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3-5 September

My Neighbour’s Problem Today – Mine Tomorrow

3 days packed with insights by distinguished policymakers, analysts, politicians, military personnel and academia from around the globe in Tallinn, Estonia. Key foreign and security policy issues discussed mostly from the perspective of the northern and eastern parts of Europe.

Conference Summary

We Should Remember the Achievements of Democracy During These Challenging Times

At this year’s Lennart Meri Conference, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Kaush Arha, noted that “democracy is quite robust and resilient in the US”, while the President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, expressed her pride in the European Union, where “the leverage of small democracies is the best.”

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Conference Agenda

Agenda

You can watch again public panel discussions that were not restricted by the Chatham House Rule. Links to the recordings, photo galleries and introductions are available under each discussion.

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Key messages

Q&A

Q&A

7 questions, 7 answers: Dean Cheng, Hans Kundnani, Abdulaziz Sager, Vikas Swarup, Nicolas Tenzer, Sergey Utkin, Kaush Arha, František Vrabel.

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Articles

Analyses, commentaries and interviews that decode foreign, security and defence policy trends and published in the Lennart Meri Conference special edition of ICDS Diplomaatia magazine.

My Neighbour’s Problem Today – Mine Tomorrow

2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Horace said: “You too are in danger, when your neighbour’s house is on fire” (nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet). Today, when states seem to prefer to retract into their shells like turtles rather than fight global…

LMC 2021
A billboard with Chinese President Xi Jinping looking down over a boulevard in Belgrade next to the words “Thank you brother Xi”, a message paid for and created by a pro-government tabloid in Serbia.

COVID-19 and the Search for European Strategic Autonomy

A virus has redefined power politics. On the big stage, the European Union needs not only to prop up the multilateral order, but also to promote a multipolar order and develop into a power among powers.

U.S. President Joe Biden at the EU-U.S. summit in Brussels in June 2021. Relieving the U.S. of some of the burden of European defense means giving the Biden administration more leeway to protect democracy at home, Constanze Stelzenmüller argues.

America Is Back, but… Europe and Especially Germany Need To Do Much More for European Security

It took President Joe Biden nearly five months before he made his first trip abroad in June, to Europe; he had more important things to do. Arguably, that is still the case today.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US President Joe Biden leave a joint news conference in the White House in July 2021.

The Battle Is Not Entirely Lost: Ukraine after the US-German Nord Stream 2 Deal

Nord Stream 2 bypasses Ukraine, reducing the value of Ukraine’s gas transit system to Europe, increasing the probability of military threats from Russia, decreasing the reliability of gas supply to Ukraine and hurting the Ukrainian economy.

LMC 2021

Kersti Kaljulaid: The Impact of the NATO Battlegroup Has Been Enormous

According to President Kersti Kaljulaid, establishing a NATO battlegroup was ingenious. And she often reminds her colleagues that their strategic patience should at least match that of their political ancestors, that is, 50 years.

LMC 2021
Mistral short-range air defence missile system.

Close to the Wind

In my 2015 report, “The Coming Storm” (2015) I highlighted the strategic incoherence of the Baltic Sea region.

LMC 2021

Speakers

Kersti Kaljulaid

President of Estonia 2016-2021, global advocate of the UN Secretary-General for Every Woman Every Child
Egils Levits

Egils Levits

President of Latvia

Kaja Kallas

Prime Minister of Estonia
Margaritis Schinas

Margaritis Schinas

Vice President of the European Commission
Stefano Sannino

Stefano Sannino

Secretary General, European External Action Service
Vikas Swarup

Vikas Swarup

Former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of India
Yascha Mounk

Yascha Mounk

Associate Professor of Practice, Johns Hopkins University, US
Sabina Jeschke

Sabina Jeschke

Scientific Senior Advisor, Deloitte and CEO, Arctic Brains AB
COVID-19

COVID-19

Visit the official government website for the most up to date information about the situation in Estonia. To ensure maximum safety at the conference, we need both to provide and to ask for more information than usual prior to the conference. We kindly ask you to read these guidelines with care.

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About Lennart Meri Conference

“We can never have too much security,” said President Lennart Meri. To mark his continuing legacy in foreign and security policy thinking, the annual Lennart Meri Conference aims to encourage curiosity and debate, highlight unity and diversity, and foster liberty and democracy.