Letter for the reservists and it's many layers

The Finnish defense forces sent out a letter for practically all of it's reservists; I got mine last week. Nothing special about that, as it was sent to approx. 900.000 Finnish citizens, so most likely if you are a Finnish male, you got one.

The letter itself is actually rather short. It has the information of your planned unit and duty in case of reservist call-up, or to put it bluntly, in case of war. The information is actually nothing new. It is something that everyone has had the opportunity to check him- / herself by asking it directly from the local regional office for the Finnish Defense Forces. If my memory serves me correctly, I've asked it once before, just out of curiosity.

Then why send a letter with information that has been readily available for all interested? From my point of view, it's a very clever way of communication. The duty and unit information itself is not the message that is being communicated, although it is the first layer of information. Second layer is the obvious also, it is to check how the systems works in real situation. Are we even able to send out, close to a million letters in a very short space of time. And from the most parts, that seems to be able. So the system works, which is a good thing.

Those are the obvious messages. We (Finnish Defense Forces) are interested in you and want to remind, that you have not being forgotten. Believe that's the third layer in the message. We haven't had the money for refresh training for the reservists, so it is easy to think that one has being forgotten. I have being to a military training twice since my time as a conscript, one as called up on and once for the fun of it. The last part was a non official training and was just a day out in the shooting range, which is actually really fun.

Fourth layer is something that you need to think for yourself. It is meant for everyone interested in the Finnish defense and it's very clear. We have 900.000 strong reserve that has being taught in the art of war and we have the ability to call them up, in a very short amount of time. That is the real hard message. We are basically saying that don't fuck with us as it will be a very expensive effort.

I'm not really sure if there are more layers, but those are the ones that I came up in a short time. Maybe the fifth could be message for the Finnish people reminding them that if some one blows the big whistle, it's up to us to defend our land and independence. There is no one else who will come over as back-up. The Estonians have NATO and Sweden is nicely placed behind us, but we are out in the harms way. Would be really interesting to see a poll on joining NATO during the summer, has the popular opinion changed "drastically" in any way. Hope it has.

I will not inform my wartime unit or my position here as it's classified information. Don't think it's much of a state secret, but suppose it's the way for me to do it.

How the Letter for reservists has affected me and my thinking? Not much, but for sure I wouldn't have written this blog post. Have always being interested in the military so I've pretty much thought these ideas already. My view to NATO is positive and has being such for a long time, even as I think we dropped the ball and should have joined when Estonia joined.

I have nothing against Russian people as from my experience they are good neighbors and wonderful people. Vladimir Putin has said that no outsider can ever oppress the Russian people and I agree totally. Based on history the Russian people has always being oppressed by a Russian leader.

Why am I writing about Russia in this post? Because every time when the Finnish border has being moved and we have made a peace, it's being with the Russia. And lets face it, we could wipe the floor with Sweden.

(Kuva Puolustusvoimat)