Over 100 senior Western defense and foreign policy officials and experts gathered in Tallinn, Estonia May 12-14 to discuss the proxy war crisis in Ukraine.
Giving Sputnik an exclusive inside look at the event, academic Joseph Siracusa said that with few exceptions, decision makers expressed support for a further dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia.
The Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn wrapped up Sunday after three days of discussions on NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, maritime security, cyber threats, the push to continue the expansion of NATO and the EU, sanctions, and the threat of a nuclear war.
The conference featured multiple big names, including US European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli, David Cattler, NATO’s assistant secretary general for intelligence and security and former US Deputy Secretary of State.
European Council on Foreign Relations Co-Chairman Carl Bildt, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, French presidential advisor Xavier Chatel, and the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also attended the conference.
A keynote lecture was provided by former US National Security Council director and presidential advisor Fiona Hill, a prominent Russia hawk in the Trump administration.
The event was also attended by Dr. Joseph M. Siracusa, a renowned US professor of history and international diplomacy who serves as dean of Global Futures at Curtin University, and is the author of more than 30 books on diplomacy and international security.
Dr. Siracusa provided detailed impressions on the event, saying that from his vantage point, it consisted mostly of hard line anti-Russian types not in the mood for any sort of dialogue with Moscow or any desire to put a stop to the bleeding wound that is modern-day Ukraine.
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Russia is the total aggressor principle, and pouring gasoline on the conflict by cheer-leading its continuation and calling for an expansion of the hostile US military footprint in Eastern Europe.
They have intellectuals here from Oxford University, [Professor of European Studies] Timothy Ash, who is for retribution.
He said that Russia must be defeated, Putin must be taken down, and the Russian nation should be subjected to the same kind of treatment as Nazi Germany after World War Two ‘so that it could never conduct aggression again.
No one is interested in dialogue with Russia. No one is interested in a peaceful solution. They all endorse Zelensky’s 10-point ‘peace program,’ which includes the removal of Russian troops from Crimea and the Donbass, so the Kiev junta could continue the ethnic cleansing?
And of course, that is just a fantasy, that’s never going to happen. The academic agreed with Sputnik’s assessment of the Tallinn conference being a kind of preview of the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania scheduled for July 2023.
Unfortunately, there is unanimity of political support for NATO’s expansion, bringing in more American troops in this part of the world, and for bringing Ukraine in as a formal member after years of de facto, “invisible member” status.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point WW III News 2023.
The alliance’s attitude is very dangerous, Siracusa said, since the conflict in Ukraine started in the first place “because of the failure of the United States and the Russian Federation to have a serious discussion about the expansion of NATO.
It’s called ‘gaslighting’… a trait of (covert) narcissists and other dark triad types!
The Conference should be renamed, The Conference of Pensioners and non-Indicted War Criminals.
Tallinn Security Conference = Massive Insecurity Complex. p.s. The Turkish Missile Crisis preceded The Cuban Missile Crisis.