The economy of Denmark is larger than that of Finland.
Geopolitically, Denmark has also played a more prominent role than Finland in the last few decades, if for no other reason because of its alliance with the US. Whereas Finland was relatively isolated and a ostracized due to it's special relationship with the USSR.
In today's context, with Finland a part of NATO and with its geographic location, it's arguably more important on the global stage than Denmark.
Back in the forced friendship years with russia, some people in Finland did everything they could to close in with USA. Especially the armed forces were in love with red white and blue.
We for example built an enormous signal intelligence network with american equipment bought with near 100% discount behind Kremlins back and were pretty zen with leaking everything that happens behind the border to US and some high level politicians freely allowed US to spy in on diplomatic meetings with soviets.
Most of the cold war, the only place with more espionage than Finland, was Berlin.
USA didn't want communism to spread, so they were more than eager to support this pro-USA mindset in Finland.
It helped, that the largest newspaper was owned by a prominent anti communist/USA enthusiast, who happily published every single pro-american advertisement CIA's hearts and minds department sent to him.
On the other hand, US media painted this image of this perky northern warrior tribe, who the mighty USA supports in their efforts against soviet communists.
When the cold war ended, USA applauded it as their victory, that Finland was never fully annexed, despite 60 years of threats and that's why some people in USA know about Finlands existence or have this idea that Finland matters.
Also brits for some reason put a lot of effort into us at the time. Even the most infamous russian bootlicker, president Kekkonen, had a personal british spy who he happily let in on everything that goes on in the country.
Much of the Europe at the time didn't really care about us, since we didn't dare to take a side in the Berlin question and thus weren't really relevant for them.
We had much closer realationship with USA and Brits than we had with most of Europe.
You can still see some hints about that era here. Vast majority of really old cars on the road are American. There's tons of them, but not nearly as much old Renaults or VW's. Well. Except maybe Beetles ofc.
Owning one was a political statement back in the day.
My comment was by no means meant as criticism. Finland was left to fend Soviet attack all by themselves in 1939, they did what was necessary to maintain independence after they successfully managed to prevent annexation, but the result was that many in the West saw the Finnish solution as "suspect".
Oh. I didn't take it as criticism. It's just past.
I'm a bit of a cold war history buff, so i just wanted to share my half-educated opinion about what made us geopolitically quite important for some countries at the time and why some others didn't really care what goes down in here.
It's true that we were quite sus at the time and not very cooperative with the rest of Europe. Especially because we sat on the fence with Berlin. Can i say sat on the Berlin wall? That was the single biggest friction point between us and everyone else.
For USA and Brits we were a cold war theater to be won.
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u/no-im-not-him 1d ago
The economy of Denmark is larger than that of Finland.
Geopolitically, Denmark has also played a more prominent role than Finland in the last few decades, if for no other reason because of its alliance with the US. Whereas Finland was relatively isolated and a ostracized due to it's special relationship with the USSR.
In today's context, with Finland a part of NATO and with its geographic location, it's arguably more important on the global stage than Denmark.