| TALLINN
THE morning after celebrating her husband’s birthday earlier this month, Barbel Salumae rose at 6am, donned fatigues, and made for a compound outside Tallinn to practice her marksmanship. “I tell my children it’s my hobby,” says Ms Salumae, a member of Estonia’s volunteer Kaitseliit, or Defence League (EDL). “I can’t tell them I have to train because maybe there is war coming.”
Such talk once struck many outside the three ex-Soviet Baltic states as hyperbolic. Then came Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Now, with American president-elect Donald Trump having questioned commitments to longtime allies, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have new reasons to worry. Issues that seemed settled after their ascension to NATO in 2004 have been reopened. “It’s living proof that history never ends,” says Juri Luik, a former Estonian foreign and defence minister.“We have to explain who we are all over again.”
The Baltic states, with their bitter memories of Soviet occupation, have much to lose if America’s stance in Europe shifts. During the campaign Mr Trump called NATO “obsolete”. Newt Gingrich, a campaign surrogate, dismissed Estonia as “a suburb of St Petersburg”. Yet the president-elect’s true views are a mystery: after his victory, Mr Trump “underlined NATO’s enduring importance” on a call with its secretary-general. Barack Obama has assured allies that Mr Trump will respect America’s defence commitments.
Estonians take solace in the guarantees of institutions, which they see as stronger than any one leader. NATO’s decision to station 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland from next May has done much to calm nerves. Mr Trump’s demand that allies pay their share is welcomed in Tallinn: Estonia, whose soldiers served in Afghanistan and Iraq, is one of only five NATO members that meet the alliance’s defence-budget target of 2% of GDP. (Lithuania and Latvia plan to by 2018.) “We need to make sure that Trump and his administration know that Estonia has been an ally,” says Lt General Riho Terras, head of the Estonian Defence Forces.
However friendly Mr Trump’s disposition towards Vladimir Putin may be, Estonian officials doubt that they can cut a deal. Early in his first term, George W Bush declared that he had got “a sense of [Putin’s] soul”; his second term ended with Russia’s invasion of Georgia. Barack Obama came to office pledging a “reset” with Russia, yet he leaves with relations at a post-cold war nadir. With Mr Trump, too, reality will constrain policy. “It’s hard for me to see what Russia could offer the US,” says one senior Estonian official.
Estonia will enter the Trump era with new leadership of its own. A coalition government collapsed on November 9th. The long-dominant Reform Party will give way to the Centre Party, a bastion of Estonia’s Russian-speaking electorate, many of whom want closer ties with Russia. The Centre Party’s ascension became possible only after jettisoning its controversial leader Edgar Savisaar, who had signed a co-operation agreement with Mr Putin’s party. Juri Ratas, the Centre Party’s new head, pledges that Estonia’s foreign policy will not change. The first plank of the new coalition agreement promises to maintain sanctions against Russia and keep defence spending above the 2% threshold.
In any case, Estonians are leaving little to chance. The citizen soldiers in the EDL will carry on preparing for armed resistance. Enrollment has risen to over 24,500. “The best victory is a victory without a battle,” says its head, Brigadier-General Meelis Kiili. “But the best defence is a well-prepared citizenry.”
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