[BRIEF NOTE] Operation Finlandia

[rfmcdonald]

Over on soc.history.what-if, redoubtable Finnish poster Jussi Jalonen has been posting (1, 2) about Finnish author Arto Paasilinna's 1972 novel Operation Finlandia, describing the brutal Swedish-Finnish war of 1977. Jussi's analysis of the novel's plausibility, and suggestions as to how this scenario could be made more plausible still, is compelling. These two threads are interesting in their own rights, and not only because they demonstrate the correctness of Paasilinna's observation in his introduction to Operation Finlandia.

At all times, wars are waged all around the world. Yet somehow we, people of the Nordic countries, consider ourselves to be living in the middle of some golden era of global peace. The wars of today are regional and, thankfully for us, fought far away in the Third World. With this book, I want to spread war to the peaceful North. My primary intention is to show that the propensity for war exists even here, and all that it takes is one small spark to start the conflagration. I want to make it clear that there are absolutely no countries and nations in this world that could not start fighting against each others under suitable conditions.

Is there any reason why there is absolutely no chance that, suitably primed, Canada couldn't become Yugoslavia, after all?