Territorial disarmament in Northern Europe
Subtitle: the epilogue of a success story
By: Matthieu Chillaud
Contributors: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Series: SIPRI policy paper -- no. 13; SIPRI policy paper -- no. 13.
Publisher: SIPRI, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Solna, Sweden
Language: eng
Number of pages: 62
Subjects: Arms control; Disarmament; National security
Description: Since the end of the cold war, while the map of Europe as a whole has been transformed, the quality of a certain apartness in the Nordic states' relation to the main strategic business of the continent has shown a remarkable power of survival. Even such sweeping changes as the entry of Poland and the three Baltic states into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have hardly impacted upon Finland's or Sweden's continuing attachment to their non-allied status, or the various opt-outs of Denmark and Norway from both NATO's and the European Union's defence-related affairs. NATO itself adopted one similar device for limiting tensions, when it chose not to base nuclear weapons or foreign forces in peacetime on the territory of its new member states. This Policy Paper begins by examining in depth the legal meaning and strategic rationale of the whole range of national and interstate measures that may be summed up as "territorial disarmament". It shows how different Nordic states and territories have acquired their various special statuses by stages through history and brings out the complex motivations involved that often relate not just to external security, but also to feelings about identity and domestic governance. The last chapter turns to current strategic politics and raises some pertinent questions--worthy of further research--about whether the Nordic penchant for separation will and should survive in face of the continuing shift of European security challenges and priorities towards dimensions that are either transnational (like terrorist threats and epidemics) or entirely non-territorial. The appendix contains the relevant sections of many of the key agreements, including some that are otherwise hard to find, that have created and recorded measures of territorial disarmament in Northern Europe.
Notes: "August 2006."