---
title: "The eastern border, treaties that no longer fit, and a chainsaw in Buenos Aires — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys"
titleOriginal: "Viisastelu: Rajat kiinni | Kv-sopimukset turvallisuusuhka | Argentiinan anarkokapitalisti pressa"
description: "Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 20 November 2023, as Finland closed crossing points on its eastern border: the mechanics of a hybrid operation at the level of a single asylum claim, an argument about treaties written for a world that no longer exists, and Javier Milei's election in Argentina."
format: "podcast"
show: "Viikon viisasteluklubi"
episode: "Viisastelu 20.11.2023"
hosts: ["Ivan Puopolo"]
date: 2023-11-20
duration: "49:06"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VbPMfJGeI
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-close-the-borders-treaties-and-milei/
---

# The eastern border, treaties that no longer fit, and a chainsaw in Buenos Aires — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys

Sami Miettinen joined **Viikon viisastelu** — Ivan Puopolo's weekly political panel, known in
English here as *Weekly Wiseguys* — on 20 November 2023, alongside **Tere Sammallahti** and
Finns Party MP **Onni Rostila**. It was recorded on the Monday that crossing points on
Finland's south-eastern border were being closed and razor wire was going up, with nobody yet
knowing how far the week would go.

The strongest stretch is the one where the panel works through the mechanics before taking a
position: a person without documents is waved through the Russian checkpoint, states a need for
protection at the Finnish one, and that alone starts a process the Finnish authority is
obliged to run. Close the crossing and the person is stuck between two borders, because the
exit stamp has already been given. Two observations follow that do not depend on anyone's
politics — a barrier you can walk around in the forest is not a barrier, and the law now being
used for the first time to close the border was passed in the previous parliamentary term, by
the politically opposite government. The panel also criticises the current government for
being too slow, and credits the opposition for speaking with one voice.

The episode's most durable argument is about treaties: a treaty nobody observes protects
nobody, but it still binds whoever observes it alone. The reasoning is not that treaties are
bad but that circumstances changed in three specific ways — the original purpose, the arrival
of large statutory welfare entitlements, and the modern capacity to organise and move a large
group. What they propose instead, assessing protection claims away from the border, is left
without its hardest detail.

It closes in Argentina, where Javier Milei had been elected the day before. The panel likes
the direction and openly dislikes the performance, and offers an explanation that travels:
results like this are reactions, and their force measures how far policy has drifted from what
voters actually experience. A prediction made in passing — that Geert Wilders's party would do
well in the Dutch election two days later — turned out right.

## Chapters

- **00:00** — Today's agenda
- **03:21** — A new segment and viewer suggestions
- **04:54** — A previous interview, and its musical footnote
- **05:42** — The border situation at the time of recording
- **06:35** — What happens if every crossing point closes
- **07:21** — The mechanics at the level of one person
- **08:10** — Whose responsibility the people at the border are
- **08:57** — A prediction about when opinion turns
- **09:47** — Where an asylum process begins
- **10:46** — The weakest-link argument
- **11:33** — The Polish precedent from 2021
- **12:26** — Mearsheimer and the realist school
- **13:14** — International law, or international aspiration?
- **14:06** — Treaties made in peacetime, applied in a crisis
- **14:55** — A treaty nobody observes
- **15:42** — Is this a NATO matter?
- **16:32** — Following the letter, and what it costs
- **17:24** — What the refugee convention was originally for
- **18:13** — A welfare state that did not exist in the 1950s
- **19:03** — Organising a diaspora with today's tools
- **19:51** — Who arrives, and who objects to closing
- **20:45** — The risk assessment for a new NATO member
- **21:35** — Interdependence and Baltic Sea infrastructure
- **22:24** — The cold-eyed view Finland avoids
- **23:10** — States in anarchy — and the number of battalions
- **23:57** — The criticism: the response was too slow
- **24:42** — Fortifying in twelve hours
- **25:29** — A barrier you can walk around
- **26:20** — A law being used for the first time
- **27:07** — Credit to the opposition
- **27:54** — And what about the airports?
- **28:42** — What tools the situation offers
- **29:35** — Western self-loathing as a topic
- **30:21** — Platform moderation and a double standard
- **32:10** — A slogan banned in one place and allowed in another
- **33:21** — Whose ethnic hatred gets recognised
- **34:09** — A university demonstration and what was said
- **35:46** — Editorial selection and moral framing
- **36:35** — The context that goes unmentioned
- **39:21** — A poll that was not reported
- **39:49** — Municipal state transfers and capital income
- **40:43** — Argentina: the chainsaw and the election win
- **41:30** — Populism rising in waves
- **42:27** — The Dutch election ahead
- **43:14** — Milei as a reaction
- **44:02** — Culling ministries on video
- **44:50** — Argentina's hundred years
- **45:36** — The Venezuelan story
- **46:29** — Ideology as religion
- **47:22** — Finlandisation and the trips nobody talked about
- **48:17** — Sign-off

**The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it.** This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.

A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, [in English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/viisastelu-rajat-kiinni-kv-sopimukset-ja-milei/) and [in Finnish](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/poliittinen-satiiri/viisastelu-rajat-kiinni-kv-sopimukset-ja-milei/).

Original recording (Viikon viisasteluklubi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VbPMfJGeI

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Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 20.11.2023 — The eastern border, treaties that no longer fit, and a chainsaw in Buenos Aires — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys, 2023-11-20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9VbPMfJGeI. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-close-the-borders-treaties-and-milei/.