Estonian President: not meeting defence spending targets makes Latvia, Lithuania vulnerable

By not meeting the NATO target of spending two percent of GDP on defence, Latvia and Lithuania are making themselves vulnerable, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in an interview with Latvian Television last night.

He pointed out that Estonia is the only Baltic country that has met NATO's defence target. However, Ilves did not claim that Latvia and Lithuania, who spend less on defense, have become a threat to Baltic security. 

Asked whether the Baltics are seen from the outside as united, Ilves said that he is annoyed when someone speaks in the name of all three Baltic countries. He believes that each country should speak primarily about themselves, instead of offering opinions about all three. Ilves said, moreover, that they did not need to share opinions about everything, adding that the Baltics do not have common positions and he doubts whether they ever will.

At the same time, Ilves also pointed out that the Baltic countries are expecting a bit too much from NATO by asking for more in return than they themselves contribute to the alliance: ''in order to accommodate allied soldiers, the conditions and infrastructure to accommodate them must be in place. Due to this, we will be spending more than the required two percent of GDP this year to construct modern barracks. We must be able to accommodate allied soldiers,'' he said.

At the end of the interview, when asked about Baltic cooperation, Ilves said that cooperation is not just about expressing and signing joint declarations, but about making actual contributions. ''But if you do not want to pay for this, than this just becomes singing about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is not cooperation, but just feeling good together. Cooperation requires money, time and energy. It also needs people to work on this cooperation,'' the Estonian president added.