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I just remembered that Norway, like Poland, shares a border with Russia. That explains a lot.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 15th, 2007 at 06:39:24 PM EST
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It might do, but historically Norway have had excellent relations with Russia ever since the time of the Viking ages.  It was quite some concern over the expansionist policies of the Soviet Union just after 1945, with the communist takeover in many of the Eastern European countries, especially Czechoslovakia in 1948, and the forced agreement on Finland just after the war.  Norway got a similar offer from the Soviet Union, but declined.  This offer plus still having the German attack in 1940 in the back of their minds, made the Norwegian government turn to NATO for protection.  Norway had no national defense at the time only a well organized resistance movement to fall back on.  

That said the Norwegian government at the time led by the Norwegian Labour party, a party, at least the majority of the party, that had been a supporter of the Russian revolution and a onetime member of Comintern back in the 1920s, was led by people that wanted to have a good but cautious relationship to their big neighbor in the east.  That is why the government put restrictions on NATO activity in the most northern parts of the country.  That didn't include intelligence activity of course, but then again the Russians were hard at work in that department too.  

I guess what I am saying is that the fear of Russia in Norway was not as great during the Cold War as in many other countries in Europe, primarily in Eastern Europe, and keeping a good relationship to Russia was high up on the security agenda for all parties irregardless of political color.  It was part of the stabilizing policy in the North, which simply stated meant, to the east: Finland was leaning towards the Soviet sphere of influence, in the middle/the buffer zone? Sweden was neutral, at least officially, and to the west: Denmark, Island and Norway were members of NATO and part of the Western sphere of influence.  

Bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.

by Gjermund E Jansen (gjans1@hotmail.com) on Tue May 15th, 2007 at 07:10:18 PM EST
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