In a time when the enlargement of NATO seems to have exhausted its political capital, there is a rising intellectual trend in Europe that speaks about a geopolitical compromise: the Finlandization of the post-Soviet space. But why now this resurrection of a Cold War concept? And what does it mean in practice? Is it applicable to the post Soviet space? On all these topics FP Romania discussed in its latest edition, the November/December issue with a Finnish expert, Igor Torbakov.

FP Romania:Why now this resurrection of a discussion on Finlandization of the space between NATO and Russia. What was the trigger? Is this the end of an euroatlantic political cycle? Or a changing in the mindset of the euroatlantic elites? Or the changing of the euroatlantic elites in themselves?

Igor Torbakov: First of all, we should distinguish between “Finlandization” as a broad metaphor and “Finlandization” as a coherent social model rooted in concrete historical circumstances – the post WWII Finnish-Soviet relations -- and based on a theory of adaptive politics. In the present-day usage of the term, more often than not, we are witnessing the former rather than the latter. Remarkably, “Finlandization” concept has recently been used not only for discussing the developments in Eastern Europe but also for understanding the tangled relations between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. Thus, it is not so much a resurrection of a Cold War mindset as a manifestation of a belated realization that the socio-political evolution and geopolitical direction of the East European “in-between” states remain an open-ended issue even 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This realization is at the heart of what came to be known as the West’s “enlargement fatigue.” Add to this mix Russia’s resurgence and the strong desire of the bulk of the Euroatlantic elites to “reset” relati