On 4-5 December 2014, ICDS convened a young professionals seminar at Swissôtel Tallinn entitled Mare Nostrum: A New Security Paradigm In and Around the Baltic Sea Region? The seminar was the second annual event commemorating the life and work of the late Ambassador Max Jakobson, a Finnish diplomat and writer.
The seminar program began in the evening of 4 December with a key-note address by HE Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, and continued with a discussion and buffet dinner hosted by Ambassador Matthew Bryza, Director of ICDS.
On 5 December, the first panel, “Eastern Ukraine: What’s Happening on the Ground?“, featured remarks by ICDS research fellow Maksym Bugriy and Henrik Breitenbauch, senior researcher at the Center for Military Studies in Copenhagen. This was followed by Panel 2, “Energy Security and Cyber Threats in the Mare Nostrum Area,” comprising ICDS junior research fellow Anna Bulakh, Wojciech Lorenz of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, and McAfee director of cyber security Jarno Limnéll. Director of Cyber Security at McAfee. The speakers in Panel 3, “After Crimea and Eastern Ukraine: What’s Next?“, were Sven Sakkov, Undersecretary for Defense Policy at the Ministry of Defense; Eoin McNamara, lecturer at the University of Tartu; and Charly Salonius-Pasternak of the Finnish Institute of International Affairsi. In concluding remarks, ICDS research fellow Emmet Tuohy reviewed key themes of the conference, especially the need for closer and more concrete cooperation on defense, energy, and cyber policy within a politically divided Baltic region that is nevertheless a “shared community of fate” within an often uncertain broader geopolitical environment.
