Baltic Sea

NATO Needs to Get Serious at Seventy-Five

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently arrived in Washington seeking to persuade the White House and Congress to successfully negotiate legislation that would free up $60 billion to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian forces.  He delivered his remarks...

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Estonia Catches Taiwan Fever: What Will the Side Effects Be?

In early November 2023, Estonia announced a decision to allow Taiwan to open an unofficial, non-diplomatic economic and cultural representative office in Tallinn. The opening of an office does not mean that Tallinn and Taipei are establishing official diplomatic...

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Doubling Down: Estonia’s Center Party Gamble on Mihhail Kõlvart

In the September 2023 Center Party leadership elections, members chose Tallinn Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart over former Health Minister Tanel Kiik as party chair. Center Party rose to prominence in the 1990s by forging a coalition of disaffected citizens, Russophones...

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NATO Vilnius Summit: Defense Takeaways for the Baltic States

This July, the NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, was yet another historical gathering for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. After facing years of dilemmas with regard to Russia, the allies agreed to bolster NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) battlegroups and...

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The Frontline States: Conversations and Observations About Russia’s Other War in Europe

  All Soviet efforts…will be negative and destructive in character, designed to tear down sources of strength beyond reach of Soviet control. This is only in line with basic Soviet instinct that there can be no compromise with rival...

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The Vilnius NATO Summit Brings Opportunities for Closer Nordic-Baltic Integration

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) heads of state and government participated in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July — the fourth summit the Alliance has held since the full scale Russian invasion...

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Nuclear Stability and Escalation Risks in Europe

  Introduction The security situation in Europe has changed dramatically following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin’s repeated threats to use nuclear weapons if the conflict were to escalate. The Foreign Policy Research Institute convened a Track...

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Biden’s Bombs: The Dance of Ethics and Interests

On July 7, 2023, at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, operators carefully placed an M55 rocket filled with nerve agent onto a machine that drained and neutralized the deadly material. America destroyed its last chemical weapon—the final...

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Lithuania’s Bet on Taiwan and What It Means for Europe

Despite a concerted effort from the People’s Republic of China to teach Lithuania a strong economic lesson for opening an unofficial diplomatic representative office in Taipei (and allowing Taiwan to do the same in Vilnius), it appears that Beijing...

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Latvia’s Military Industry Marks its First Decade

The Federation of Security and Defense Industries of Latvia recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary. Although the military industry in Latvia predates the federation, the industry has grown markedly in the last decade. The military industry in Latvia has developed...

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