Best Friends – and That's Official
In Estonia it can sometimes seem that membership in multinational organizations is the pinnacle of diplomacy, so it is refreshing to note that good old-fashioned bilateralism seems to be making a comeback.
That was certainly the feeling in Riga on December 10 (one day after Estonia became a full member of the OECD and less than three weeks before its eurozone debut) at the unpromisingly-titled “Latvian-Estonian Future Co-Operation Report Stakeholders' Conference.” In a pleasant surprise, the dreary name belied what was actually a stimulating and open-minded event to discuss around 60 proposed projects of neighborly cooperation: the sort of things consultants like to call “win-win outcomes” but which ordinary people refer to as common sense.
Thankfully common sense was in ready supply in the core report (compiled by Latvia's Andris Razans and Estonia's Anvar Samost) which provided an excellent example of how to embark on real-world diplomacy without lapsing into meaningless jargon.
“Both societies actually know very little about developments and trends in their neighboring country,” the report said with refreshing candor. “What we currently have is a kind of 'official friendship' – we keep repeating the mantra about the historic closeness of Latvians and Estonians but we do not really know much about our neighbors and do not actually fully believe in these similarities.”
The suggested remedies were in the main just as commonsensical with one or two exceptions: talk of “establishment of a system for regularly bringing together Latvian-Estonian elites” might get cynics thinking about shopping trips to Riga and Tallinn, while a suggestion that “we have to watch our rhetoric to emotionally strengthen the feeling of 'neighborliness'” had a slight hint of Orwellian “newspeak” about it.
On the whole though, the various discussions of the report were eminently practical in nature: how to get a decent rail link between the countries, how to shake down tourists more effectively and how to back each other up on the international stage.
But perhaps the greatest service the report does is to avoid the politically correct cliché that all people in all nations are basically the same and their ultimate goal should be a sort of homogenized internationalism. Both Estonians and Latvians are proud of what makes them “different” and are not scared to say so even in the face of willful misinterpretation of that national pride by other nations – most obviously Russia and its childish accusations that the Baltic states are basically run by a bunch of unreformed Nazis.
If the conference attendees were anything to go by, it's still not difficult to tell an Estonian from a Latvian. It has nothing to do with the Estonian belief that Latvians all have six toes or the Latvian belief that “Estonian” is a synonym for “slow.” You simply look at what sort of spectacles they wear: Estonians favor retro-chic heavy black frames while Latvians go for techish lightweight frameless goggles.
While Prime Ministers Ansip and Dombrovskis engaged in a little mutual back slapping at their press conference, there was another subliminal reminder of why Estonia and Latvia are “in it together” whether they like it or not. Through the window behind them, reporters were given a view of the back of the US Embassy, from which cables originating in both Tallinn and Riga had recently reached the world via Wikileaks.
The third Baltic state – Lithuania – was absent in body but not in spirit. The recent collapse of Lithuania's latest attempt to find someone willing to build it a nuclear power station arose, with Ansip commenting that it was “a bit disappointing” and reminding everyone that Estonia still has plenty of oil shale plus a putative plan to build a mini-nuke plant of its own.
“In Estonia we have enough oil shale for the next 35 to 40 years but we don't know what will happen with CO2 emission quotas in future and how much we will have to pay, so it's reasonable to diversify our energy production portfolio. This is the reason we would like to participate in the Lithuanian nuclear power plant project. We would like to cover 300-500 megawatts from our energy needs with nuclear energy,” he said.
The two prime ministers also commented on the fact that Lithuania is now expressing interest in precisely the sort of bilateral cooperation format that was being seen in action. Dombrovskis described the process as “an experience which is coming from north to south,” with Finnish-Estonian cooperation leading to Estonian-Latvian cooperation and then Latvian-Lithuanian cooperation.
Yet despite the overflowing goodwill from both sides, there are still issues upon which Estonia and Latvia will never see eye to eye. The crucial subject of which nation has the right to be called the birthplace of the Christmas tree was broached repeatedly. Latvian MP Ojars Kalnins at one point attempted a diplomatic approach by suggesting both sides agreed that Livonia was the home of the Christmas tree.
Before you could say “Jingle Bells,” Andrus Ansip snapped back: “Tallinn is not in Livonia.” That in turn sparked a debate about the shifting borders of the Livonian state in medieval times. But perhaps even that shows a degree of Baltic unity: after all there's nothing Estonians and Latvians like more than to endlessly debate history.