Estonian papers: World entering age of uncertainty with Trump
Estonia’s most important papers wrote in their Thursday editorials that Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections may not be a catastrophe for Estonia, but that a certain amount of insecurity was understandable.
The country’s largest newspaper by circulation, Postimees, wrote that Trump’s election wasn’t the end of the world. “This is a historic moment, as for the first time a candidate from outside the system wins, who has never held office, and has been in politics only as a financial contributor,” the paper wrote.
In Postimees’ assessment it is likely that Trump will take on a typically Republican foreign policy line, defending American interests abroad, and supporting its allies. The fact that the Republicans also took the Senate as well as the House of Representatives would help along, Postimees wrote.
Life would go on and the world wouldn’t collapse, just as life in Estonia would go on after the Reform Party left government, Õhtuleht wrote. The coming changes shouldn’t be underestimated, though it could be expected that the U.S. would be concentrating on domestic issues and pay less attention to the rest of the world, the paper opined.
With this in mind, Estonia needed to work to keep people from thinking of the country as a suburb of St. Petersburg, as Republican heavyweight Newt Gingrich referred to it a few months back.
Business paper Äripäev pointed out that though Trump’s election might come as a cold shower for some, it was important to keep cool. The world hadn’t ended.
“The president of the United States has a lot of power of course, but not even the president of the USA decides what happens in the world alone, and doesn’t operate in a vacuum where no voice matters and nobody sees them,” Äripäev wrote.
At the same time it was important what team Trump would assemble around him, and how much he would listen to them.
“Trump’s victory speech alone demonstrates that the election campaign is one thing, and the political reality another. The victory speech showed us a much more balanced and reasonable Trump than the unrestrained fumbler and offender we remember from the campaign,” the paper pointed out.
Daily Eesti Päevaleht found in its editorial that Trump, considering the statements he has made so far, gave Estonia reason to worry, as other than his predecessors he hadn’t made a clear statement promising defense support, but rather the opposite.
Estonia needed to come to terms with this age of uncertainty, Päevaleht wrote. “We haven’t lost our defense guarantees, but we have to take the possibility into account that the temptation for an enemy power to put things to the test has increased. The best cure for this is cooperation with other allies in NATO, national unity, and strengthening Estonia’s independent defense capability,” the paper wrote.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn