The current highly complex international situation has brought issues related to national security and safety to the forefront of politicians' and the public's attention. At the same time, we are experiencing a prolonged deterioration in the economic environment, raising issues of resource allocation at the national level. Which areas are directly related to the country's military defense capability and thus protected from budget cuts? What are the other areas where additional savings need to be found?

The aim of the following analysis is to provide an overview of the levels of national security and the various defense functions associated with them. The goal is to find a more suitable basis for making national-level decisions that are not primarily driven by political bargaining or stubbornness, where ministers lament the harsh blows of fate and demand proportional cuts across all areas of national life.

The highest level of ensuring national security can be defined by Estonia's position within the global security architecture, i.e., how we have identified our friends and enemies as a nation. Consequently, it depends on who considers us their friend and who does not. Every sovereign state inevitably makes such choices.

Our choice after regaining independence was unequivocal: we consider ourselves part of Western-Christian civilization and, as a result, strive to be as closely integrated as possible with the relevant structures of the Western world.

Immediately after regaining independence, our ability and readiness to integrate with the West were intensively and regularly attacked, attempting to create as poor an image of us as possible in the eyes of our Western partners. Our enemies quickly understood that integrating with the Western world would distance us from their reach and make it more challenging for them to reconquer us even if the international situation were to turn to their favor.

With the current reshaping and modernization of the global security architecture, it would be foolish for us to try to become friends with those who are culturally and ideologically distant from us and with whom establishing friendly relations is unrealistic given the current situation. It would be disastrous to simultaneously distance ourselves from our real friends and allies, for instance, by leaving economic and defense unions that bind us together.

Primarily, we are talking about the European Union and NATO, which are not fully formed structures but depend on the continued contributions of all participants. The former represents primarily soft power, while the latter provides direct military defense capabilities. Our membership in both is essential. We have undertaken commitments in these organizations and have tried to fulfill them as best we can, as there is no other way to survive independently on the border between two civilizations.

The goal is for us to be fully accepted as equals, not merely stowaways hoping for a free ride. We should not continuously demand more while contributing as little as possible. This bazaar-style bargaining does not fit the Western world at all, and countries that have taken this path will surely regret their choice in the future.

From this, the next level of ensuring security emerges, which involves loyalty to the values that the Western world prioritizes. These include the rule of law, separation of powers, freedom and the respect for human life and dignity. This commitment must be demonstrated not only in words but, more importantly, in actions.

This means that all institutions of our state must be built and function according to these aforementioned values. Additionally, various levels of infrastructure (e.g., railway track gauge, road network, electricity transmission network) must be decoupled from Russian infrastructure and adapted to meet Western standards. Economic dependence on a totalitarian military state in any form poses a direct and significant security threat.

The goal is for our social and economic environment to be clearly distinguishable now and in the future from what prevails on the other side of Lake Peipus. This distinction should be evident not only in the work of state institutions and the interaction between the state and its citizens but also in the straightforwardness or crookedness of street signs, the number of stray dogs and cats roaming the streets, or even the quantity and hygiene levels of public toilets. No one should have the slightest doubt about the orientation of our socio-economic environment.

Security-enforcing structures undoubtedly include services under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice, ranging from those forming the criminal and judicial systems to the rescue service and border guard.

The backbone of our nation lies in these services because it is precisely these daily activities that ensure the state's continuous internal security, both in peacetime and wartime conditions. They ensure that nearly every crime is followed by punishment, that order and predictability prevail in everyday life, that the state functions with reliable continuity and that the national border is securely protected.

It is important to note that, in general, internal security services fall under civilian structures rather than militarized ones, yet they are subordinated similarly to the military (e.g., border police).

In this respect, the Western world fundamentally differs from totalitarian military states, where the entire life of the country operates as if under military camp conditions, with meeting the needs of the military being an unquestionable priority. At the same time, we have relative freedom in the field of internal security to decide how to proceed, while being fully responsible for successfully repelling attacks directed at us.

At the pinnacle (or the end, if viewed through the symbol of the ouroboros describing comprehensive national defense) are the structures and institutions ensuring the military defense capability of the state. These range from the Defense Forces and the Defense League to allied units stationed here under the NATO treaty.

