Nordic Baltic Security Architecture
This is the name of one of the panels in Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn, today 17.05.2019
Nice and well selected speakers again are gathering and sharing the wisdom what they consider will not harm anyone and is politically correct, not too irritating, same time enough exciting, but not too much because most important is to stay calm and reserved. So nothing exiting, bunch of people with high self esteem are drinking free vine again and having fun, as did also Lennart.
Problem is that in information age we are building up our communication bubbles and when there is no decision makers involvement, then all nice discussions will stay where they are, in the garbage box of history. This year there is no EST Prime ministers or EST Foreign Minister presenting, unfortunately. It seams like conference is taken over by one political party.
Ok, little about topic Nordic Baltic Security Architecture!!!
Architecture is very nice word. By definition architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings or any other structures. For me architecture describes something combined and coordinated. Unfortunately there is very little planned, designed, and constructed jointly at Nordic Baltic region. I would hesitate to use word Architecture. First comes in my mind musical term great cacophony, a harsh discordant mixture of sounds. Every instrument is playing his own song, every state is protecting his own small national interest and tries to compete neighbors. There is nearly nothing built jointly up for Nordic Baltic Security. There is lots of nice political statements, but no more.
Why I am stating like that?
First about cooperation between 3 Baltic tigers: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Many cooperation initiatives are only on paper, there is no real serious actions behind. Defense institutions are doing minimum in order to struggle with all political promises given without any understanding of processes and commitment or delivery for resources. I have been leading myself one exercise where in the middle of the exercise one Baltic partner says that he has to withdraw his unit from Baltic battalion because they have bigger partner with who also they have to exercise at same time. So for Lithuania the Baltic cooperation has been always like big brother thing, those youngsters are too small to play, but until parent are watching and forcing, I will do something.
Commitment even on minimum level for cooperation is time to time too much. My country for example decided to diminish, make smaller, command and control structure of defense forces during the Ukrainian war. That brought today Estonia to situation where is no senior officers available to lead Baltic Defence College! Luckily there are neighbors Latvians helping us out. Unfortunately
their defence structure is even worth. Latvia abandoned conscription in the year 2002 and today they have only approximately 3 badly manned battalions left. The rest is national guard who has task to conduct territorial defense, but cannot establish necessary units in country side, because people are abandoning the villages and moving away. Same thing is ongoing in Estonia. Without mobilizing available resources, re-establishing conscription, Latvia stays as weakest link in Baltic region defense.
After 28 years of independence and 15 years in NATO there is still no joint procurement established among 3B for military equipment. When we are talking about cooperation between other security institutions like border guard or search and rescue, police, there is not even political will visible.
When we are looking other side of the Baltic sea there are things not better. Denmark, Sweden, Finland has also diminished their armed forces. Sweden has abandoned conscription and makes huge effort to be visible at European Union defense arenas, dragging resources away from NATO system and splitting unity of the NATO members.
Finland has right to be suspicions, because they had to fight for independence during second WW against many enemy's like, against red army in Winter war, then by Americans well equipped soviet army during Continuation war and finally at Lapin war against Nazy Germany. Today Finland instead of cooperation with the existing security establishments in Europa tries to built his own Hybrid War Center of Excellence, to lead another security initiative. What it is- nobody knows, what it dose- nobody knows, better to let it stay in this way. Finish initiative is similar to British very quick rapid force creation, what in the end was competing with NATO response force structure.
Russia is also player in the region. Usually great Scandinavian nations are very reserved when the word Russia comes in use. Obviously nobody has learned from the 2008 Georgia war and 2014 Crimea annexation. It all was possible because of weak foreign and defence policy of previous US president, who withdraw large amount of American units from Europa. That was the sign to Russia to act and start to compete for the power in the region. France, Germany, UK have been always unstable, push and pull subjects, when we are talking about internal European cooperation.
History repeats himself. We are phasing bad turmoils in the region, lets hope it will not grow to something worth. Reason why this all has been happening is because nice and selected speakers, by using politically correct language, have not made clear the challenges we face, they do not have access to decision makers for implementation and finally they are living in their own information bubble, loosing the contact with the real world.
