> Finnish law requires all apartment buildings to provide proper shelters, which adds about 2% to construction costs.
When was this law enacted?
> The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts.
Sadly this is not how politics works. If the human race was a giant insectoid hive mind, we would have way better use of resources than we have now. There is a great essay called Meditations on Moloch [1], that explains what youre describing, especially about war. The military industrial complex is its own self propelling feedback loop industry. If no country had a ministry of defense, we would all be better off, but if one country does it, then every country has to have it, so all of this percentages of GDP are sunk into it, instead of going into healthcare or education.
Since WW2, or even before maybe WW1, the rules of war and occupation have changed. Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past. The modern occupation consists of the occupying country having some kind of same-ethnicity but minority faction inside the occupied country, and trying to use that situation to create a breakaway state (which the occupied country wouldnt want of course) so it would create a pretense for war, or use that faction to influence politics for the whole country. The other modern occupation method is to influence the politics of the country by either heavily financially supporting a given faction, or heavily arming that faction (in a paramilitary way). Both of these methods provide political backsupport for the occupying country, in order for better economic deals and geopolitical positioning. But the main goal for the game of modern occupation and warfare is better economic deals.
What politicians and governments state in public is quite different than what actions they enact. Russia's politicians have to look strong. By stating those things about Finland, they hope to say "we hold Finland by the balls" because there is a Russian minority there, and because sometime ago parts of Finland was Russian territory, so they can sell those arguments to the public for a necessary invasion if needed. So they want to tell Finland to not escalate this further by putting nukes on the border, since that would result in war, and to keep being a buffer zone. But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence. In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.
> the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks
Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules. They're not the example you're thinking of. In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.
Many decades ago. Finland now serves as a blueprint for civil defense. Estonia and Latvia have begun to introduce similar provisions, and Norway announced restoration of theirs that were abolished in 1998.
> Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past.
The USSR was perfectly willing to trade economic development for imperialism. The methods they used to keep the Eastern Bloc under control are also well known. Are you not aware of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the Prague spring of 1968, the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and other key events? Driving a tank over dissenters or ordering soldiers to beat their skulls open with sapper shovels is a surprisingly effective way of crushing opposition. That remains true in 2025, as we can see on the news.
> In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.
The same was said about Ukraine, and yet here we are, about to enter the fifth year of the war.
I see no reason to believe that an attack on other European countries besides Ukraine would lead to a much different reaction. Revelations about the Biden administration have shown that Biden knowingly limited Ukraine's capabilities precisely when the Kharkiv offensive was achieving its greatest successes because he got scared by Russian threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons. What makes Finland or Latvia or Poland so exceptional that it would suddenly make allies stop fearing Russian nukes?
> But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence
This is just your bias talking. Finns are proper Europeans for you, while Ukrainians are some half-slaves of Russia. For Putin's generation, the us-versus-them border runs considerably further west from yours, somewhere along the furthest extent of imperial Russia and the USSR and its satellites. The Russian viewpoint is very well summarized in the 1997 "Foundations of Geopolitics" by hardcore Russian Nazi Alexander Dugin and much of what he wrote there has been put into action since the book was published: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#In_...
> Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules.
Not true at all. West Germany had 5000 tanks in the 1980s. As a general rule, European countries have lost about 80-90% of the equipment and manpower that they had during the Cold War.
> In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.
Other areas are just as lacking. Germany has only about 30 operational fighter jets, artillery rounds for only a few days at the intensity seen in the war in Ukraine, and so on. Germany has a scandal about the poor state of the Bundeswehr every time its inspector-general issues a report.
**
With outlandish ideas about "Moscow being occupied within seconds", it seems like you're living in another era of the distant past. It is a luxury that defense and intelligence chiefs cannot afford, which is why your assessments diverge from theirs. By focusing on economics, you clearly fail to recognize that Russians are driven by an entirely different set of factors. By overestimating European military strength, you severely underestimate how far a broader Russian attack could penetrate.
When was this law enacted?
> The public and other government institutions would much prefer to hear that there is no threat from Russia, and that we do not need to pull productive members of society away from their work and studies to serve as conscripts.
Sadly this is not how politics works. If the human race was a giant insectoid hive mind, we would have way better use of resources than we have now. There is a great essay called Meditations on Moloch [1], that explains what youre describing, especially about war. The military industrial complex is its own self propelling feedback loop industry. If no country had a ministry of defense, we would all be better off, but if one country does it, then every country has to have it, so all of this percentages of GDP are sunk into it, instead of going into healthcare or education.
Since WW2, or even before maybe WW1, the rules of war and occupation have changed. Its not possible anymore for one country to just occupy another, mainly because more territory doesnt mean more economic growth or gain, and mainly because its impossible to rule over another peoples in the modern age, as opposed to in the past. The modern occupation consists of the occupying country having some kind of same-ethnicity but minority faction inside the occupied country, and trying to use that situation to create a breakaway state (which the occupied country wouldnt want of course) so it would create a pretense for war, or use that faction to influence politics for the whole country. The other modern occupation method is to influence the politics of the country by either heavily financially supporting a given faction, or heavily arming that faction (in a paramilitary way). Both of these methods provide political backsupport for the occupying country, in order for better economic deals and geopolitical positioning. But the main goal for the game of modern occupation and warfare is better economic deals.
What politicians and governments state in public is quite different than what actions they enact. Russia's politicians have to look strong. By stating those things about Finland, they hope to say "we hold Finland by the balls" because there is a Russian minority there, and because sometime ago parts of Finland was Russian territory, so they can sell those arguments to the public for a necessary invasion if needed. So they want to tell Finland to not escalate this further by putting nukes on the border, since that would result in war, and to keep being a buffer zone. But in all reality there's 0% chance of Russia invading Finland unprovoked, mainly because we western europeans consider Finland to be part of us, part of the EU, unlike Ukraine which we consider to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence. In all reality, if Russia invades Finland, that would be the biggest blunder for Russian politics because in a matter of seconds NATO would occupy Moscow.
> the entire German fleet consisted of only ~200 operational tanks
Germany was demilitarized until a few years ago, as part of post WW2 rules. They're not the example you're thinking of. In addition, tanks are not important for european warfare anymore, because most of the warfare NATO was waging was overseas. Most of the combat strategy has changed to involve combat aircraft and rockets, which NATO excels at.
[1]https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch