Resilience has in recent years become a central concept in security policy. Tapio Juntunen, a university instructor at Tampere University, explains what resilience means and how shifting perceptions of security affect our society.
Resilience—shock-resistance, or the capacity to adapt and recover from crises—has become commonplace in politics, the business world, and public debate. It refers to both individuals’ and societies’ readiness to face unforeseen changes and threats.
“Over the past 10–15 years, we’ve essentially been moving towards a resilience paradigm,” says university instructor Tapio Juntunen of Tampere University.
“Put bluntly, this means a shift in security policy—from prevention to strengthening resilience—a more reactive way of thinking fuelled by changes in multiple threat scenarios and the growing complexity of society.”
Earlier this year, Juntunen completed his doctorate with a dissertation on Finland’s Cold War–era nuclear arms control policy. Beyond transformations in the nuclear order, however, he has long been guided by a more conceptual and theoretical interest in security studies and resilience.
How, then, has resilience and security been interpreted in Finland, and in what ways has Finland built that resilience?
“I see that in Finland there has traditionally been a more strategic, state and security authority–focused view of how resilience is formed,” Juntunen says.
“If we compare it to the Anglo-American model, which emphasises local-level agency and individual responsibility, our idea of how resilience is produced is more state-driven.”
By this he means that resilience issues in Finland often distil down to societal material preparedness, security of supply, and the protection of critical infrastructure. “These measures give the authorities a logical framework, and by international standards, Finland’s material preparedness is in good shape,” Juntunen concedes.
The changing security environment has inevitably accentuated this particular interpretation. “Over the past two or three years, something has happened that has led external threats and their imagery to begin redefining our perceptions of very fundamental security-related tensions,” Juntunen remarks.
He points specifically to tensions between citizens and state authorities, as well as to balancing national security and human rights. “On the one hand, security is inevitably in perpetual conflict with certain individual freedoms, yet on the other hand, security itself is part of human rights,”
Juntunen observes.
While national security became the central argument during the drafting of Finland’s civilian intelligence legislation, Juntunen notes that as a guiding concept for practical policymaking, it remains somewhat ambiguous.
“It’s not a new concept in the sense that it has established international forms and is intuitively graspable. Resilience, by contrast, was once a distinctly novel term.”
Even so, Juntunen sees a risk that focusing too narrowly on national concerns might overshadow the reality that a small country like Finland depends on cross-border cooperation, the European Union, and global developments.
“On the one hand, security is inevitably in perpetual conflict with certain individual freedoms, yet on the other hand, security itself is part of human rights,” Juntunen reflects.
“Even though the EU faces fairly uniform security threats at present, applying the US concept of national security to an EU context is conceptually contradictory,” he explains. “The EU has legislative power over its member states, yet it isn’t a sovereign entity in the same way a nation-state is.”
Not all security threats are military, even though the war in Ukraine is currently the most visible. Finland invoked its Emergency Powers Act for the first time in March 2020, when the country declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The COVID-19 pandemic affected how resilience and state-led security became central,” Juntunen points out. “The threshold for state action—and for exceptional measures that bolstered state authority—was lowered in a certain sense.”
“Emergency powers and restrictions on citizens’ freedoms, like shutting down the Uusimaa region, have undoubtedly left their mark.”
Long-term effects are still difficult to gauge, but research does point to an increased sense of insecurity in people’s daily lives. “Threat perceptions, risks, and the need for preparedness have become more pronounced,” Juntunen notes.
Debates on internal security often seem to revolve around external threats. The EU’s Global Strategy also tightly interlinked external and internal security. Drawing boundaries between them is difficult, as Juntunen observes.
Could excessive focus on external threats foster the notion of Finland as a sort of lintukoto – “idyllic haven”? Juntunen finds some resonance in this idea but also emphasises historical reasons behind Finnish attitudes.
“If you consider Finns’ shared historical experiences of insecurity, external threats have undoubtedly played a part. Simply being in Russia’s orbit frames the issue,” he says.
Finland’s geographic location—being a small state somewhat off the beaten track in the global sphere—continues to manifest as a “narrative of isolation.” “Even the wave of globalisation at the turn of the millennium didn’t fully dispel this feeling,” Juntunen remarks.
“People in Central Europe don’t necessarily share the same sense of isolation.”
“At a time when society is becoming more complex, our discourse around threat perceptions may actually be becoming more simplified,”
Juntunen warns.
“Right now, the dominant threat behind most discussions is Russia’s hybrid interference and military menace.”
While the war in Ukraine is jarringly significant and the focus on it understandable, that doesn’t mean other threats have disappeared. “Complexity itself hasn’t gone away, nor have overlapping and interwoven threats,” Juntunen stresses.
Furthermore, the early 2000s debate around so-called ‘new threats’—cybercrime, international criminal organisations, and the drugs trade—intersects with state-based actors and hybrid warfare. “We see this clearly in the debates over border legislation, the situation on Finland’s eastern border, and immigration, which have each taken new turns,” Juntunen points out.
“On the surface it appears that we’re mainly talking about one threat at the moment. Meanwhile, with security thinking becoming more state-centric, many global risks—like environmental crises—have been sidelined,” he cautions.
Returning to the concept of resilience, Juntunen believes that conversation about it is especially pertinent now. What is missing, in his opinion?
He feels we’ve lost sight of generalisable adaptive resilience. “Society-wide, generalisable resilience isn’t necessarily recognised as clearly part of security operations, or how it boosts citizens’ crisis preparedness,” he explains.
By generalisable adaptive resilience, Juntunen means a focus on social policy frameworks, interpersonal relationships, and communal attributes that promote positive responses and adaptability to any crisis or threat.
“It can be described as a form of welfare society policy, whose recipe is ultimately up to the politicians,” he clarifies.
However, Juntunen says we shouldn’t make all social policy revolve solely around security. “If, say, we start linking early childhood education policy—which studies have shown correlates with children’s resilience—directly to the concept of security, it may end up sending unwelcome signals,” he observes.
“At the very least, we need a broader discussion about resilience, remembering not to reduce our notion of societal resilience solely to material and political-level preparedness,” Juntunen emphasises.
“At the very least, we need a broader discussion about resilience, remembering not to reduce our notion of societal resilience solely to material and political-level preparedness,” Juntunen repeats.
Holistic, comprehensive security—necessary for a country renowned for its preparedness—cannot, according to Juntunen, be confined strictly to military sector issues. He references the tradition of psychological national defence, which has a strong sociological side that values community and solidarity.
“Great-power and military-political hybrid interference also involve a psychological and mental dimension,” Juntunen notes.
This article series has been produced with European information support from the Prime Minister’s Office for the project “Europe’s Internal Security in the Wake of the War in Ukraine.”
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