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Curzon
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Curzon

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April 12th, 2006

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Some things never change

Via Marmot comes this translation (by the author) of a diary entry written by an ambassador stationed in Helsinki in the 1950s. The President of Finland had few kind words for the leaders of the great powers:

[Finnish President Paasikivi] is extremely well-read and skillful in politics and history, but his temper is fierce. He talked to me of the amateurish policies of certain statesmen in such a loud voice that it seemed as if he had wanted me to take responsiblity for the setbacks in South Korea.

Just think, he shouted, the kind of people who lead global politics: Baldwin, Chamberlain, Roosevelt, Attlee, and Bevin are all ignorant, naïve, and easy to fool. Do they know history? No. Do they know geography? No. Do they know foreign languages? No. They’ve had only one capable man, Winston Churchill, but they got rid of him as soon as the biggest danger was gone.

Then they gave the impression that South Korean means a lot to them, but forgot to give weapons to those unlucky blockheads. If the fate of small peoples like us was lead by such amateurs we’d have been finished already a long time ago.

Without agreeing or disagreeing with Paasikivi’s charges, I would certainly agree that the three most important disciplines a geopolitical player must study are history, geography, and a foreign language.

Comments to this entry

snow
April 12, 2006
2:47 am
So why didn't he help the South Koreans out? Talk is cheap and we know European governments are experts at it.

The US had strategic reasons for not arming the South after WWII. They deliberately did not arm them because they were worried that Syngman Ree would make a play for the North, as he had threatened to do. Unfortunately, they were ignorant of the threat of the North to the South. A grave mistake, so in some ways the Finnish President was right, but where was he when all this was happening?
Curzon
April 12, 2006
3:15 am
Snow: Poor Finland was at the mercy of Soviet might and barely kept its independence (and democracy) after two bitter wars with its communist neighbor during World War II. The USSR support for Kim and the threat of a two front war was perhaps the only thing that saved the Finns from Soviet hegemony -- the furthest thing from their mind was airlifting weapons to Seoul. "Read more here.":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Finland#Finland_in_World_War_II

Also, certainly part of the reason the North invaded was because the US suggested it would not defend the South if such an invasion occurred.
Chief Wiggum
April 12, 2006
4:17 am
History, geography and knowledge of foreign languages was not much help to the Finns until the second half of the 20th century. Greater powers fought over Finnish lands for years, which were subjected to a series of invasions and occupations. Geopolitics even put them on the side of the Nazis during WWII.

Finnish President Paasikivi is of the generation that allied Finland with the Nazis. (I know his unhappy choice was between Hitler and the hated Stalin.) Does that make him more qualified to pontificate about the amateurish policies of other statesmen? Still, he looks impressive in profile with that stogie stuck in his pie hole.
Curzon
April 12, 2006
4:31 am
Chief: I couldn't disagree more. You seriously err in thinking the choice was "between" the Soviets or the Nazis. Look further. Finland in the 1930s was invaded by the Soviets and lost territory. Their so-called neighboring allies the Swedes had left Helsinki to hang in the wind. Churchill and the other allies had abandoned any hint of helping now that they were fighting with the Soviets. In 1941, they launched a counterattack, coordinated with the Nazis.

The "choice" as you call it was not a) Soviets or b) Nazis, but a) total invasion and conquer by the Soviets or b) an alliance with the Nazis in which Helsinki kept its independence. Any leader that chose a) would today be considered one of the greatest failures of the 20th century. And the choice was so clear to Finland's population that "even Finland's Jews fought _with_ the Nazis.":http://www.uta.fi/~tuulikki.vuonokari/fin-1.html
Antti
April 12, 2006
6:13 am
Thanks for getting noticed!
For some background for the situation at the time, Finland's relations with the Soviets had been tense since '48 when Communists were not given seats in the government, and the Social Democrats had formed a minority cabinet, greatly reducing the influence of Communists and confirming that a Chechoslovakia-like coup wouldn't happen. And the following Soviet propaganda was nasty, and in terms of intelligence-gathering, Finland was treated almost like an enemy state until the mid 1950s.

