Episode 158 · 2022-10-29 · 01:01:50 · Original in Finnish
1992, the Hornets and Russia | Esko Aho | Negotiator 158
Originally published as “1992 Hornetit ja Venäjä | Esko Aho | Neuvottelija 158”
In three and a half months at the start of 1992 Finland detached itself from the YYA Treaty, applied for membership of the European Union and bought the Hornet fighters — and none of it was in the government programme. The former prime minister Esko Aho explains why the totem animal of his book is a phantom cat, the Lion of Ruokolahti, and how the same imagined beast is still being hunted in politics from Trump to Putin. The conversation runs from the Tehran Conference to the floating of the markka, the rupture between the Bank of Finland's Kullberg and the government, and Yegor Gaidar's prediction of post-imperial nostalgia, a passage Aho says he has read fifty times. It also covers the Sberbank board seat, the agricultural terms of EU membership, and what 1992 has to teach 2022.
Core theses
- The three decisions that reoriented Finland in 1992 were none of them in the government programme, which is the episode's argument about how large changes actually get made.
- Gaidar's forecast of post-imperial nostalgia in Russia is offered as the single most predictive thing Aho read, and he dates his own reading of Russia to it.
- The phantom-cat image is about politics chasing a beast nobody has seen, and Aho applies it to the present as readily as to 1992.
- The Kullberg rupture is where monetary independence and government policy collided in public, and it set the terms of the devaluation that followed.
Watch and listen
Summary
In three and a half months at the start of 1992 Finland detached itself from the YYA Treaty, applied for membership of the European Union and bought the Hornet fighters — and none of it was in the government programme. The former prime minister Esko Aho explains why the totem animal of his book is a phantom cat, the Lion of Ruokolahti, and how the same imagined beast is still being hunted in politics from Trump to Putin. The conversation runs from the Tehran Conference to the floating of the markka, the rupture between the Bank of Finland’s Kullberg and the government, and Yegor Gaidar’s prediction of post-imperial nostalgia, a passage Aho says he has read fifty times. It also covers the Sberbank board seat, the agricultural terms of EU membership, and what 1992 has to teach 2022.
Three decisions, none of them planned
Leaving the YYA framework, applying to the European Union and buying the Hornets happened inside about fifteen weeks, and none of the three appeared in the programme the government had been formed on. Aho’s point is not that programmes are useless but that the decisions that matter tend to arrive from outside them, and that a government which treats its programme as a boundary will miss them.
The passage he has read fifty times
Yegor Gaidar’s account of what happens to an empire after it loses its empire is the single text Aho returns to. Read in 1992 it was a forecast; read in 2022 it is a description, and the episode’s treatment of Russia rests on it.
Kullberg and the markka
The public breach between the Bank of Finland and the government is the most concrete domestic episode here, and it is the one that decided the currency’s fate. Aho tells it from one side, which is worth remembering while reading it.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: 1992 Hornetit ja Venäjä | Esko Aho | Neuvottelija 158. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
Go deeper
Explore the ideas in depth
Guides connected to this conversation, with frameworks and further reading.
Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have
A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.
People and topics
Guests: Esko Aho
Topics: Geopolitics Leadership & Governance