Estonian foreign minister calls for more U.S. troops in Europe
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu has called for an increased U.S. military presence in Europe, stressing that a Ukrainian defeat in the war with Russia would result in “an existential threat to our statehood” and the European security architecture.
There were 300,000 U.S. troops on the continent in the closing period of the Cold War when Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union, but now, “despite the war going on, with additional U.S. units sent,” the U.S. military presence is three times smaller, Reinsalu said.
He said European countries need to “invest more into the military, into new weapon systems and capabilities,” but they “also need more U.S. military presence in Europe.”
With current sanctions not achieving their goal of pressuring Russia to “stop this aggression and leave the Ukrainian territory,” Reinsalu also stressed the need for the Group of Seven industrialized nations to step up sanctions against Moscow.
“The Estonian philosophy,” he said, is that “we will support a full trade embargo against Russia…including the energy source.”
Reinsalu additionally called on other countries to back an international tribunal to deliver a judgment on Russia’s “crime of aggression” against Ukraine, saying, “No people, no person in Europe can in the current context sleep overnight in peace” while Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in power.
The Estonian parliament in October adopted a statement declaring Russia a “terrorist regime.”
The Baltic state was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Recalling the history, Reinsalu said, “There is no Estonian who hasn’t imagined that this kind of attack could happen also against our country.”
Estonia belongs to both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, and Reinsalu expressed support for Ukraine joining the two organizations in the future.