March 03, 2008
The Rising Bear
As someone pointed out last night, it was exactly 200 years ago that Russian Cossacks occupied Helsinki, then a thriving metropolis of some 4,500 Swedes (since Finland was still part of Sweden). The cathedral I posted about earlier today was built for the Russians soon thereafter. Russia, as one might imagine, is never far from the minds of the Finns today. The lengthy border between the nations is one of the world's starkest dividing lines, in terms of measures income and life expectancy. A Finnish male today is expected to live roughly two decades longer than a counterpart across the border. While the Soviet Union was still in existence, roughly 27 percent of Finnish trade was with Russia, but after the end of the Cold War that number dropped to just three percent—a pretty good indication of the economic meltdown the country has seen in the last twenty years. Of course today, it seems to be on the rise again.
On the military front, it didn't escape notice that Russia buzzed a U.S. aircraft carrier two weeks ago. According to that same article, there have been eight incidents between Russian bombers and U.S. fighters off the coast of Alaska since September.
Politically, though, Russia is in a really interesting place. As one diplomat pointed out last night at dinner, what does it say about modern Russia that the Russian election this week was never in doubt but that in America, tomorrow's Texas and Ohio primaries has everyone on the edge of their seats? We knew just as well that Putin's hand-picked successor would win as we did that Saddam Hussein would win reelection in Iraq. Is there any doubt that Russia is no longer an open democracy? What does that mean for the next decade in terms of Russia, Europe, and the U.S.? I can tell from conversations here that the Nordic countries are thinking very very hard about this question.
