Yesterday newspaper Kaleva brought to our attention  that Finland is going to work her way around the Ottawa anti personnel mine treaty.  This is welcome news Apart from Social Democrats and other goody two shoes who have a placed “International goodwill” in front of country’s defense.

After former social democratic led government decided to enter the Ottawa treaty, which was ill advised considering Finnish long land border with Russia. This long land border  compound with the shrinking of war time strength of Finnish Defense Forces and abandoning the ultimate defensive weapon there is can be described as puzzling ant the least and treacherous at worst. The diminishing numbers must be augmented with other force multipliers, one of which was the mine arsenal. And the mines where maybe the most cost effective. But now we are reaping the storm of this decision, and have to put our money where Socialist mouth is.

There has been a much to debate about the decision to enter Ottawa treaty.  Both reservist organizations have seen it as dangerous for defense of country and borderline treacherous. Nobody, apart some key figures in SDP,  has been able to see why Finland had to enter the treaty because of some long dead princess bet her future on it.

But now it seems that Finland has risen from her slumber and has decided to get something  army likes to call  “area denial munitions” to operational use.  This is new technology, where explosives are placed into area denied, and the munitions will be detonated remotely by a drone or some other technology that will detect enemies in area.

the Treaty has no effect, because SOMEBOY or SOMETHING detonates the explosives without the poor sap detonating the mine. As this is one of the hallmarks of a mine, the area denial system is not a mine, and thus does not fall within the Ottawa treaty.

This will again instill the fear of God, or at least mines, to the skull of attacking enemy.

Faer of mines was deemed one of the key aspects of the new system. So attackers will not wantonly go about their business anymore.
Still mind boggles to underrestand why Mr Tuomioja and Mrs Halonen wanted to get rid of perfectly good defensive arm. Considering that Russia nor USA were about to enter this “Ottawa treaty of colonial dreams”