The double edition of Diplomaatia is focusing on the triangle formed by Estonia, Finland and Russia. Baltic Sea Security has also become a more important issue in Finland, where its ministry of foreign affairs commissioned a report on the idea of NATO membership for Finland. This report is analysed by Jarmo Mäkelä, Finnish veteran journalist.
“Finland is currently using potential NATO membership as an implicit threat in an attempt to master the inescapable geopolitical dilemma posed by its unpredictable neighbour. By choosing not to act on her own, Finland leaves the keys to her own security to Moscow, Stockholm or Brussels,” Mäkelä observes.
His article uses comments from Ants Laaneots, Pauli Järvenpää and Marjo Näkki.
Andrei Manoilo, the Russian analyst on information and hybrid warfare, says in an interview that the Baltic States are too small to initiate a confrontation between the US and Russia.
Anna-Mariita Mattiisen from the Estonian Atlantic Treaty Association shows how Russia’s imperialist thinking is also gaining ground in cyberspace where Moscow refuses to play by the rules.
Hudson Institute analyst, Richard Weitz, recently visited Russia. “The fifth Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS), which met April 26–28, 2016, made clear that Russian policy makers may want to restore relations with the West, but only if Western leaders change their policies and thinking to accord better with Russian preferences. The Russian speakers, which included the country’s senior national security leadership, called for more cooperation against common threats, especially international terrorism, but insisted that various Western policies inhibited such reconciliation,” Weitz writes.
The morality of Russia’s foreign policy using the example of the Georgian war is also weighed by Mariann Rikka, masters graduate in law and human rights.
Retiree Jaak Kiviloog writes about Estonian-Finnish relations. He is concerned about the decrease of socialisation between Estonians living in Finland. Erkki Bahovski, the Editor-in-Chief, reviews the latest book on Estonian-Finnish relations.
Former prime minister Andres Tarand writes about water diplomacy and masters graduate in IR Triina-Liis Makson about Argentina. Katrin Höövelson, economic adviser to the EC Representation in Tallinn analyses the future of the European Monetary Union.
This article was published in ICDS Diplomaatia magazine.