Baltic Sea

Most discussions on Baltic Sea regional security focus on NATO, Russia, or pipelines, while forgetting social factors within the countries that make them less secure. In fact, research suggests that gender equality is actually a better indicator of a...

In the early hours of Jan. 13, 2021, Estonia’s coalition government consisting of the Center Party, the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) and Isamaa unexpectedly collapsed when Prime Minister Jüri Ratas (Center) tendered his resignation to President Kersti...

Joe Biden, defeating the incumbent Donald Trump, won the US presidential election and will be inaugurated as the 46th US president on Jan. 20, 2021. Biden has from the campaign trail expressed his intention to return to less fractious...

Since the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in late August and his subsequent rehabilitation in a Berlin hospital, the controversial and beleaguered gas pipeline project between Russia and Germany has received intensified press attention. Nord Stream 2,...

“We mean what we say. We have never reneged on any commitment we have made. Our sacred honor is at stake.” This is an excerpt from a speech by Joe Biden, made during a visit to Riga, Latvia, in...

Sowing discontent and disruption is a tactic that the West has accustomed itself to when dealing with the Kremlin. The Baltic states are in a unique position in the face of these threats. Estonia and Latvia, specifically, have significant...

For years, the international attention paid to the “tiny Baltic nation” of Estonia was overwhelmingly positive. After pulling itself out of the doldrums of their Soviet past, Estonia embarked on a new direction, emphasizing open markets, liberal democracy, technological...

On Aug. 29, 2020, Riga held snap municipal elections. The results deeply rocked the political landscape of the Latvian capital. Harmony, the leading Latvian Russian-speakers party, which has run the city since 2009, lost its top position to the...

Estonia’s relations with neighboring Finland have been unsettled by late July’s announcement that the country’s ambassador in Helsinki, Harri Tiido, resigned. Tiido cited difficulties in maintaining strong cooperation between Estonia and Finland due to a string of controversial statements...

On Aug. 23, 1989, about two million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands in a 690-kilometer human chain across the three Baltic countries in protest of Soviet occupation. The first reenactment of that “Baltic Way” took place in 1991,...