EDITORIAL ⟩ Our man in Berlin

What do you mean you disapprove of me splashing around in the Baltic Sea? Fascists! Illustration: Urmas Nemvalts

Germany's new Minister of Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul is making the right points about enhancing security in the Baltic Sea region.

A seasoned foreign policy expert from the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 62-year-old Wadephul serves as foreign minister in Friedrich Merz's Cabinet. He has previously expressed views that Postimees found agreeable. In a 2023 interview with Tagesspiegel, he supported allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons, including those from Germany, on Russian territory. Wadephul also backed supplying German arms to Israel during the fighting in Gaza.

In a Saturday evening interview with Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, Wadephul said that Germany has so far paid too little attention to the Baltic Sea region and that he intends to devote more time to it in his new role.

Wadephul also noted that the situation in the Baltic region is unstable, pointing to incidents such as the severing of communication cables between the Baltic states and Nordic countries, the removal of Estonian border buoys from the Narva River by Russia, airspace violations over EU and NATO countries, and actions by the Russian navy. He concluded that we live in a high-risk area.

The Baltic Sea states along with the Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland, and Germany must form an even stronger front to counter the threat from the east.

Wadephul therefore pointed to incidents directly involving Estonia and drew exactly the right conclusions from them. Postimees supports his position that even more needs to be done to strengthen Baltic Sea security cooperation. The Baltic Sea states along with the Nordic and Baltic countries, Poland, and Germany must form an even stronger front to counter the threat from the east. Tensions and mistrust exist even among allies, including Poland and Germany. These divisions must be overcome.

Now that both Sweden and Finland are NATO members, the Baltic region is much more secure against conventional threats. Russia now faces several countries around the Baltic Sea that operate on the assumption that they must be capable of standing up to our eastern neighbor on their own, if necessary.

Even more pressing, however, are the hybrid threats pointed out by Wadephul. Confronting these requires closer strategic cooperation within existing frameworks and, if needed, new ones. In this area, the Baltic Sea countries could become a model for other parts of NATO.