Lennart Meri Conference to focus on security and liberties
The eighth annual Lennart Meri Conference (LMC) will be held on April 24-26 in Tallinn. Entitled “The Limits of Order”, LMC 2015 will focus on the stark challenges to the current international order.
“The global order is currently being challenged on an unprecedented scale - including within Europe. Many if not all of the fundamental principles of the international system, together with liberal democratic values, are being abused, eroded, or outright obliterated by a range of revisionist, cynical and aggressive actors. They exploit the West's complacency, disunity, and unwillingness to act more robustly in defense of those principles and values, employing a mix of methods and strategies that leave Western institutions, governments, and societies exposed, confounded, and off-balance,” the organizers behind the conference said in a statement, introducing the topics for this year's event.
LMC was founded in 2007, in memory of Estonian President Lennart Meri (1929-2006). Conceived as a new forum to discuss Europe’s burning issues and problems, the conference intends to carry forward Meri’s legacy and to ensure that Estonia continues to be seen as a country willing and able to play a proper part in finding new solutions and opportunities. Over the years it has focused on key global foreign and security policy issues, on the future of capitalism, energy security, transatlantic relations, Eastern partnership, the future of NATO, and cyber security.
This year's conference will not pass by without discussing the global security concerns. Russia's international behavior and the efforts by the West to counter it; strategic dilemmas facing the Eastern Partnership countries; emerging security dynamics in the North Atlantic area; political challenges to the European integration project; continuing turbulence in the Middle East and other topical issues will be explored during LMC’s plenary and breakout sessions.
LMC will bring to Tallinn many high-ranking foreign dignitaries, such as Radosław Sikorski, Speaker of the Polish Parliament, Steven Erlanger, London Bureau Chief of The New York Times, Frederick Hodges, Commander of the US Army in Europe, Vladimir Milov, head of the Russia's Institute of Energy Policy, Edward Lucas, editor at The Economist and Senior Vice-President, Center for European Policy Analysis, Ian Bond, Director of Foreign Policy, Center for European Reform, and many others. Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas and Defense Minister Sven Mikser will also participate in some panel discussions.
Lennart Meri was Estonia's President from 1992-2001.
Editor: S. Tambur