Perils of Finlandization

[Prince Cobra]

Not puppets, but the victims of Finnish policy choices, although some maintain that it was just force majeure.

Anyway, please read the OP again so you understand what is at issue:
My position is that finlandization resulted in a truncated country with a truncated democracy. Soviet influence stifled national debate, free choice in policies and also historical debate. So far I have seen nothing in this thread to counter this view. Finlandization implied much more than neutrality. It entailed forced cooperation with the Soviets in some areas, limited (foreign) policy choices and a comprehensive self-censorship which stifled free debate and research.

Hmmm, we all see how well the Czechoslovakian Republic was defended by its Western allies in 1939. Are you sure anybody will start a war for your icy Northern country?

Second, would you feel more comnfortable when you are having the Soviet rockets against your capital guarded by rockets of the hostile, though allied to you country? And supposing that the Soviet weapons were getting older imagine something goes wrong and a rocket is fired on your land by accident... Imagine this is a territory not in Western Germany but very close to Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the heart of superpower. And imagine your neighbour have nothing to gain from your 5 million populated country except hostile Sweden, casualties, the image of an invader and all these traded for ice and forests. Is a little limitation of the freedom of speech, flexible neutrality + valuable econiomic ties worths saving from a totlatiarian regime and happy referendum at best and world destruction at worst? I would say yes.

May I also aks which are these countries with big choice during the Cold war? Apart from USA and USSR... National debate was even stiffled even in USA during the Cold war. It is a mistake to put the present cattegories in the past.