Nice and well selected speakers again are gathering and sharing the wisdom what they consider will not harm anyone and is politically correct, not too irritating, same time enough exciting, but not too much because most important is to stay calm and reserved. So nothing exiting, bunch of people with high self esteem are drinking free vine again and having fun, as did also Lennart.
Problem is that in information age we are building up our communication bubbles and when there is no decision makers involvement, then all nice discussions will stay where they are, in the garbage box of history. This year there is no EST Prime ministers or EST Foreign Minister presenting, unfortunately. It seams like conference is taken over by one political party.
Ok, little about topic Nordic Baltic Security Architecture!!!
Architecture is very nice word. By definition architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings or any other structures. For me architecture describes something combined and coordinated. Unfortunately there is very little planned, designed, and constructed jointly at Nordic Baltic region. I would hesitate to use word Architecture. First comes in my mind musical term great cacophony, a harsh discordant mixture of sounds. Every instrument is playing his own song, every state is protecting his own small national interest and tries to compete neighbors. There is nearly nothing built jointly up for Nordic Baltic Security. There is lots of nice political statements, but no more.
Why I am stating like that?
First about cooperation between 3 Baltic tigers: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Many cooperation initiatives are only on paper, there is no real serious actions behind. Defense institutions are doing minimum in order to struggle with all political promises given without any understanding of processes and commitment or delivery for resources. I have been leading myself one exercise where in the middle of the exercise one Baltic partner says that he has to withdraw his unit from Baltic battalion because they have bigger partner with who also they have to exercise at same time. So for Lithuania the Baltic cooperation has been always like big brother thing, those youngsters are too small to play, but until parent are watching and forcing, I will do something.
Commitment even on minimum level for cooperation is time to time too much. My country for example decided to diminish, make smaller, command and control structure of defense forces during the Ukrainian war. That brought today Estonia to situation where is no senior officers available to lead Baltic Defence College! Luckily there are neighbors Latvians helping us out. Unfortunately
their defence structure is even worth. Latvia abandoned conscription in the year 2002 and today they have only approximately 3 badly manned battalions left. The rest is national guard who has task to conduct territorial defense, but cannot establish necessary units in country side, because people are abandoning the villages and moving away. Same thing is ongoing in Estonia. Without mobilizing available resources, re-establishing conscription, Latvia stays as weakest link in Baltic region defense.
After 28 years of independence and 15 years in NATO there is still no joint procurement established among 3B for military equipment. When we are talking about cooperation between other security institutions like border guard or search and rescue, police, there is not even political will visible.
When we are looking other side of the Baltic sea there are things not better. Denmark, Sweden, Finland has also diminished their armed forces. Sweden has abandoned conscription and makes huge effort to be visible at European Union defense arenas, dragging resources away from NATO system and splitting unity of the NATO members.
Finland has right to be suspicions, because they had to fight for independence during second WW against many enemy's like, against red army in Winter war, then by Americans well equipped soviet army during Continuation war and finally at Lapin war against Nazy Germany. Today Finland instead of cooperation with the existing security establishments in Europa tries to built his own Hybrid War Center of Excellence, to lead another security initiative. What it is- nobody knows, what it dose- nobody knows, better to let it stay in this way. Finish initiative is similar to British very quick rapid force creation, what in the end was competing with NATO response force structure.
Russia is also player in the region. Usually great Scandinavian nations are very reserved when the word Russia comes in use. Obviously nobody has learned from the 2008 Georgia war and 2014 Crimea annexation. It all was possible because of weak foreign and defence policy of previous US president, who withdraw large amount of American units from Europa. That was the sign to Russia to act and start to compete for the power in the region. France, Germany, UK have been always unstable, push and pull subjects, when we are talking about internal European cooperation.
History repeats himself. We are phasing bad turmoils in the region, lets hope it will not grow to something worth. Reason why this all has been happening is because nice and selected speakers, by using politically correct language, have not made clear the challenges we face, they do not have access to decision makers for implementation and finally they are living in their own information bubble, loosing the contact with the real world.
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