My Tallinn Diary: The Importance of Allies

Despite the naysayers, allies — both old and new — are our greatest advantage today regarding our competition with China and Russia.

This weekend, I went to Tallinn.

Think about that sentence for a moment. I live in California but traveled halfway around the globe for a weekend to attend the annual Lennart Meri Conference organized by the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) and Lennart Meri European Foundation. You can read about the details here.

It was a long trip, but well worth it. Visiting Estonia always gives me hope for the future.

I first visited Tallinn in 1985, when the Soviet Union still occupied Estonia. At the time, I was learning Russian in Moscow. We visited the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – which back Soviet leaders called “Socialist Republics.” Before this trip, I had traveled outside of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic only once. But our stay in Tallinn was where I first got a feel for people’s attitudes towards the Russian-led Soviet empire of those who had been conquered and occupied by Moscow.  No one in 1985 wanted to speak Russian with us. People in Estonia preferred English. The city felt very European, not at all like Moscow. And although our contacts with local residents were limited, it was clear to me that Estonians did not want to be part of the Soviet empire. American leaders made the right decision to never recognize the illegal annexation of the Baltic states.  To learn more about this history, visit the Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom next time you are in Tallinn, as I did last Sunday.

That strong disdain for the empire gave Estonians a major advantage and clarity in determining the trajectory of their country when they secured independence in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Estonians wanted to become part of Europe as quickly as possible. After independence, Estonia made the dual transition to democracy and capitalism and did so faster than any other post-Soviet country. It quickly became a rich and thriving economy and gained a reputation for its high-tech and e-governance. (Many features of their government services are much more modern than ours.) But there was one thing they could not change – geography. Given that Estonia shares a border with Russia, Estonians always knew that security was key to their prosperity. So, joining NATO became a paramount national interest.

In the debate about whether Estonia should be invited to join NATO twenty years ago, there were two central reservations. First, how could the alliance defend Estonia if attacked by Russia? Second, what would this tiny country add to the alliance? Two decades later, both questions have been answered.

Regarding defense, the NATO alliance had to develop new contingency plans for defending the Baltic states. They were not well developed when I started working at the National Security Council in 2009. Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 accelerated that planning. By 2017, NATO sent equipment and deployed four fully-operational multinational battlegroups, totaling 4,500 troops, to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine last year compelled NATO to deploy even greater military capabilities to this frontline state. At the NATO Summit in Madrid in June 2022, the U.S. stated that it would deploy a U.S. Infantry unit (typically consisting of 80 to 250 soldiers) as well as HIMARS along with command-and-control equipment systems to Estonia to strengthen NATO’s position in the eastern flank. The delivery was finalized by December 2022. (When I landed in Tallinn, the airport was filled with British soldiers.) These measures of enhanced deterrence have worked. Strikingly, Putin has not attacked any member of NATO during his invasion of Ukraine. Even in response to Finland and Sweden announcing their desires to join NATO and then Finland joining NATO, Putin did nothing. At the end of the day, it is countries in the gray zone –Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova – between NATO and Russia that are endangered the most as the world learned tragically when Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. Without membership in NATO, that tragedy could have been Estonia as well.

But Estonia and other new Allies are not just beneficiaries of NATO's provision of security. They provide security too. When Al-Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, NATO allies invoked Article V of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, stating that an attack on one is an attack on all, and then joined us in fighting our enemy in Afghanistan. Estonians were not attacked on September 11^th, but they fought side by side with American soldiers. A dozen of Estonians died in Afghanistan to defend us. The same was true for other NATO members.

Estonia’s contributions to advancing our common security interests against Russia’s war in Ukraine are even more significant and impressive. In GDP per capita terms, Estonia was just recently surpassed by Latvia as the world’s largest provider of military assistance to Ukraine on a percentage of GDP basis. Estonia allocated 1.082% of its GDP on military aid to Ukraine, compared to Latvia’s 1.183%. Perhaps even more importantly, Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, has emerged as one of Europe’s most persuasive and moral voices in support of Ukrainian independence and against Russian imperialism. This is not surprising, as Estonians know first-hand what Russian occupation does to a country. As a result, Kallas and other Estonian officials have been leading conversations within NATO and the European Union to push for greater support for Ukraine.

In fact, my biggest takeaway from the weekend in Tallinn was the value of allies. In the U.S., the current debate revolves around allies not pulling their weight, or not doing their fair share, or relying too much on the United States, etc. As the discussion about Ukraine’s membership in NATO heats up in the run-up to the NATO summit in Vilnius this summer, we will hear these same complaints about the risks and costs of adding a new member. For me, Tallinn was a reminder of what we gain from having allies. The more, the better. Without question, our allies need to spend more on defense. (That, by the way, was Obama’s idea, not Trump’s proposal.) But let’s not forget what they are already doing together with the United States to advance our shared security and moral goals.

First, as a German participant reminded us at the Tallinn conference, we have pushed the frontline of the alliance further east. During the Cold War, West Germany was a frontline state. Today, Germany is surrounded by allies. Germany and all the older members of the alliance are more secure today than at the end of the Cold War.

Second, the entire NATO alliance is providing military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine. We – meaning the United States – are not taking on this mission alone. The U.S. is the biggest provider of military assistance, but not the sole provider. President Zelenskyy has just completed a very successful tour of European capitals and picked up new commitments of support at every stop. New pledges of military aid to Ukraine  – especially the new big package from Germany – are stunning. Regarding economic and humanitarian assistance – especially support for Ukrainian refugees—our allies in Europe are providing major resources to Ukraine. The European Union will also be in the lead regarding post-war reconstruction in Ukraine.

Third, our allies in Europe share a commitment to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. In Tallinn, I felt this shared set of values among all participants of the conference, including especially those attending from Ukraine. (There were a handful of Russians there too; they were all dissidents, living in exile, who embraced our values too.) Ideas matter. More people and countries sharing your ideas matter too. 

In a head-to-head comparison, the balance of power between the United States and China appears to be growing more even. (I think it’s not as even as many believe – the United States is still ahead – but that’s the subject of a future Substack piece.) But Putin’s tragic, barbaric war in Ukraine has clearly revealed that the U.S. is not alone in pursuing our security interests in Europe. We have allies: strong, rich, moral, and committed allies, including Estonia.  We also have powerful, principled allies in Asia. Both Russia and China lack real allies. In our new era of great power competition with both China and Russia, allies are our greatest advantage. A quick weekend trip to one of these allies reminded me of this comforting fact.