What Ukraine Achieved in Vilnius
Since the NATO Summit in Vilnius failed to grant Ukraine an invitation to the Alliance, undisguised disappointment has been common.
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Defence Spending
Series: NATO’s Vilnius Summit
NATO’s heads of state and government meet this week for their second summit after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s war and its consequences will again dominate the agenda.
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Baltic Defence Development: Adding Value to the Defence of the Baltic Sea Region
While Baltic security thinking has long been dominated by assessments of the risk of Russian military aggression in Europe, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was still a shock in its brutality and scale. It has led the three Baltic states to further increase defence spending and to accelerate the building of national defence capabilities.
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Defence Spending: Who Is Doing What?
Defence spending has often been the cause of bitter arguments among NATO Allies. In today’s worsened security environment, Allies will doubtless need to return to this thorny topic at their July summit in Vilnius.
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#NATO2030. Addressing the Burden-Sharing Challenge
NATO routinely measures and compares the national defence inputs and outputs of its members to assess how they share the burden of collective defence. It has always been apparent that by comparison with the US, Europe needs to do more, but NATO’s burden-sharing discussion is stuck on tired arguments about simple spending measures.
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Estonia’s 2021 Defence Budget: The Result of a Heated Political Debate
On 30 September, the Estonian Government submitted its draft 2021 state budget to the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu). For once, the allocation for national defence was the result of a heated political row between coalition partners.
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Does NATO’s New Cost Sharing Arrangement Contribute to Fairer Burden Sharing?
Allies recently agreed to a new cost sharing formula whereby European members and Canada will increase their contributions to NATO’s three common funded budgets allowing the US share to decrease. This new arrangement is a consequence of the reluctance of many European nations to spend more on defence and the perceived need to send positive signals to the White House.
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Estonia’s 2020 draft defence budget
On 25 September 2019, the Government of Estonia agreed to the 2020 draft state budget, which obviously includes the defence budget.
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NATO Beyond 70: Renewing a Culture of Readiness
On 11-12 July 2018, the heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Alliance met in Brussels.
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Challenges of Real National Defence
Jonatan Vesviov is the Estonian Ambassador to the US. Before this he worked in the Estonian Ministry of Defence for 10 years.
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