Luik: My name is Jüri Luik. I'm essentially, at the moment, Director of the Estonian defence research facility, International Centre for Defence and Security. But most of my life I've been a diplomat and a politician. And I've been an ambassador of Estonia, to the United States NATO and Russia. Russia was my last posting, so I came from Russia in 2015. And now I've entered the academic world.

Shirrefs: And you glossed over the fact of being a politician you were in fact defence minister twice, foreign minister once. And you were in those positions through very difficult, quite turbulent times for Estonian independence. Just in a very sort of shorthand, tell me how significant those roles were at those times?

Luik: Well, those were, of course, much more dynamic times. At the moment we are living, although the world around us is turbulent, Estonia itself is a very quiet, stable, Nordic place. But at that time, of course, we just liberated ourselves from the Soviet Union and started to restore our independence. And obviously, both in political, economic, security wise, we had major problems and major complications. And so we had a very young team at the time.

Shirrefs: And you were young.

Luik: I was young, my prime minister was 32, and I was below 30 when I became minister for the first time. But it has its benefits, because there was no manual, at that time, what to do. Nobody had, as our former president said, nobody yet made an egg from scrambled eggs. That's essentially what we had to do, because the Soviet occupation obviously destroyed, both our economy, the tradition of political independence was 50 years old, or 50 years ago. And also, in psychological mental terms, occupation is a major burden, sometimes underestimated what the importance of that is. So this was quite a complicated time in the life of our republic, but it was also complicated because, for Russia, the independence of the Baltic states came as a total shock. And it also came as a shock to that that our independence, the policy of our independence, was very much based on the European democratic values. We wanted to get to Europe. We didn't want to remain somewhere floating in the grey zone, between Russia and the West. That's probably something they imagined should happen. That's why, when I started to lead the Estonian delegation in the negotiations with Russia on the withdrawal of Russian troops, it proved to be extremely difficult to actually get them out, because they didn't see that as part of what our independence is all about.

Shirrefs: So it was a very new idea for Estonia, but it was also happening elsewhere. I mean this was unfolding across the whole of the east of Europe. And you had to reimagine what it was to be a Estonian, what it was to be independent. I mean it was a peaceful independence, for the most part, you had some scuffles, but it was very peaceful transition. Was there a benefit in not having the burden and the baggage of old systems, that you knew you didn't want the Russian system, therefore everything was possible?

Luik: Yeah, I mean, if you compare us to, let's say Ukraine, then we had the benefit that 50 years ago, at that point 50 years ago, we have had our own state for 20 years. So there was a whole generation around then, in 1991, most of them have gone now, but they were alive then, who still remembered the Old Republic and who still remembered what independence was all about. They were intellectuals, like writers, artists, journalists, who represented this older generation, these kind of grandfathers. So, there was something to stand on, while for countries like Ukraine, who really became independent, in 1991, literally for the first time in their life, it was much more complicated and, it's fair to say, probably still is. So, in that sense, we were in a beneficial situation. It also helped, and people again sometimes underestimate it, that although we were submerged to the Soviet Union when we became annexed, then there was still, because of the Western nonrecognition policy, the West never recognised the illegal annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, it somewhat, sort of, also made the Soviets to pause. So there was, I would say, a bit more freedom. It's a very relative term of course, freedom in the Baltic states to organise our own ... I don't know ... cultural life, to use our national language, stuff like that. It was always said that the Baltics are the Soviet west. So it was more open to foreigners, for instance, than ... I don't know ... Kazakhstan or a place like that. So there were a lot of international visits of, mainly artists, but also ordinary tourists. And of course the closeness with Finland was also very important for Estonia, because the Finnish TV, which was an enormous asset because it was visible, at least here in Tallinn, and Soviets were not able to scramble it, because they would have then scrambled their own stations ... I mean the Finnish stations. And so, this was an enormous benefit. Our former foreign minister and President, Lennart Meri, he once said that Estonians were the only nation in the Soviet Union who knew that Lech Wałesa had a moustache. And it's an important point because, although Lech Wałesa was described as a demon in Soviet newspapers, in Pravda and Izvestia, he was actually never shown, he was never humanised as a person. His face was never ever shown. So we saw it because we saw it from the Finnish TV. So that's a vignette, but I think an interesting one. So that's how it was.

