Introduction: Two Political Cultures

Abstract

Like the Northern Lights, the aurora borealis, the concept of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Scandinavia, has miraged on the political horizon of the Nordic countries for a quarter of a century. When it was first introduced by Soviet Premier Bulganin in letters to his Norwegian and Danish colleagues in January 1958, the proposal — an outgrowth of the various nuclear-weapons-free-zone plans for Central Europe the Soviet Union and its allies introduced at the time — was seen by the Danish and Norwegian governments as an effort to weaken the NATO alliance. Accordingly, they responded by demanding that corresponding Soviet territory must be included in any such zone. An article a year later in Izvestiya outlining the advantages of a zone, proved that their assumption had been correct: ‘The creation of a nuclear-free and missile-free zone in Northern Europe could mark the beginning of the appearance of a broad belt of peace in Europe… The formation of such a zone in Northern Europe could also be the first step in the transition of all the Nordic countries to a position of neutrality.’¹