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Journal on Baltic Security _______________________________________________ Volume 1, Issue 2 2015 Journal on Baltic Security is the bi-annual publication of the Baltic Defence College © 2015, Baltic Defence College, All rights reserved ISSN 2382-9222 (print) ISSN 2382-9230 (online) Editor-in-chief: Dr. Asta Maskaliūnaitė, Baltic Defence College Assistant editor: Dr Ashley Robert Roden-Bow, Baltic Defence College Editorial Board Dr. Augustine Meaher, Baltic Defence College Dr. Ole Kværnø, Royal Danish Defence College, Denmark Mr. Marek Menkiszak, Centre for Eastern Studies, Poland Dr. Andres Kasekamp, Tartu University, Estonia Dr. Žaneta Ozolina, University of Latvia Dr. Margarita Šešelgytė, Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, Lithuania Electronic version of the Journal on Baltic Security can be accessed on the website of the Baltic Defence College at www.baltdefcol.org All articles of the Journal on Baltic Security are also available through the International Relations and Security Network (ISN) at www.isn.ethz.ch All inquiries should be made to the Baltic Defence College, Riia 12, 51013 Tartu, Estonia, ph: +372 717 6000, e-mail: [email protected] Disclaimer: The Baltic Defence College publishes the Journal on Baltic Security as a journal of research and commentary on security issues in order to facilitate academic discussion. The views presented in the articles are those only of the authors, and do not represent any official views of the three Baltic States, or their armed forces, or of the Baltic Defence College. Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 CONTENTS SPECIAL ISSUE. SECURITIZATION OF MIGRATION IN THE BALTIC STATES Securitization of migration in the Baltic States Ąžuolas Bagdonas. The EU Migration Crisis and 7 Baltic Security Viljar Veebel. Balancing between solidarity and responsibility: Estonia in the EU refugee crisis 28 Aija Lulle, Elza Ungure. Asylum seekers’ crisis in Europe 2015: Debating spaces of fear and security in Latvia 62 Asta Maskaliūnaitė. Discursive and institutional management of refugees and their crisis in Lithuania 96 Research articles Kristian Nielsen, Heiko Paabo. How Russian soft power fails in Estonia: Or, Why the Russophone Minorities Remain Quiescent 125 Tuomas Kuronen, Aki-Mauri Huhtinen. Leadership in the contemporary military: mavericks in the bureaucracy? 158 3 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 Book Reviews Ashley Robert Roden-Bow. We Can Be 183 A review of Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi Augustine Meaher. Goodbye Comrades, 189 We Miss You Not A review of Goodbye to all that?: The Story of Europe Since 1945 by Dan Stone 4 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 EDITOR’S NOTE The second issue of the Journal on Baltic Security focuses on the developments that took much of media attention in Europe and the three Baltic countries over the last half a year – mass influx of refugees to Europe and the attempts of the EU and national governments to tackle this situation. While the question of refugees has created tensions in all the European countries, the Eastern European members of the EU in general and the Baltic States in particular have often been singled out for the lack of solidarity and apparent unwillingness to help out their struggling allies. In this issue of the Journal we present four articles addressing this topic: one from the EU perspective with implications for the security of the three Baltic States and three looking at the debates in the three Baltic States. The first article by Ąžuolas Bagdonas looks at the ways of solving the crisis at the EU level and the implications for the Baltic States of these policy decisions arguing for the importance of the rules-based system and the interest of the Baltic States in upholding such a system. The article by Viljar Veebel looks at the Estonian discussion of the refugee crisis and its possible solutions. The author points out the numerous flaws in the EU relocation mechanisms and discusses their implications as well as security risks that ‘unwanted’ relocation may cause inside the country. Lack of economic resources, experience and skills, he argues, together with the poor management of communication on the issue greatly diminishes the chances of success of the relocation scheme in the country. The next article takes on the Latvian case and analyses it through the framework of spaces of fear and security. The authors analyse the public debate in Latvia on the refugee crisis and explain the supposed hostility of Latvians towards the EU relocation scheme 5 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 by pointing to the failure of integrating Latvia’s large Russian speaking minority over the last 25 years. finally, the article on Lithuania looks at the Lithuanian management of the refugee crisis through institutional and discursive dimensions and notes that while institutional practice reflects strong securitization of the issue, seeing refugees largely as potential threats to (hard) security, the discourse surrounding refugees in the country revolves around the economic issues. The two book reviews in this volume also try to contextualize the current refugee crisis in the wider historical (‘Goodbye Comrades, we miss you not’) and philosophical (‘We can be’) debates about the ‘European idea.’ In addition, this volume contains two research articles on topics of importance for the region and for military education, addressing the issues of Russian soft power and its uses (or lack thereof) in the Baltics compared to that of the EU’s soft power as well as discussion of the newest ideas and best takes in the analysis of military leadership. Dr. Asta Maskaliūnaitė Editor-in-chief Journal on Baltic Security 6 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 THE EU MIGRATION CRISIS AND THE BALTIC SECURITY Ąžuolas Bagdonas Fatih University, Istanbul ______________ ABSTRACT The article provides a theoretically informed commentary on the ongoing migration crisis in Europe, and discusses its causes and the currently proposed solutions to it. Irregular migration to Europe is likely to remain on the agenda of the European Union for decades to come and, in order to avoid repetitive crises, further integration is needed in the European asylum system. The article suggests that the greatest threat to the security of the Baltic States comes not from irregular migration itself, but from the policy decisions that would fail to address the EU crisis caused by it. Introduction This article seeks to provide an analysis of the ongoing migration crisis in Europe and assess its impact on the security of the Baltic States. The steep increase in the number of irregular migrants entering the European Union (EU) during the last two years led to a frantic search for solutions at both national and European levels, which has not yet been successful. The argument advanced in this article is that while the influx of irregular migrants and the increasing Mediterranean migrant death rate exacerbated the sense of a crisis, the crisis is not about migration as such but about the breakdown of the rules of the European asylum system due to internal contradictions, the incomplete nature of European 7 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 integration and the divergence of national interests. While most current measures to address the crisis are generally aimed at reducing the number of irregular migrants, migratory pressures on Europe are likely to increase in the future and a more permanent solution to the migration crisis will involve a rollback of European rules or further integration. The article argues that it is in the interests of the Baltic States to support integration. The overall intention of the article is not to make a theoretical contribution to the study of migration or institutional reforms in Europe, but rather to provide a theoretically informed perspective for the ongoing political debates in the Baltic States. In pursuing this aim, the first section of the article provides a brief description of the crisis and an analysis of its causes. The following section gives a selective overview of internal and external measures by the European Union undertaken or proposed in relation to the crisis. The final section contains critical observations regarding the challenges that the migration crisis poses to the security of the states and societies in the Baltic States. What is the crisis? According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR 2015b), more than 820,000 irregular migrants arrived in the EU by sea in 2015, mostly to Greece (673,000) and Italy (142,000). The majority of these migrants came from Syria (52%), Afghanistan (19%), Iraq (6%), and Eritrea (5%), but the wave also included people from Pakistan, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, Gambia, and Mali. The number of irregular migrants in 2015 represents a fourfold increase in comparison to the previous year (216,000) and a thirteen-fold increase in comparison to 2013 (59,421). The majority of migrants chose not to stay in Greece or Italy and continued moving north, with Germany and Sweden being the preferred destinations (UNHCR 2015a). 8 Journal on Baltic Security Vol 1, Issue 2, 2015 The sudden influx of migrants, many of whom have a valid claim to international protection, exceeded the capacity of national institutions to cope with the situation and revealed inadequacies in the regional asylum system. At the regional level, the centrepiece of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is the so-called Dublin system, which established that the first EU state of entry is typically responsible for examining asylum applications and that asylum seekers will be returned to that state in case they settle somewhere else.1 Essentially, the effect, if not the purpose, of this system was to lay down certain standards for dealing with migrants with a claim to international protection and transfer the responsibility and, to a large extent, the costs of dealing with them to the EU border states.

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