Shirrefs: It's one of those beautifully restrained and deeply loaded lines that says a lot. I interviewed Danilo Turk, the former Slovenian President, and in a different way, as you said about Ukraine that it never experienced independence, neither had Slovenia. And I remember him saying that Slovenians knew who they were through all of that because they had their books and their music. And that's how they held onto their identity. Estonia and the other Baltic states achieved independence through the Singing Revolution, which says an awful lot about the sort of personality of this group of countries. To what extent did that determine the future? I mean, it sounds trite, but it is very much a region and a country tied up in its culture.

Luik: Oh absolutely, and the culture has been, for a small nation like Estonians, has been the basis of our identity. We are not huge war heroes. Because of our size, we have been unable to win major battles. So our monuments, so to say, are to writers and painters. And I think it was very important that the first politicians who came to power after the restoration of Independence, were historians who were artists, they were, broadly taken, humanitarians. And while it was very different in some other countries where power was given to technocrats because they, quote unquote, knew how the system works or something like that. But in our case the president the prime ministers were both historians, not only by training, but also by sort of invocation, by sort of virtue of actually writing books and doing dissertations and research. And this was important, because they were able to explain to their own people what had happened with them, and what are the historic precedences or circumstances or risks. This is something which, unfortunately, has never happened in Russia for instance I am of the mind that there is no basis that Russian people are somehow genetically unable to be democrats. But the problem is that even the democrats who were in power in 1990, 91, 92, 93 ... I mean Boris Yeltsin was a former Communist party apparatchik. So he, although having good intentions I think in most part, had no ability to explain to his own people what had happened to Russia. I mean, why was Soviet Union called it an evil empire by Reagan. Or why was KGB sort of an extremely dark and negative force. In fact KGB was never disbanded, because in a way, people like Yeltsin themselves didn't understand some of the challenges of such bodies. And if you don't create that intellectual atmosphere, then you get a situation whereby a young, enthusiastic KGB colonel comes, and becomes popular, not only regardless of that he has been a KGB operator, but even, I would say, thanks to it ... kind of being a heroic intelligence officer. So the kind of intellectual state of mind of nations who undergo these reforms, turbulent reforms, is, I think, of major importance and often underestimated. People look very much at the market forces and, you know, financial stability, and how the legislation, the civilian civil law has been, kind of, put together, and this is all very important stuff as well. But if the nation is mentally not ready for self-governing, then the rest of the stuff is almost of no importance.

Shirrefs: I mean you bring up two things there. You bring up the idea of a population that is happy to abrogate that responsibility to someone else. And in the current state it's Vladimir Putin. But you're also talking about two very different personalities between Yeltsin and Putin. Now Yeltsin was in power at a time when there was unrest here in Estonia, there was a in 2006 was it, there was a reaction from the Russian minority over the removal of a bronze memorial.

Luik: ... 2007.

Shirrefs: And that could very easily have become something more, and it could have become something far more if Moscow decided to capitalise on that. Yeltsin had no appetite for that. He was trying to court stability, he was trying to court something with the West and perhaps, as you say, he didn't fully understand what was happening. Talk about what we have now with with Putin, because Putin does seem to grasp the entire mechanism of Russia. And he seems to be using that to test edges, test borders. And we know that borders exist only if everyone believes they should exist. They are an object of consensus, and the moment one person stops believing in it they vanish. So is that what's going on at the moment?

