Never underestimate the power of a well-organized group of fools. That was how this year’s Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia looked. Named after the country’s first president, the annual security-policy gathering was more somber this year. The consensus? Ukraine is not just losing on the battlefield but is also grappling with severe attacks on its power and heating infrastructure. These are devastating the economy now and will be nearly impossible to fix before the winter chill sets in. Oddly, no one mentioned Ukraine’s own strikes on Russian power plants and civilians.
Naturally, the solution proposed was to ramp up military aid: more weapons, more lethal, delivered faster. Estonia’s Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, a rising star for her bold actions like dismantling Soviet-era statues (to erase Estonia’s Soviet past and perhaps boost her NATO chief prospects), made a notable appearance. She boasted that Estonia has pledged 0.25% of its GDP to Ukrainian military aid for the next three years. “If every country did the same, Ukraine would win,” she declared. What is Estonia’s GDP? $30, 40? Who’s counting?
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, praised Estonia as a model of support in a video message. But Ukraine’s praise quickly turned to criticism of other countries. Kuleba emphasized that only deep strikes into Russian territory would stop the onslaught of glide bombs launched from 50 miles away. This requires F-16 warplanes (too few and too late), German Taurus long-range missiles (which Berlin won’t supply), and American HIMARS and ATACMS, restricted to targets in Russian-occupied Ukraine by the Biden administration. Fears of escalation have deterred the West from providing Ukraine with the weapons needed to win, or even from declaring Russia’s defeat as a goal. Germany has slid into a recession, and Biden, still smarting from Afghanistan, doesn’t want another international debacle as he faces foreign policy hawk Donald Trump in the upcoming elections.
One sage at the summit pointed out, if the US and its allies, with a combined GDP of $40 trillion, can’t handle Russia (GDP: $2 trillion), they have no chance against China. GDP comparisons? Like anyone’s fighting with wads of cash.
Looming over the conference was the unspoken dread of a catastrophic Ukrainian defeat, with Europe bracing for a potential migration crisis and Russia plotting its next moves. A Yale historian (from the university named after a slave trader, no less) likened the situation to Hitler’s aggression in the late 1930s. Ukraine, he argued, is like Czechoslovakia in 1938. But unlike the Prague government, which was coerced into submission, Ukraine has chosen to fight, “extending 1938 for you.”
He also warned that just as Hitler used Czechoslovakia’s armaments and resources for his next invasion, Russia would do the same with Ukrainian assets. Worse still, successful Russian nuclear blackmail could spur other countries to develop their own nuclear arsenals. The historian drew a direct parallel between Hitler and Putin, though it’s worth noting that Putin has repeatedly called for peace—11 times, to be precise. Hitler, on the other hand, never did. And while Hitler gassed millions, Putin’s tally remains at zero.
The conference attendees, the security-savvy elite of the region, see all this with stark clarity. Here’s our advice to them – accept defeat now to save money and mitigate future costs. But their dilemma lies in how to accept defeat gracefully, which highlights the dismal state of modern intellectual discourse.