Ilmari Käihkö’s DCAF report, Post-War Security Sector Reform in Finland, examines Finland as a rare case of a small frontline democracy that managed to preserve sovereignty, maintain a large defense sector, and avoid military rule despite civil war, world war, Cold War pressure, and decades of threat from Russia. The report is especially valuable because it complicates the usual image of Finland as a clean success story.
Käihkö’s central point is blunt: measured against the benchmark of democratic civil military relations, Finland “hardly offers a success story.” One of the most important issues highlighted by the report is that the literature on Finnish civil–military relations is limited, consisting mostly of biographies and memoirs of senior politicians and commanders of the armed forces instead of social scientific studies or policy papers that would focus on civilian oversight of the defense sector.
“To an extent it can be explained by the armed forces’ level of autonomy within historically changing boundaries, as well as the armed forces’ weak academization, combined with pragmatic emphasis when it comes to research that discourages anything deemed potentially critical of their practices.”
Käihkö also offers a good outline of the military size figures, noting that most of the reserve would not be capable of short-term mobilisation, and could not be effectively used in battle.
“Finland’s main strength is its conscript system, which allows a large reserve. The peacetime Finnish Defense Forces possess 24,000 active personnel (0.4% of the population, ranking Finland 87 out of the 145 countries in the index), divided into around 12,000 employees (one-third civilians) and 22,000 conscripts per year. This bi-annual intake allows the cost-effective maintenance of a 280,000-strong reserve, with the possibility of mobilizing up to 870,000 personnel. In practice, the professional cadre and the better equipped general forces would be mobilized first and thereby buy time for the mobilization of the older reservists — many of whom would be poorly equipped and would be used in support roles.”
He also quotes figures of harassment we wrote extensively about in our report The Nordic Conscription Myth.
“According to conscript questionnaires, around 40% of female and 4% of male conscripts reported repeated sexual harassment during their conscription in 2023 (…) While bullying in the military is periodically reported, 2022 and 2023 saw particularly severe cases of long-term bullying of dozens of conscripts by instructors in two units of the Navy (Kerkelä 2023). Accidents often resulting from inadequate safety measures during conscript exercises also regularly come to light (Muhonen 2024). Soldiers’ and officers’ regular use of prostitutes and alcohol abroad (Suopanki 2021b), and sexual harassment and illegal behavior at home have also been noted (Suopanki 2021a). In every case the response by the military has been to emphasize that the incidents reported are outliers, and to assign responsibility to individuals. The priority has thus been to protect reputation instead of concrete measures taken to get rid of unwanted and, in some cases, illegal behavior”
A significant part of the problem is institutional weakness:
“The Parliamentary Ombudsman in Finland reviews the legality of military actions, administrative decisions, and personnel conduct. A 2011 amendment allowed the Ombudsman to dismiss frivolous or groundless complaints, enhancing efficiency and enabling a focus on critical tasks, including inspections of the Defense Forces. While the Ombudsman is also tasked with monitoring Finnish peacekeepers abroad, such inspections are infrequent, with the last occurring in Kosovo in 2009. Because of secrecy, operations have not been subjected to much public scrutiny. (…) For example, in 2017 the Ombudsman received at most five complaints
per year”
Käihkö points out the weak civilian oversight of the military. One piece of the puzzle is that:
“No critical journalism about the Finnish military exists even during peacetime. While no major scandals have emerged since 1944 within the armed forces, even decision makers who sit in the parliamentary defense committee struggle to understand military activities because of a strong tradition of secrecy.”
Overall, this is an important report because it offers a sober and unusually realistic assessment of the Finnish military, something increasingly rare in European scholarship, media coverage, and security-policy analysis.