For these, we can unequivocally speak of strong force and strong security, ready to engage directly in military conflict with the enemy in the event of war. They then acquire a clearly prioritized status, because "if you do not want to feed your own army, sooner or later you will have to feed a foreign one."

Thus, we see that military combat capability is crucial, but it is only part of a comprehensive national security system.

Until recently, we often discussed broad-based national defense, which, particularly after 2022, has somehow died away. The central idea of broad-based national defense was to assign a defense role to as many services and agencies as possible. However, structural reorganizations sometimes resulted in the curtailment of certain services' defense roles.

An example of this is the Border Guard, which in 2010 was hurriedly incorporated into the Police and Border Guard Board, under the assumption that Estonia's and the European Union's eastern border with Russia – a Cold War-era adversary – would inevitably lose its significance.

This reform positioned the restructured border police against the FSB, as Russia's Border Guard Service remains part of its security service. Although the Maritime Surveillance Center, now part of the Navy, monitors Estonia's coastal radar images, similar monitoring on the eastern land border is planned. However, there are no means to utilize this information effectively. If the Ministry of the Interior faces budget cuts, the existing capabilities of the border guard are also jeopardized.

It is noteworthy that Estonia reduced its actual capacity to control border activities just before major crises began in our region. The 2014 Eston Kohver incident highlighted our inadequately developed eastern border, where it was impossible to pinpoint the incident location in the wild. This situation was resolved diplomatically, at the cost of concessions on our part, although we fortunately managed to bring our man home alive and well.

In 2014, Russia began its aggression against Ukraine by occupying Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Alongside military actions, Russia sent so-called humanitarian convoys into Ukrainian territory, disregarding Ukraine's wishes and international law. These Russian trucks were painted white, similar to UN humanitarian convoys, and had the Russian letters MS (mirotvorcheskiye sily, or peacekeeping forces) painted on them.

Since international organizations and Ukrainians lacked the capability to inspect the truckloads, it is fairly certain that these convoys also delivered weapons to the separatists. Even more interestingly, on their return journey, the trucks were loaded with equipment from factories and businesses, which were transported from Ukraine to Russia. This effectively destroyed the economies of the regions that were hoped to be increasingly tied to Russia.

In 2015-2016, Europe experienced an unprecedented migration crisis of biblical proportions, with up to two million unidentified individuals illegally entering various European countries. We now see a clear pattern in these incidents, as they targeted the vulnerable aspects of countries' social structures. For example, human traffickers shamelessly exploited the Western world's near-reverence for children's rights by coaching young men without documents to claim they were under 18 years old and thus in need of special treatment by authorities.

These incidents demonstrate a consistent strategy of exploiting weak points in the societal and legal structures of targeted countries.

It is essential to ask as honestly as possible and without rose-tinted glasses on: how does the enemy view us and the West in general?

Estonia's traditional enemy lies to the east, as that direction has consistently been the source of attacks over the centuries. War has only been in a non-active phase when the enemy has achieved its aims and occupied our territories.

Alongside direct military aggression, all levels of our state functioning have been regularly attacked. This includes attempts to sow discord among our friends or undermine state life through corruption, organized crime, money laundering or regular provocations at the state border. The range of possibilities is vast, even seemingly endless, and increasingly blurs the lines between soft and hard security measures.

Today, all of this falls under the concept of hybrid warfare, the main goal of which is to find weak points in our resistance where we either cannot or do not know how to respond adequately to an attack. The enemy attempts to gain an advantage without triggering a direct interstate military conflict. Figuratively speaking, boundaries are constantly tested to see how far one can go without provoking an adequate response proportional to the threat.

A recent example is the removal of boundary buoys on the Narva River at the Estonia-Russia border under the cover of night, effectively presenting Estonia with a fait accompli.

One can talk all they want about how our border guard monitored the situation continuously and how prudent it was not to react immediately to a deliberate violation of the state border. However, if we ask the reverse question about our border guard's real capability to respond more forcefully to such incidents, the answer is far from reassuring.

There is no doubt that the increased pressure on our eastern border in recent years forces the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) to review its current border guard and protection concept and capabilities to better meet the requirements of national defense in the era of hybrid wars. This allows us to view our national defense as an integrated system, where every part has an important role to play.

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