The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [101]
The Friendly Globalizers
The happily knitting border between Canada and the United States is not unique in the North. Unlike the Arctic Ocean seabed, territorial boundaries on land are long settled and calm among the eight NORC countries.429 Borders between Norway, Sweden, and Finland are among the friendliest in the world and their citizens (like Cascadians) identify more closely with each other than with the rest of Europe. The closest thing to a troubled border, if there is one, zigzags through more than seven hundred miles of forest to disentangle Finland from Russia.
Throughout history the Finns were subjugated, first by Sweden and then by Russia, before capitalizing on the disarray of the Bolshevik Revolution to win peaceful independence from Russia in 1917. Finland has been grappling with how to coexist with her giant and occasionally unruly eastern neighbor ever since. The countries fought twice during World War II, and Finland was forced to cede substantial territories to the Soviet Union. One of these, Finnish Karelia, contains the beautiful port city of Viipuri (now Vyborg) and remains a source of great bitterness to Finns today. From time to time Finnish politicians make noises about seeking its return. Less noticed was the loss of Petsamo (now Pechenga), a small corridor that once connected Finland to the Arctic Ocean. Its loss shuts Finland out of any UNCLOS claim there. It is reasonable to expect that Finnish regret over this region will rise in the coming decades.
But none of this renders the Fenno-Russia border militarized or tense. A regional cross-border economy in roundwood (unmilled lumber) is emerging between the two countries, not unlike the one between Canada and the United States.430 Many Russians now own vacation homes in Finland—to the delight of local merchants and consternation of old-timers—and Finnish tourists pour into Karelia. In fact, the only reason this border even warrants mention is because all the other borders around the Northern Rim are so placid. Compared with other neighboring countries around the world, the NORCs are an extraordinarily peaceful bunch.
They also rank among the most rapidly globalizing, business-friendly countries on Earth. Compiled on the following page are index performance scores for fifteen countries, representing the six largest national economies, the BRICs, and the NORCs.431 These respected indices ingest a wide range of econometric and other data to derive country performance rankings in things like openness to trade, tendency to make war, treatment of citizens, and so on. Rather than dissect the merits or agendas of each index, I simply provide rank-based scores from all of them.432 Each uses a different scoring system, so they are presented as percentiles for easy comparison. A score of 86, for example, means a country ranked higher than 86% of all of the countries in the world that are measured by that particular index. Also shown is a single composite score for each country, averaged across the five numeric indices.
A remarkable story leaps from these numbers. With the exception of Russia, the NORC countries are the most stable, trade-liberal, rapidly globalizing players on the planet. Who knew that Denmark and Canada are even more open to free trade than Japan, Germany, or the United States? Of particular relevance to energy production is that this openness also pervades the oil and gas industry, in contrast to the worldwide trend toward nationalization described in Chapter 3.433 Civil and political freedoms run remarkably high except in Russia. Six are among the most peaceful nations in the world. Viewed collectively, the NORCs appear particularly well-positioned to succeed in our rapidly integrating