Much of what Paasikivi says in the quote must stem from the frustration that small states are often left alone, on top of his nasty temperament. About the knowledge of foreign languages, he read newspapers in six languages, and negotiated with the Soviets in October and November 1939 without an interpreter.
Robert
April 12, 2006
6:40 am
And the tough foreign policy choices didn't end with conclusion of World War II. It's not like Finland Finlandized because they liked the Soviets. But they knew that if the Soviets came for a visit, the West wouldn't come rushing to the defense of a former Nazi ally. Real bitch of a situation to find yourself in.
Interestingly enough, I read somewhere--can't remember where--that Sweden's refusal to join NATO was in a way intended to be a form of mea culpa to Finland for leaving them hanging during the Winter War, the belief being that if Sweden joined NATO, the Soviets would have responded by occupying Finland. By not joining NATO, Sweden was, in a fashion, giving Finland the help it failed to give earlier. Or so the argument went.
moorethanthis
April 12, 2006
6:58 am
I've had some interesting conversations with a Finnish friend of mine about film treatments of Finland's wars with the USSR, in particular the Winter War. The "fighting with the Nazis" bit is news to me, but the heavily anti-Soviet slant is always there in the films, to a greater extent than other countries' war films ("Talvisota" for example, was made in the 1980s, long after the war was over). But with the USSR on the doorstep, Cold War tensions probably played a part.
lirelou
April 12, 2006
7:36 am
Actually, there had been two capable leaders, with De Gaulle being the second. Like Churchill, he too was chucked out at war's end. I suppose this is also a good chance to put in a plug for US Army Special Forces Major Larry Thorne, promoted posthumously after his disappearance over Laos in 1966. Thorne entered the U.S. Army after having served in the Finnish Army in the Winter War, and then on the Russian Front in a Finnish Waffen SS unit during the Continuation War.
Alfred Russel Wallace
April 12, 2006
3:14 pm
Paasikivi is certainly impressive, but whoever did the translation doesn't seem to understand that lead is an element.....
marquer
April 12, 2006
8:15 pm
I would certainly agree that the three most important disciplines a geopolitical player must study are history, geography, and a foreign language.

A competent translator can amend the lack of a language skill. It is much less easy to ameliorate in real time an incomprehension of history or or of geography.

The third area in which rapid remedial coaching similarly fails is in trying to convey the subtleties of science and technology, which are at this point in human history of profound importance to geopolitics.

More cogently, there have been times in history when the tongues of a few dominant powers were the only ones which needed to be known in order to perform competent diplomacy. Jefferson was fluent in five languages and read in several more, but the circumstances of the day made only French an imperative possession.

Today we have a mad Babel. And the languages of importance are themselves often far more difficult to master. Russian. Arabic. Mandarin. It takes two years of immersion at DLI doing little else to get good at any single one of those, with a high washout rate.

It would be preferable to have polymathic statesmen schooled in every area, of course, but in a pinch, language should be deleted in favor of grounding in science and engineering.
lirelou
April 13, 2006
12:18 am
Marquer, an anecdote. I attended a short Command and General Staff college course in 1976 with, among others, the future Chief of the U.S. Army Engineers. He was between assignments to Korea and Indonesia, and on his way to Saudi Arabia. While he was interested in learning Arabic, he was obviously not going to have the time. I asked him how he fared in the countries he had served in, seeing that he spoke neither Korean, Bahasa Malay, nor Arabic. He just laughed and said: "All engineers speak a common language: Pi r squared!"

