RE: The GZGverse UN

> On the Finnish side, I suspect that they still
> remember 1939-1945 quite 
> well - prior to the war there was quite a bit of
> Swedish talk about 
> standing united with the Finns, yet all we sent was
> a smallish "volunteer" 
> force (not to denigrate the contribution of these
> volunteers to the war, of 
> course!). On the Swedish side, I fear that it'll
> take a long while before 
> we willingly allow anyone who might need serious
> support into any kind of 
> official mutual defence union with us as the senior
> partner 

If the English can help the French in 1914 and 1939 with a Monarch who
is half-German and after over 1000 years of bloody war against the
French then I think the Swedes and Finns can settle their differences
over WWII.

Furthermore if the Swedish military are lax in discipline now, maybe
they need the Norwegians and Finns to give their troops some backbone
and to shake things up. Perhaps the Swedes drove the technology and
economy and the other Scandinavian nations provide the backbone for the
colonisation effort and military might. Maybe everyone gains.

Also the emergence of supra-national empires in the vicinity of the Scan
countries would require an economic federation to prevent the economies
being outdone. It would then be a fairly small step for a charismatic
leader to turn an economic union into a political one. Probably not
without squabbles or pain but then they have a little while to get it
right yet! 

The differences between the Scandinavian nations is surely no greater
than the differences between the member states of the FSE. And they all
had some common ground in wanting to be out of the NSL so presumably
that meant needing economic and military critical mass of some kind. 

Ian