Twenty seven years later and I am more of an urban geographer than I ever was as a seven year old child. I am making the journey from Vantaa into Helsinki. I look up nervously as we pass under motorway bridges mimicking giant reed flute caves armed with solid ice stalactites heavy and sharp enough to impale this number 615 bus. I manage to arrive safely on the north side of Rautatientori Square, the pumping heart of another new city and the farthest east that I have ever ventured. I am belittled by the Finnish National Theatre and even at night this Art Nouveau statement is impressive with its sober facades carving out the political legitimacy of National Romanticism.

I glance up at the illuminated Rautatientori clock tower that times the dense ganglion of trains, trams and buses that branch out into Helsinki and beyond. At first there is nothing much to be seen here except snow and elevated neon signage under a velvet black sky, the dirty snow has already installed itself and the clean snow is moving in behind. On the short walk to Kruununhaka the childhood stage begins on the icy streets where walking has to be relearned. In the sub zero temperatures water has temporarily lost its battle with gravity as I step over icy tongues hanging out of the mouths of vertical drain pipes.

Any city is a labyrinth for the newcomer. I start thinking about the simplicity behind Anton Corbijn’s photos and I would later be captivated by his ‘Retrospective’ exhibition in Tennispalatsi. Corbijn’s black and white shots of U2 in Death Valley encapsulated the Irish in America in a place ‘where the streets have no name’.
In Helsinki however, it is not that the streets have no names but rather strange and bewildering ones. My Belfast pronunciation of Mannerheimintie, Kaisaniemenkatu or Pohjoisesplanadi will surely always sound a little odd to the Finns.

After some urban walking and anecdotal observations I notice that the streets are yoked together by squares around Rautatientori and at Hakaniemi where market stalls are scattered across coble stones. The secondary bus depot is also based at Rautatientori Square that feels busy but more open on the eastern side extending towards Mikonkatu. I have since exited from the main south entrance of the Central Railway Station to feel four pairs of eyes on my back. On either side of the massive castle like doors Eliel Saarinen’s muscular upper body statues hold glowing spherical lamps that radiate a soft glow on to the faces of the commuters who pass between them everyday. Directly across the Kaivokatu I am stuck by Makkaratalo’s decorative railing coiled around the third floor parking lot. I was not surprised to learn that this ‘sausage house’ topped a Helsinki Sanomat poll as the ugliest building in the city.

The level of pictorial advertising in Helsinki is noticeable much in the same way as it is in American or British cities. Image laden walls around office buildings and scaffolding offer the finest static surfaces for informing the denizens of the latest fashion trends. Adverts are not always so static. Now and then you see trams painted all over with some brand, Ray-Ban ‘Genuine since 1937: never hide’. People are encouraged to appreciate the hue of Helsinki’s sky through the latest sunglasses, Outsiders Original Wayfarer, Aviator Large Metal, Original Clubmasters or the slick
Jackie Ohh II design.

Travel by tram should be more than anything else a journey into a past that I never experienced. Belfast’s electrically powered trams provided service until the system closed in 1954, nineteen years before I was even born at the Ulster Hospital. In Glasgow’s Museum of Transport I would sit on the No. 3 Coronation tram that used to travel south along Union Street at Gordon Street. With its rounded front panels and enclosed top I could only guess at how many of the twelve million people that this eight wheeled bogie carried to the 1938 Empire Exhibition in Bellahouston Park.

It’s March 2008 and I am making my daily commute to the geography department at the University of Helsinki. I am listening to the Blade Runner ‘End Titles’ on my iPod. I am on a low floor tram snaking up Hämeentie* *towards Kumpula where I see the giant football shaped radar that balances on top of the observatory tower. The giant football looks like it could be kicked off its elevated penalty spot to win some cosmic world cup final making one player the brightest star in the galaxy. It is quite something to watch a city burst into life to Vangelis’s synthesized futuristic music that still sounds ahead its time. I saw motorways carry heavy traffic under bridges from Junatie, a gateway to the Leposaari. All that cellulose caught in the Finnish sun is lost as cars belt under the tram and the smell of kerosene fades east towards Alppila.

Perhaps I don’t have to be able to properly pronounce the strange names of Helsinki’s streets and districts to truly appreciate it as a city. As for learning the language, well that’s an entirely different matter.

NATO has been a military organization to plan tactics and strategy against any hostile nation. Its imagined or probable enemies were the Soviet Union and its Warsaw allies. In the 1980s, NATO became a channel of bi-lateral negotiations on arms control between the United States and the Soviet Union. One example for such function is the Treaty on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (the CFE Treaty). This treaty restrained the possession of conventional arms, namely tanks, armed combat vehicles, artillery, combat aircrafts, and combat helicopters. By 1995, regardless of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, the ceiling on the number of arms enforced by the CFE Treaty was fairly observed. By this statistics, people assumed that Europe became a peaceful theater of economic and political cooperation.

Europe, however, has never been “arms free.” Even with the positive results from the CFE Treaty, a close analysis on the treaty itself gives an alternative view. First, no naval arms were restricted by the CFE Treaty or any other treaties (except a few types of nuclear cruse missiles). Anti-submarine nuclear depth charge, submarine launched nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers, naval aviations… those are the technological advantages of the United States and its NATO allies, never limited. Second, by the membership of Denmark and Turkey into NATO, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea are “choked” by NATO-friendly ports of Copenhagen and Istanbul respectably. These two points above guarantee NATO’s strategic advantage over any navies in the world. Third, with this NATO’s supremacy on the sea and NATO’s capacity of rapid deployment, NATO can transport any quantity and quality of armed forces within a short period of time anywhere in the world. Therefore, it seems that there is little impact of NATO expansion on the Russian national security; without Ukraine and Georgia, NATO can do any hostile actions against Russia if it is willing to do so.

Then, why is NATO expansion necessary? Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO had to seek out its new mission. Economic and political cooperation has been taken over by the European Union. So, NATO was willing to cooperate with the United Nations to carry out the so-called humanitarian interventions. Additionally, recent “War on Terrorism” has been associated with the idea of collective security guaranteed by NATO charter. NATO is now deeply involved in the both operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both humanitarian interventions and war on terrorism often focus on the universal peace and freedom of all humanity. Therefore, the more participants such operation has, the higher legitimacy the operation will gain.

From the Russian perspective, NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia is more than a strategic loss. Of course, NATO bases across the mountains from Chechnya and NATO naval bases on the nose of the Crimean Peninsula are annoying and future problems can be easily expected. What we should focus here, however, is the Russian pride. Both Ukraine and Georgia were traditionally in the Soviet/Russian bloc. Many nationals in those countries share culture, language, and religion. Participation of such countries into NATO simply means the decline of the Russian influence in the region. Military reality of NATO supremacy described above is one thing, but socio-political decline of Russia is totally another thing.

Russia will not be a part of NATO for a while. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union joined the Gulf War on NATO’s side, Russia prefers to be an alternative patron in Europe to the United States or the European Union. The Russian pride fueled by rich national resource reserves will not easily give up Ukraine and Georgia regardless of the seemingly-determined military inferiority of Russia. Observing the political life of Gorbachev, the admittance of the Russian (or Soviet) loss in international relations, small or big, will put the leader into a miserable collapse of domestic political leadership. Remembering Machiavelli, it is unlikely that Putin or his successors would commit such political suicide.