American troop rotations in Estonia are set to return to full strength, The Defense Post reported on September 25, with a new US military unit due in the country in November after a pause in the deployment cycle. The US Army’s 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment finished its rotation earlier this year, and the follow-on unit was held up while Washington reviewed its force posture in Europe. Only a smaller American contingent stayed on at Camp Reedo in the south of the country; the November arrival, whose size Estonia’s Defense Ministry did not disclose, is expected to bring the rotational presence back to roughly its earlier level.
The standoff over rotations matters so much to Tallinn because NATO membership is the cornerstone of Estonian security, and a hard-won one. A reference history of the country traces full independence restored on 20 August 1991, at the close of the “Singing Revolution” against Soviet rule, with accession to NATO and the European Union following in 2004. Estonia then turned its own bad experience with cyberattacks into institutional weight: NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, based in Tallinn, grew out of a concept Estonia proposed to the alliance in 2004, straight after joining. The politically motivated cyberattacks of 2007, in the centre’s own account, acted as a wake-up call, and it was formally established on 14 May 2008 by Estonia together with Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain, winning accreditation that October. Its Tallinn Manual process on cyber conflict and international law began in 2009.
Tallinn has lobbied hard to keep the Americans in place. Margus Tsahkna, the foreign minister, told ERR, the Estonian public broadcaster, that his government had pressed Washington to keep US troops in the Baltic states and Poland, said Estonia would pay the costs of hosting allied troops if it came to that, and called the bond with Washington one built on trust. The country is putting real money behind its posture: 5.4 percent of gross domestic product goes to defense this year.
The urgency is regional. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said another American unit was heading to Lithuania, and in June Latvia’s intelligence service reported indications that Moscow might be readying some military “provocation” against the Baltic countries or Poland. Its assessment, as relayed in the report, was that Russia could try to pressure Kyiv’s supporters through limited actions, potentially using drones and missiles, and that such a move would also probe how the United States and its allies answer a threat aimed at smaller NATO members. For a state that spent five decades cut off from the West, that guarantee is not an abstraction.
Sources
- US to Resume Full Troop Rotations in Estonia
- Estonia keeps US troops. NATO strengthens the Baltic defence
