s, and Denmark—along with Sweden—has already committed to increasing its defence expenditure to 2% of GDP.

Taken together, these steps will substantially strengthen the entire Nordic-Baltic region’s defence potential. Stronger defence will remain crucial as long as the Kremlin remains on its current course. But northern Europeans also must take care not to provoke Russia, which has important resources and economic hubs close to Sweden and Finland. St. Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city and a major industrial zone and the Kola Peninsula is the site of Russian submarine bases and other facilities, as well as the world’s single-largest concentration of nuclear weapons.

Russian leaders describe their imperial project as a ‘life or death struggle’. Taking that characterisation seriously, Finland and Sweden no longer view NATO membership as a strategic choice. Since 24 February, it has become an existential imperative.