Sabotaging Finlandia

Jean Sibelius’s Finlanfdia: A Song of Peace for Their Land and for Mine

At my 6th grade graduation from Samuel Gompers Elementary School in Philadelphia in 1962, we sang Finlandia, by Sibelius. We also sang George M Cohan’s patriotic song, “Over There,” “The Yanks are coming,” for our parents’ recent memory of “the good war.”

Decades later, Finlandia re-remerged on an Indigo Girls CD, "Finlandia" ("This is My Song") which always moves me. Here is a gorgeous 8-minute orchestral version, performed on the100th anniversary of Finnish Independence and a version by Joan Baez. Ironically, Mussorgsky’s Gates of Kiev in Pictures at an Exhibition is another favorite.

The original words (below) to Finlandia are about a new dawn after emerging from oppression and slavery. The US lyrics by Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness is about empathy for people in other nations, recognizing they, as do we, also love their homes, their holy shrines and their natural beauty. It is a prayer for peace.

A Mindless Decision

As Finlandia fills my heart with innocent yearnings for our common humanity, I am saddened, horrified and terrified at the regressive, escalatory decision of formerly neutral Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

This move reflects, in addition to submission to external coercion, an immature, egocentric, concrete, black and white, all or nothing, here and now, us/them, win/lose, good/evil mindset. According to the “law of opposites” such policies inevitably produce unwanted consequences as they are ignorant of historical context, conflict dynamics, cause and effect, and the psychology of the recipient.

US pressure for yet another threatening wave of NATO expansion, turns two neutral countries close to Russia into adversaries and magnifies the precise conditions that led up to this current war. 

The fact that Sweden and Finland believe that this makes them more secure is what we psychologists call “poor reality testing,” when the ego function of evaluation, and judgment of real, external factual events is colored by emotions, fantasies and internal representations. 

It is an understatement to say “IT IS FOOLISH FOR FINLAND AND SWEDEN TO JOIN NATO.” Jan Oberg gives a superb conflict analysis of the absurdity.

Here are some excerpts.

“NATO’s expansion policy created – and is responsible for – the conflict. Russia created – and is responsible for – the war. There exists no violence which is not rooted in underlying conflicts. Conflict and peace literate people, therefore, talk about both.”

“Decisions taken with this irrational approach and emotionalism will only make things worse. Such as Sweden and Finland joining NATO based on the hysteric panic of the moment: There simply exists no credible, realistic scenario that would lead to an isolated, out-of-the-blue Russian attack on either of them if they remained non-aligned as they’ve been for decades.”

“The discourse of peace – in media, politics and research – has been disappeared. Peace has come to mean weapons, deterrence, more and more of it coupled to blind loyalty with every US/NATO war.”

Cartoon from the 1980s

Steven Kinzer states in Bringing Finland into NATO is a big mistake, “Nonalignment has served it well, and Russia doesn’t really pose much of a threat.” … “Admitting Finland into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would provoke Russia, endanger Finland, and possibly drag the United States into war against a nuclear-armed power. … A country that has been a valuable bridge between East and West will surrender that role.” … “Despite all this, the United States is rushing to pull both Finland and Sweden into NATO.”

Political Narcissism and Self-Fulfilling Paranoia

In “Preventing Armageddon in the 21st Century,” Morton Deutsch, PhD, founder of Columbia University’s International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) wrote,

“Psychological experiments suggest that when one party in a conflict attempts to increase its security without regard for the security of the other party, the attempt readily becomes self-defeating. Such a situation is potentially catastrophic when the stakes involve nuclear war. If military inferiority is dangerous, so is superiority. It is dangerous for either side in a conflict to feel tempted or frightened into action, or to have grounds to believe that its antagonist might be so tempted or frightened. According to this analysis, our security and that of an adversary can only be obtained through our mutual security.”

Acting out of psychological ignorance and narcissistic preoccupation with our own security, US and NATO, with every wave of expansion and arrogant, self-righteous rhetoric, provoke fear, moral outrage and humiliation and provocative mutual escalation. People are more dangerous when afraid, as are we.

When acting out of fear, we provoke fear in the other, creating a cycle I call self-fulfilling paranoia. This an example of what I describe as “Newtonian politics” as opposed to “quantum politics” in  Wise Power™ Paradigm: Beyond Hard, Soft and Smart Power: Quantum Politics and Second Order Change

“The madness that is carrying the world closer and closer to nuclear war has at its core a psychological explanation: Each side, though fundamentally afraid, misperceives the nature of the danger it faces. Each side imagines that it faces an inherently, implacably aggressive enemy, when it actually faces an enemy as fearful as itself - an enemy driven mainly by fear, to do the things that lead to war.”  Ralph K. White, Fearful Warriors.

Although that is true, the US and NATO may not be acting out of fear as much as manipulating fear and support for the war billions in weapons sales, and acting out of greed and the desire to dominate, knowing full well they are inciting escalation of violence.

