Kristen Michal, 49, has been Prime Minister of Estonia since July 23. He succeeded Kaja Kallas, appointed High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. On Monday 16 and Tuesday 17 December, he chaired the summit in Tallinn of the Joint Expeditionary Force, an operational military force under the command of the United Kingdom, which since 2018 has brought together Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands Bottom, Iceland and the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania). Visiting Paris on December 6, he answered questions from Monde.
Estonia, like the other Baltic countries, is very attached to NATO. What do you expect from Donald Trump’s return to the White House?
It is to be expected that Trump, as in his first term, will ask Europeans to invest more in their own defense. For our part, the message was well received. We now spend 3.4% of our gross domestic product on defense, which puts us second behind Poland among European NATO members. And this will continue to increase: next year, we will be around 3.7%, and within two to three years, we will exceed 4% thanks, in particular, to considerable purchases of ammunition and weapons. long range.
Why such investments?
Because we know our neighbor, Russia. For a long time, Estonians were seen by many as paranoid. We were told: “Look at how Russia is evolving, it has adopted capitalism and will eventually become democratized. » It didn’t happen. We are constantly victims of hybrid attacks from Russia. Russia only respects force. This is why we cannot afford to be weak in the face of it. And this applies first of all to Ukraine, which must have the means to force Russia to sit around the table to negotiate. This is the only way to build true and lasting peace. Russia must be forced to negotiate, otherwise it will send a very bad signal to its allies, such as North Korea or Iran, who will feel entitled to attack their neighbors and change borders by force.
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