On 28 October, ICDS Head of Studies Tomas Jermalavičius participated at the 5th Cambridge Baltic Conference (CBC) organised by the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian students of the University of Cambridge (UK).
The event which serves as a platform of debate on various national, European and international issues brings to the UK-based audiences—academics, journalists, civic activists, government officials, diplomats and business sector representatives—Baltic perspectives on those issues. CBC 2017 was dedicated to the themes of security, populism and cyberwafare. Tomas Jermalavičius, together with James Bergeron of NATO’s Allied Maritime Command, Martin Arpo of the Estonian Internal Security Service, and Pete Duncan of the University College London, spoke in the session on defence strategies of the Baltic states. He highlighted the importance of using military instrument for solidarity maintenance across NATO and ensuring effective deterrence in the Baltic region as well as the necessity of building societal resilience and broad consensus on the value of national and collective defence. The conference was broadcast online by Laisvės TV (Liberty TV)—a crowd-funded online TV channel; its video record is available here.