Category: Articles in English

Introduction: Aku Sorainen – a Finn living in Tallinn – is the founder and CEO of the biggest legal service operating in all the Baltic countries and Belarus. June 4th, 2015 Aku and his partners celebrated the 20th anniversary of their highly successful partnership. Aku invited me to give a keynote-speech at the beginning of the conference on the subject: The Baltic Road to Freedom revisited – a quarter century later. The next speaker was Lieutenant General Riho Terras, commander of the Estonian Defence Forces, who dealt with „challenges in Defence and Security“ for the young Estonian Republic. Mart Noorma, founder of the first Estonian student satelite program EST-CUBE, gave an interesting talk entitled: „Who will be on Mars in 2020 and where will we be then?“ Eriks Stendzenieks, president of the Latvian Art Directors´Club in Riga, gave a hilarious talk on how the underdogs (small nations) manage to survive in the animal kingdom. All the proceedings of this remarkable conference can be viewed at http://www.sorainen.com/ .

The following interview by Ilze Nagla of Latvian LTV-1 was broadcast on May 3d, 2015 in a program dedicated to the independence struggle of the Latvian poeple, because a quarter century has passed since the declaration of independence. That declaration of independence was not activated until Iceland took the initiative in giving it diplomatic recognition at a ceremony at Höfdi House in Reykjavík, August 26th, 1991.

Introduction: On April 21st I gave the following speech at a conference held in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. The theme of the conference, as well as of my keynote speech, was to seek answers to the question: What can Ukraine learn from the Baltic post-independence experience? It turned out that there is a lot to be learnt from the Baltic experience. The most important lesson is that right from the beginning the political leadership in the Baltic countries stood united – across the political barricades, left, right and center – to consolidate their fragile independence by joining the EU and to take out an insurance policy against future threats by joining NATO. This unity of purpose gave their domestic politics – despite all the turmoil and social upheaval of the most difficult transition period – the internal descipline needed to push through and stand by difficult and necessary, but unpopular, decisions. This steadfastness of purpose and long term strategy has been sadly missing in Ukraine all the time since independence.

When Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985, his reform policy sparked an independence movement in the Baltic states. But as their cries for help were answered with silence from the international community, two small nations answered the call – Iceland and Denmark – motivated by the personal connections of their foreign ministers.

Meistaraprófsnemi við Collége d´Europe í Belgíu, Tim Gemers, valdi sér sem rannsóknarverkefni spurninguna: Hvers vegna er meirihluti Íslendinga andvígur aðild Íslands að Evrópusambandinu? Hann bað mig að svara spurningum varðandi þetta mál og hefur sjálfsagt beint sínum spurningum til fleiri aðila. Það sem hér fer á eftir eru svör mín við spurningum.

A Dutch student, Mr. Tim Gemers, in the Collége d´Europe in Belgium has selected as his research theme for his Msc. thesis the question: Why is a majority of Icelanders, according to opinion polls, opposed to Iceland´s membership of the European Union? He sent me a questionnaire concerning the topic. What follows are my answers to Mr. Gemers´questions.

http://www.fairobserver.com/region/europe/iceland-will-not-join-the-european-union-54680/

Sir –
America´s Founding Fathers, with their phobia against strong central government, would have been well advised to look at the Old Icelandic Republic (930-1262 A.D.) for inspiration, rather than this „revered piece of sheepskin“ (The „Magna Carta at 800“, Dec. 20ieth, 2014).

1. Baltic liberation and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Why did I take it upon myself to promote the cause of the Baltic nations´ restored independence in the early nineties? Because the leaders of the West at the time were not, de facto, following up on their rethoric on democracy and national self-determination. Why not? Because they had, unwisely, placed all their bets for ending the Cold War on the political fate of president Gorbachev. Nothing should be said or done which undermined his position. If he were to be deposed, the hardliners would come back. And there was a lot at stake. We might return to the Cold War. That would mean the end of the peace process. Negotiations on both conventional and nuclear disarmament would be off the agenda. The peaceful reunification of Germany would no longer be possible. And the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe might be put down by force.

Á vormisseri 2014 kenndi ég nokkur námskeið við Háskólann í Tartu í Eistlandi. Ég hafði vinnuaðstöðu í skrifstofu í háskólabyggingunni, sem var merkt Prófessor Dr. Rein Taagepera. Nafnið rifjaði upp fyrir mér skondna sögu, en sannleiksgildi hennar er staðfest í bréfaskrifum okkar, sem fer hér á eftir.

Sagan snýst um forsetakosningar í Eistlandi 1992 og pólitíska framtíð Lennarts Meri, míns gamla vinar. Meri var fyrsti utanríkisráðherra hins nýfrjálsa Eistlands. Pólitíkin í árdaga eistneska lýðveldisins var sviptivindasöm. Þegar árið 1992 hafði Meri hrökklast út úr pólitíkinni og var gerður að sendiherra Eistlands í Finnlandi. Þar bar fundum okkar enn saman á mikilli ráðstefnu á vegum OSCE um öryggismál. Sendiherrann var hálf vængbrotinn. Hið unga lýðveldi var staurblankt og átti ekki fyrir rafmagnsreikningnum. Forsetakosningar voru framundan eftir nokkra mánuði. Meri taldi sig ekki eiga sjans. Við sátum uppi við kertaljós í fátæklega búnum sendiherrabústaðnum. Það var þessa nótt, sem ég gerðist kosningastjóri Lennarts Meri, eins og bréfaskiptin leiða í ljós.

Dr. Rein Taagepera is a wellknown scholar (political science) and an Estonian in exile (Californa, USA). He became a candidate for president of Estonia in the elections 1992. Our correspondence, which follows, is about those presidential elections and my accidental role as a sort of political spin doctor for my friend, Meri. I have told the story in greater detail in an interview with Askur Alas in the Estonian magazine, Keskus.

During spring semester 2014 I taught a few courses for master-level students in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Tartu in Estonia. I was alotted an office with a sign on the door: Professor Dr. Rein Taagepera. The name refreshed my memory of my accidental involvement in Estonia´s presidential elections anno 1992. The truthfulness of the story is confirmed by my correspondence with Dr. Taagepera, which follows.

The story is about the presidential elections in Estonia in 1992 and the political future of Lennart Meri, my old friend. Meri became the first foreign minister of Estonia after restored independence. In the early days of the republic Estonian politics were in a flux. By the year 1992 Meri had actually dropped out of politics and had been made ambassador to Finland in Helsinki. That´s where we met once again at a major OSCE- conference on European security policies.