Political Cartoon from a Moscow newspaper in October 1984, given to me when I was there as a Citizen Diplomat, Track 2 Diplomacy with the Association of Humanistic Psychology

Who Knew? A Message from the Universe about Our History of Provocation

In March, while writing a piece about interpreting “messages from the universe,” using the example synchronicity Colin Powel (Interpreting Our Collective Waking Dream: Colin Powell: Synchronicity and Symbol), analyzing some current events as a waking dream, I heard news that 4 US marines were killed on March 18, 2022 in a NATO military exercise unrelated to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The story was full of details that felt like loud messages crying out for our attention. Synchronicities are causally unrelated events that share an underlying reality.

Taking a Jungian approach to interpret this waking dream, consider the elements of this event are showing us something we are not seeing, that we need to see in a new way, to correct our problematic conscious attitude, to make the unconscious conscious.

In the classic manipulation of a one-sided image of the enemy, we fail to understand the world from their perspective. We forget about my “Political Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” in Wise Power™, that we cannot judge the behavior of another without considering the “experimenter observer effect” that we have upon the other, and whether they show up as a particle (static) or a wave (dynamic).

Elements of the Waking Dream – Revealing Something Hidden from Us

What does it mean to us to become aware of these facts?

* On March 18, four U.S. Marines were killed during a large NATO military exercise in a Norway Northern Mountainous area.

* This military drill, called “Cold Response” happens every 2 years. It began on March 14 and ended on April 1, 2022.

*  The drill included 30,000 troops, 220 aircraft and 50 vessels from 27 countries. Non-NATO members Finland and Sweden also participated.

* The American MV-22 Osprey aircraft crashed during this NATO military exercise. The Osprey, with it troublesome accident history has sparked long political controversy over its safety.

* The crash occurred on the eve of the anniversary of the cataclysmic invasion of Iraq, considered the biggest blunder in US military history

* That same day, Putin Lays Out Demands For Cease-Fire In Call With Turkey's President.  He “reportedly outlined the conditions for ending his invasion of Ukraine.”

Putin asked for “for face-to-face negotiations with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hammer out his demands which Zelenskyy has previously stated he is not opposed to.”

In sum, these elements converge to show us that we risked the lives of US marines in dangerous aircraft with a history of accidents, on the anniversary of a cataclysmic war, to demonstrate a humiliating, intimidating show of force, using bases in “neutral countries,” while refusing overtures for conflict ending negotiations – indeed a “Cold Response.”

Consider just two, no doubt of many other provocative actions.

The military exercise described above is reminiscent of military exercises the US does with South Korea that increase fear and escalatory tensions with North Korea, provoking a felt need to possess and test their own nuclear weapons.

Osama bin Laden claimed his attacks on 9/11 were because the US had military bases in Muslim countries. He also mentioned the humiliation of 80 years before.

Bearing Witness to Stupidity

Jan Oberg wisely warns us (excerpts)

·       The Swedes and the Finns will become less secure. Why? Because there will be harder confrontation and polarization instead of soft borders and mediating attitudes. In a serious crisis, they will, for all practical purposes, be occupied and told what to do by the US/NATO

·       To the degree that, at some point in the future, the two countries will be asked to host US bases – … Such bases will be Russia’s first-order targets in a war situation.

·       From a Russian point of view, of course, their NATO membership is extremely tension-increasing and confrontational.

·       There will be virtually no confidence-building and conflict-resolution mechanisms left in Europe. Russia will feel even more intimidated, isolated and – in a certain situation – become even more desperate. As does, normally, the weaker party in an asymmetric conflict. We are living in very dangerous times and these two countries in NATO will only increase the danger, there is no way it could reduce it.

·       It will cost a fortune to convert their military infrastructure to full NATO membership 

·       As NATO members, Finland and Sweden cannot but share the responsibility for nuclear weapons 

·       The West has no positive vision anymore – its actions are about re-armament, threats, sanctions, demonization, the self-righteous “we-never-did-anything-wrong” and the concomitant projection of its own dark sides upon others, China in particular.

One can only regret that Sweden and Finland lack the intellectual power to see the larger picture in time and space. NATO has had the time since 1949 to prove that it can make peace. We know now that it can’t. Joining it, therefore, is one big gift to militarism and future warfare.

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Tragically Sabotaging the Dream of Finlandia

This beautiful anthem, one version about emerging from oppression, the other “a song of peace for their land and for mine,” oozing with empathy, as “other hearts other lands are beating” is about to be shredded as Finland and Sweden are manipulated by the US and NATO at the height of emotion to enter the abyss.

Finlandia lyrics by Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness.

This is my song, O God of all the nations

A song of peace, for lands afar and mine

This is my home, the country where my heart is

Hear are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrines

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean

And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine

Oh hear my song, thou God of all the nations

A song of peace for their land and for mine

Original Finnish Lyrics, English translation by Keith Bosley

Finland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning
The threat of night has now been driven away
The skylark calls across the light of morning
The blue of heaven lets it have its way
And now the day the powers of night is scorning:
Thy daylight dawns, O Finland of ours!

Finland, arise, and raise towards the highest
Thy head now crowned with mighty memory
Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest
That thou hast thrown off thy slavery
Beneath oppression's yoke thou never liest
Thy morning's come, O Finland of ours!