Luik: At first sort of regarding the 2007, I mean this was already Putin's time, and Putin actually tried to use it to stir up trouble, but it was actually a very limited, sort of, one time protest, which very quickly faded, because the famous statue over which the commotion was all about—statue to the fallen soldier and obviously the role of Soviet soldiers is very differentially interpreted by different people in Estonia—the monument is still there, it's simply not in the middle of the town, but it's in the military cemetery where I would say it belongs. So this situation was a kind of moment of flare-up tensions and didn't have much relevance. I think the situation was much more unstable in 1990s, and there it is very important that really Yeltsin abhorred this kind of stuff, and was not ready to use or try to use any of these subversive measures, which are now unfortunately so much in the arsenal of Kremlin today. But Estonia, as a country today, is much more resistant. I mean it's a stable country, it's part of the European Union, part of NATO, we have Euro. And also it's important that the integration of the Russian community has been developing in a very sort of reasonable and stable way. We have government ministers who are now Russians, the leader of one of biggest parties the Social Democratic Party, Mr Ossinovski, he's an ethnically Russian. So Russians have come to the fore also into political, and they have been for a long time in the economic life, but also in the political life. And I think this is all very positive, because this all sort of firms the stability and the well-being of all people who live in our country. When it comes to Russia, then, as you say, I mean since nobody explained the risks and problems to the Russian nation, and since they don't have the real heritage or the real historical background for independence, other than being an empire, never developed itself as a nation state, with its own mentality, with its own philosophy, what does it mean to be a Russian. I mean being a Russian is often tied by Russians to this statehood, to the empire, to governing not only yourself but also all other nations, kind of being ... having this kind of historic mission, which they see themselves as sort of through flag carriers. And that is something which which has never been questioned, and many leaders, and especially now Putin actually capitalises on it. He doesn't want to explain, he doesn't want to analyse it. He just uses it to forward his own political benefit, to play on really the darkest instincts which the nations have, if nobody addresses them. And of course he has done it superbly, and has benefited greatly the whole great power ideology, the kind of militaristic approach he has brought back from the Soviet times. And having this awkward philosophy which is a mix of Soviet, plus czarist empire, which he's then the Czar/General Secretary, has worked so far. But of course, as we see now, with for instance this Sunday with large demonstrations in many, many Russian cities, at some point creates problems because this Putinist system creates instability. But it economically creates stagnation and, if the economy doesn't develop, if oil prices are low and if there are Western sanctions, vis-à-vie Russia, then of course the living standards will drop, and if they drop people become angry and annoyed. And if you add to this mix the fact that there is a lot of very high-level corruption, this can actually at some point become a very explosive mix, as we saw in Ukraine. I mean the thing which brought down Yanukovych was not so much the fact that he didn't sign the EU Association Treaty, I mean this was a trigger, but it was the enormous corruption which was visible to everybody, which, especially when you have a poor country like Ukraine, was simply a source of enormous annoyance to virtually everybody. So, that's how it works. So, who knows how long the system with last in Russia.

Shirrefs: Just on the subject of corruption as a, sort of, a corrosive force, I remember when I was here in 2010 a lot of things were said to me at that time, you know, and I was in Australian in Estonia trying to figure out what being here meant, what this meant geographically, what it mean politically, what it meant socially. And I remember at the time people said Estonians had always looked to the West, always looked to Europe, even through the whole of Soviet times, there was never any sense that they were part of that. But at the same time people said to me, at that time, a bit over six years ago there was still a sort of a trailing effect of post-Soviet corruption or cronyism in the country which did sort of leak to the surface occasionally. What I've seen since then, and one of the things that has brought a real smile to my face, was watching the sort of development of e-Estonia, the sort of e-Residency, e-Governance, a sort of an idea of a global system that transcends that idea of national boundaries. And somebody was saying to me, one of the real benefits of that has been transparency, and a way of really tackling that corruption at a political level, at a business level. Is that one of the sort of really useful benefits of elevating Estonia in that technological way?

Luik: It is, and it has a number of benefits. Obviously there is simply a fact which should be considered, Estonia is a very small nation, but as a nation with its own state, we have to keep up the whole apparatus of the state, and pay for it by our own taxpayers. Having your own state is very expensive stuff. And now we've been greatly helped by the fact that the e-Government, which essentially means that every person has to and can relate to the state, fulfil documents, get information through the Internet, essentially, starting from paying taxes, sending all kinds of letters to the state authorities, getting letters, getting information. It all goes via computers. You don't have to go anywhere. You don't have to queue anywhere. And of course the state doesn't have to employ so many people, because this is all digitalised, standardised. And basically it's, to put it crudely, it's done by the machines.

Shirrefs: I mean this is only possible because Estonia did something that very few other countries have done which was future-proof itself technologically. I mean it built an infrastructure that was astounding.

Luik: Exactly. It actually needs a very resilient and sophisticated infrastructure. Also cyber infrastructure because, if you have hundreds and thousands of people wanting to get access to the tax system, at one time, then what the computers usually do, they just crash. But if you have relevant systems, if you have relevant encryption systems, and if you have relevant, which is very important, identification systems. Because usually the problem, with relating to state, is that if you want to send them a document they want your signature. And that's kind of ... you have to go and give a signature or send a letter with a signature. But in Estonia you can give, what we call, kind of e-signature. You have a special card, which is your identity card and you can use it to sign a paper digitally. And this is very useful stuff. But when it comes to corruption, then it is also a very important tool, because how corruption usually works is obviously through dirty money. I mean, basically, somebody pays to somebody illegal, so it's illegal money. And in Estonia basically everything you do has a kind of cyber trail—whatever an official does, whatever decisions are made, how the decision is made, how the money moves—this is all visible in sort of digital print. And if somebody wants to, I don't know, a police force, somebody wants to look at it, it's very easy really, literally very easy. Or even in everyday terms, the computers basically control how the interactions go, so they can immediately signal that there is a problem somewhere etc, etc. So it's very useful. Of course it doesn't bring corruption down to zero, never does. Corrupt people are very inventive. No, but it clearly makes it much much more difficult to hide. But also, and I think this is a very important part of fighting against corruption, again something which is very much underestimated in many post-Soviet, is that you have to minimise the number of gateways where you can actually collect corruption money. Meaning that you don't have to have so many licences, permits, agreements of all kinds, because whenever you need a document, whenever you need a permit, there is a risk that somebody asks money for it. But if you don't have that kind of very complicated, bureaucratic red-tape system, then it's also, there are less opportunities if you will, to actually be corrupt. So I think fighting corruption is a multifaceted issue. It's, of course it's the juridical, judicial, police etc. issue, but it's also an issue of trying to build a state which essentially doesn't encourage corruption in any way.

