The Estonian Foreign Policy Yearbook 2007

ANDRES KASEKAMP 1 2 PREFACE ANDRES KASEKAMP 3 4 PREFACE Cover design: Mari Kaljuste © Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, 2007 ISSN 1736–4175 Tallinn, 2007 Trükikoda OÜ Greif ANDRES KASEKAMP 5 Table of Contents Preface 7 Andres Kasekamp Overcoming doubts: The Baltic States and European Security and Defence Policy 9 Andres Kasekamp & Viljar Veebel The European Neighbourhood Policy: From “is” to “ought” and back 33 Ahto Lobjakas Estonia and disarmament: Between geopolitical constraints and strategic socialization 49 Matthieu Chillaud Combating the global threat of terrorism as part of Estonia’s foreign policy 77 Jaap Ora Estonia’s energy security and the European Union 91 Andres Mäe Managing polarity: Post-modern European security environment and misperceptions in Estonian security culture 121 Holger Mölder Conceptualising practices of security governance in the Baltic and the Mediterranean 147 Tiago Marques & Yasar Qatarneh Estonian foreign policy toward China: Opportunities and choices 163 Raul Allikivi Estonia and the International Climate Change Regime 195 Andres Kratovits About the authors 207 6 PREFACE ANDRES KASEKAMP 7 Preface Andres Kasekamp The past year has been an exciting one for Estonia politically: we witnessed the election of a new President of the Republic, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (the founder of the Institute and a contributing author to past issues of the Year- book), in September 2006, parliamentary elections in March 2007, and a dramatic face-off with Russia over the relocation of a Soviet war monument in Tallinn, featuring massive cyber attacks. At the same time, the country has experienced a booming economy that has been growing in double digits. The past year has also been a stimulating one for the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute. The Institute was commissioned to undertake studies con- cerning some of the most pressing global issues which will determine our future, but until recently were absent from the conventional international relations agenda: energy security and climate change. In addition to conduct- ing research for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament), the Institute was for the first time selected to produce a briefing paper for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament on the European Neighbourhood Policy. As well as tackling a wider array of new non-traditional subjects, the Institute has also broadened its geographical scope. It co-organized a confer- ence in Tokyo with the support of the Japan Foundation and carried out a research project in Jordan together with local partners within the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission. We are thus attempting to genuinely engage with global affairs, rather than simply our own immediate region, which initially, out of sheer necessity, was the case. For more infor- mation on the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute and its activities, please visit our homepage at http://www.evi.ee. As in previous years, one of the aims of the Institute’s Yearbook has been to provide a forum for Estonian researchers to reach a wider audience and thus help build an international affairs community in Estonia. The overriding theme of most of the contributions to this fifth edition of the Yearbook con- cerns various aspects of security. Some of the security challenges for Estonia 8 PREFACE analyzed here are familiar, some are new, and some are old security challenges in new shapes and forms. I hope that between these covers readers will find plenty of food for thought. ANDRES KASEKAMP 9 Overcoming doubts: The Baltic states and the European Security and Defence Policy1 Andres Kasekamp & Viljar Veebel Introduction Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been staunch supporters of transatlantic security and European integration, but their attitude towards the Common European Defence and Security Policy (ESDP) and willingness to contribute in practical terms have turned positive only in the past couple of years. Pre- vious Baltic scepticism and parallel pro-atlanticism have their historical and rational reasons, which have often not been appreciated among ESDP pro- ponents in the EU. Several geopolitical and securital aspects that originally alienated the Baltic states from ESDP have started to lose their significance, but the Baltic states still see their security situation in the near future as re- quiring a lot more than ESDP alone can provide. Several questions need to be debated and analyzed to clarify and plan the role of ESDP in Baltic security. Among them: 1. The importance of Baltic regional cooperation and suitable allies for the Baltic states in EU and NATO; 2. Rethinking the principles of the use of mobile units for NATO, ESDP or third party missions; 3. Attention to the ESDP and field missions or civilian ENP activities; 4. The interests of the Baltic states in an updated European Security Strategy; 5. Finding the right balance between traditional defence and mobile ca- pabilities. 1 This is a revised version of an earlier article published in Klaus Brummer (ed.), The North and ESDP. