Minna Ålander 🌻
Associate Fellow @chathamhouse.org | @cepa.org Fellow | Senior Fellow Frivärld. Nordic-Baltic-Arctic security, NATO, European affairs. Plot twist: not from Åland. 📸 Arno Mikkor/ICDS
✍️ Northern Flank Notes: open.substack.com/pub/minnalander
- The Finnish railway gauge is imperial Russian and actually wasn’t updated to the soviet one. So it’s not the same as in Russia. And not a soviet legacy as Finland wasn’t a occupied by the Soviet Union.
- Big (military) mobility news from Finland: Finland starts working on changing the railway gauge to the European standard, instead of the current one that is a legacy of Finland’s 100 years as part of the Russian empire
- A Very Czech Problem: was late to a conference session because I went to the wrong castle (Seriously, so many castles in such a small area in Prague !)
- Giving Russia leverage was a great basis for peaceful coexistence last time 👍👍👍
- This is madness. US, according to Reuters, is exploring ways to restore Russian gas flow to Europe. What could possibly go wrong! www.reuters.com/business/ene...
- Revisited my theory of ”world wars” (instead of a World War) as the most likely escalation of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The Biden administration paved the way for this development and the Trump administration has given green light to rogue powers and groups who are seizing the moment to wreak havoc.
- It seems that France has decided the good old Bernadotte connection is the most promising one in Northern Europe. The French have been eyeing the Swedish defence industry with interest for a while now. ”France and Sweden are strengthening their military bond - to be able to manage without the USA”
- US embassy in Stockholm has demanded companies that deliver goods and services to it to not have any DEI programmes. This is beyond ridiculous and it would serve the embassy right to have their services cut. Once again the Finnish saying applies that they’re asking to get the blood from their noses
- US Embassy vs City of Stockholm escalates: ”Let’s be clear, the Embassy is putting themselves into a situation. One that they’ll lose in. It’s them who won’t last without trash collection, heating, and running water,” says the city’s opposition center-right party leader www.svd.se/a/rPRX8a/fje...
- So thanks to Da Pope being from Chicago, I learned that a street was renamed after Pope John Paul II who once visited. So is Chicago now going to be renamed Popecago ? Leocago ?
- Very frank conversations about possibly irreparable damage in the transatlantic relations interrupted by a 2-minute silence in memory of the end of WWII at London Defence Conference. Saddening to think what a decisive role the US played for Europe to get over its past. And where we are today.
- For this week’s ”The Europe Dispatch” with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social I looked at what yesterday’s Merz mayhem tells us about Germany’s leadership prospects and wider power dynamics in Europe. Looks like the smaller states will have to continue their efforts to keep Europe on the right track.
- Thank you, I could only nod along in reading. "That, in turn, is one of the many legacies of Angela Merkel" - what in that time caused the now lack of leadership potential? "the trend of larger European states being unable to offer stable leadership on the continent". Yes. it is visible. But why?
- Good questions, to be returned to in another column ! 😉