Shirrefs: So I mean it's very much about inventing and conjuring up an image of yourself as a country, within a particular context. So, it's partly distancing yourself from a past that was very much, in Soviet times was very much mired in that idea of cronyism and corruption. So, in context of Europe, at a time when Europe is being tested, it's pretty unambiguous that Estonia believes in the idea of Europe. Europe is important, partly for self-preservation, partly for sort of a cultural identity. How important is it that Estonia is trying to sort of set benchmarks for the rest of Europe, because a lot of Europe is in a state of torpor. Europe is losing its way somewhat.

Luik: Well, we have always said that what we do is primarily for ourselves. I mean, we are not in the business of showing off or trying to be a benchmark of any kind. Obviously the main target is to improve the life of our own people. And you can compare Estonia to a small start-up, because we have such a small population, and we have a lot of benefits, when it comes to you know proximity to the Nordic countries etc, etc. And this allows us to sort of flexibly use these opportunities, at the same time trying to set a high bar for being honest and non-corrupt etc, etc. But the fact is that some of the tools, which we have used inside our country, have been later sort of used in other EU countries. The whole electronic applications stuff is now more and more popular. Other countries computerised their state services. And obviously there are countries in southern Europe, in many parts of Europe where corruption is for instance an endemic issue, so perhaps our systems are some benefit there. And obviously, one important aspect which we pride ourselves, although we try not to boast about it, is really trying to fulfil the criteria's of all these clubs we are members of. I mean we assume that if we become a member of the European Union, or we become a member of Euro for instance, the monetary system, we have to fulfil the criteria's by the book, because if we don't, then the whole exercise becomes pointless. It is especially important in the monetary union because the Euro is a social experiment. There is nothing like that anywhere else. So if countries are not responsible they put the whole system under great strain. We have seen it now, for instance with Greece. Also in other organisations like NATO. I mean NATO's aim is to have 2% of GDP used for defence, now Estonia is one of the five countries who fulfils that benchmark. And we believe it is very important that, once you have entered the organisation, which mainly benefits you because, let's be honest, it's very beneficial for Estonia to have a country as an ally, who has ... I don't know ... whatever the US has ... everything, really in great numbers. Aircraft carriers, 10 aircraft carriers. So it's it's clear that Estonia benefits from it enormously. And we believe that everybody should pay its dues, as agreed.

Shirrefs: I mean this is really down to a question that sort of comes up in many fronts, and it came up a lot over the refugee issue, that a lot of the refugees coming through were asking the question of Europe about values. And European Union was set up on a set of values. I mean the first generation of European Union architects, it was unarguable that European Union was important, because the alternative was far worse. For the next generations, it's much harder to make that argument, because there is no visceral memory of why it came into being. So it relies very much on an agreed set of values. And certainly what was being asked of Europe with the refugees situation was 'Where are your values?'. And this extends to so much of what is happening at the moment. What you described Estonia doing is setting itself a standard. What you see with a lot of other countries is, they're trying to figure out how they can avoid that. So they're looking for the loopholes, and they're looking ... certainly I mea ... Brexit came about ... I lived in Britain for four years in the early nineties when the Maastricht treaty was being negotiated, and I watched that sort of cherry picking of, you know, what would be signed, what wouldn't be signed, what was in our interest, you know we don't like the social charter so we don't do that. That was sort of building cracks into the idea of the EU right at the very outset. So this sort of thing is, it's now coming to a critical point. It is about values, and the sort of coherence of the idea of European Union hangs on that. It's not just some sort of abstract notion.