In an article recently published in the Journal on Baltic Security, researcher Saila Heinikoski examines how European military enhancement is presented necessary with political imperatives, while in contrast, the demilitarisation of the Åland Islands – within the European union – is justified with reference to multilateral agreements. Heinikoski argues that this might be seen as illustrating the differences in justifying military force and its absence. She further concludes, that while the European Union appears as a realist actor in terms of defence, Finland complies with the image of a normative power as far as the Åland Islands are concerned.
Saila Heinikoski is a researcher in the research project “Demilitarisation in an Increasingly Militarised World. International perspectives in a multilevel framework – the case of the Åland Islands”, that is a cooperation between researchers at the Åland Islands Peace Institute and the Arctic Center (University of Lapland, Rovaniemi). Research is supported by the Kone foundation and the Åland Culture Foundation (Ålands kulturstiftelse).
The article, “Pool it or lose it?” – a contrastive analysis of discourses concerning EU military integration and demilitarisation in the Baltic Sea, is open access and can be found in the Journal on Baltic Security Volume 3, issue 1, June 2017, here.