If you are manifestly competent in your field, especially technical fields, language difficulties will be overcome. Diplomacy, however, requires a mastery of both one's own language, and the language of where one is serving, as differences of opinion often lie in nuances, rather than concrete terms.
Chief Wiggum
April 13, 2006
12:26 am
Sometimes the choice is between bad and worse. I confess I have a prejudice against allies of the Nazis, but I see the Finns were desperately trying to survive as a nation. The Finns did some creative diplomacy to arrange a separate peace with the Russians in September of 1944. As part of the agreement, the Finns promised to drive out elements of the German army in still in Lapland, which they did. I'm still not sure why the Red Army was not set loose on Finland again, after the defeat of Germany. For all their valor, it seems unlikely the Finnish army in 1945 could have held off the powerful Russian army again.

Winston Churchill was an aberration; there may never be another world leader of Churchill's stature.
moorethanthis
April 13, 2006
2:39 am
It takes two years of immersion at DLI doing little else to get good at any single one of those

What does DLI stand for?

I will admit I'm biased towards language study as, well, it's what I'm doing right now. It depends what your job is. If your work consists mostly of being briefed by people who know their way around science, of course you should have enough of a grounding to understand their briefings. If you work in diplomacy, a lot of your time will be spent working out what people say and what they really mean. An understanding of the subtleties of a different language is obviously required in that case.
marquer
April 13, 2006
8:12 am

What does DLI stand for?


Defense Language Institute. It is the premiere school of the U.S. Defense Department for languages, located in Monterey, California. They have a reputation for being among the best in the world at what they do.

With regard to the idea that parsing linguistic and cultural nuance is a critically important skill among diplomats, agreed. But it is possible to repose this skill in a third-party translator with success.

At one point, I was called on to brief an American businessman who was going in to a meeting with non-English-speaking Korean executives. I said to him, "Bill, my high regard for your abilities notwithstanding, I must note that an idiomatic American sports term comes out of your mouth with every second sentence, and these gentlemen will simply find that incomprehensible. You must speak neutrally and without slang. It may even be considered disrespectful if you do not do so."

Of course, he was thirty seconds into his presentation when he first said, excitedly, "Right. It's fourth and goal," and I buried my head in my hands. He went on from there, salting the entire speech with such asides, some of them opaque even to me.

It turned out not to be a problem. The very professional young Korean woman who was translating handled Bill's athletic expostulations smoothly. I asked her about it afterward, and she said, "It's a common issue with American men in business. I took a class to learn what these things mean."
Antti
April 13, 2006
1:28 pm
Paasikivi is certainly impressive, but whoever did the translation doesn't seem to understand that lead is an element"¦
Thanks for the correction. Sometimes the English verbs are just too simple to get them right. The original post has been fixed.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » On Foreign Language Skills and Living Abroad
April 13, 2006
1:59 pm
[...] “Marquer” disagrees with my recent statement that learning foreign languages (or at least a foreign language) is one of the more valuable skills a geopolitical player should learn, saying a translator can make up for that and that learning about science and technology is more important. Joe at MutantFrog.com made a similar assertion last year in his post on the economics of language learning. [...]
Admiral
April 13, 2006
3:01 pm
This post needs more Truman bashing. I guess he wasn't important enough to be within the scope of the Finnish President's ire. It's too bad.
Rommel
April 15, 2006
5:28 am
Marquer,
I understand the need for a technological knowledge base when it comes to the business or even some political fields, however I can not see how this might be paramount (surely it is useful) in diplomatic or intelligence work. I plan to work in either of these fields and plan to brush up on my French and have begun learning basic Arabic (Egyptian). I know that the CIA and State Department both recommend proficiency in foreign languages and international studies (my minor).

Actually, this is for anybody who might be of help...
I am very knowledgeable in geography, history (my Major) and good with languages. Now this might seem like a given, but considering that one should play on one's strengths and these are definitely my strengths .. does a career in either intelligence or diplomacy seem appropriate? I ask because I definitely lack the technological acumen aforementioned by Marquer.
Oh, and I also love travel and wish to live overseas for some amount of time.