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2007. 10 THE BALTIC STATES AND ESDP Certainly, the Baltic states need to play a more proactive role in planning new European security priorities and activities -- opting out or remaining aloof is not an option in an integrating EU. The Balts also need to explain better their choices to their European partners. The legacy of history has shaped the foreign and security policies of the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They enjoyed two decades of independence before being annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of the Non-Ag- gression Pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany which allocated them to the Soviet sphere of influence. During the Second World War they fell under Nazi rule before being re-conquered by the USSR. In the 1980s they were the first Soviet Socialist Republics to seize the opportunity provided by Gor- bachev’s reforms to recover their sovereignty. The legitimacy of the Soviet regime was successfully challenged by the Balts living memories of independ- ent statehood, democracy and the market economy. After the recognition of their independence in 1991, the Baltic states achieved the withdrawal of remaining Russian troops from their territory in 1994. Nevertheless, throughout the 1990s Russia claimed that former Soviet republics formed a special category of states known as the ‘near-abroad’ over which Russia still had special influence. Having struggled hard to win their freedom from the Soviet Union, the Balts were acutely aware of the need to preserve their newly-won sovereignty. The three are determined to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s when their diplomatic isolation led to their absorption by a hostile neighbour at the outbreak of the Second World War. The need to anchor themselves firmly in the Euro-Atlantic community was the lesson drawn.2 The entire process of EU and NATO accession was couched in terms of a ‘return to the West’ from which they were forcibly cut off for half a century. The Baltic states in the European Union The Baltic states’ strategy in the EU accession negotiations which lasted from 1998 to 2002 was to be the best pupil in the class. With Estonia having started negotiations one year earlier, this stimulated the Latvians and Lithua- nians to try to catch in the race to successfully close negotiation chapters. Unlike some other candidate countries, such as Poland, which could be con- fident that they would be included in the next enlargement, the Balts were in a more precarious geopolitical position and poorer starting position as 2 See Kai-Helin Kaldas, “The evolution of Estonian security policy,” in Andres Kasekamp (ed.), The Estonian Foreign Policy Yearbook 2006. Tallinn: Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, 2006, pp. 95-117. ANDRES KASEKAMP & VILJAR VEEBEL 11 former republics of the USSR and could only appeal to its success in fulfull- ing the ‘objective criteria’. Baltic decision-makers clearly sensed that they did not have the luxury of time and that the window of opportunity might not stay open for long. The Balts were eager to distance themselves as quickly as possible from the Soviet legacy and from Russia’s influence. This common understanding allowed the political elite to construct a remarkable consensus around the need to speedily implement the necessary reforms. During the EU accession negotiations, the Baltic states maintained a pri- marily positive or neutral opinion about deepening integration and develop- ment of the high policy area, seeming to be happy with role sharing between NATO and EU. The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) in its first years was seen as just a secondary initiative next to NATO and OSCE security tools. However, in the debates in the Convention on the Future of Europe, the Balts often took positions defending inter-governmentalism and the status quo, being afraid that the draft constitution might lead to a ‘super state’. In this they were close allies of the British. This favouring of intergov- ernmental positions also applied specifically to CFSP and ESDP where there was a strong reluctance to countenance any further deepening.3 Underlying this position was the explicit anxiety that NATO could be weakened and the unstated fear that the old EU member states might force the Balts into some unacceptable accommodation of Russia. In addition to the natural anxieties of small states, the historical experience of the Baltic countries made them particularly wary of further integration creating more powerful EU institu- tions. The most common refrain of Baltic eurosceptics has been ‘why join a new union after having struggled so hard to achieve independence from another union’. Their recent negative experience inside the Soviet Union made Balts more sceptical than other candidate countries regarding grand blueprints for ‘ever closer union’. It has been easy to score emotional points in the debates on EU membership by drawing superficial parallels with the some of the bureaucratic excesses of the EU with the absurdities of the USSR.

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