The frontline of NATO is the key to security

Lee Jae-seung
The author is a professor of international studies at Korea University and head of the Ilmin International Relations Institute.

The “fault zones” in geology exist in geopolitics, too. Tension can build up in a volatile belt at any time. In Europe, a geopolitical fault line precipitously stretches from the three Baltic states to the south — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — to Finland in the north. The fault line is the easternmost front of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in defending Europe from Russia. Such a harsh fate — and challenges — befall the Korean Peninsula placed on the geopolitical fault line of Northeast Asia half a world apart.

As head of the Nordic-Benelux Center at Korea University, I visited the Baltic states last October with cooperation from their embassies in Seoul and our foreign ministry. The piercing wind blowing from the Baltic Sea in winter was strong enough to blow away the Unesco Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. As the roaring waves of the Gulf of Finland succinctly suggest, the security environment of the Baltic countries is very tough. With no rivers or mountain ranges separating them from Russia, they have a combined population of less than seven million — and a combined territory even smaller than the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. The three Baltic states also share their bitter history of disappearing from the map after Russia’s annexation and gaining independence later on.

The war in Ukraine is deja vu for the Baltic countries. If Russia turns its eyes to them again, they can hardly protect themselves on their own. However, their determination to defend their freedom and independence is unflinching. For them, alliance is a must, not a choice.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg answer questions from journalists after a meeting of defense ministers of NATO members at its headquarters in Brussel, Belgium, in October 2023. [AP/YONHAP]

The top priority for the Baltic states is security assurance. Despite having been under the influence of powers like Germany, Sweden and Russia in the past — and despite their long antipathy toward Germans in particular — their antagonism towards Germany abated during the Soviet era after it became clearer whom to partner with. Their security concerns from Russia brought them closer to Germany. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, finance ministers of the Baltic countries headed to Germany together at the time when Germany led Europe’s finance and industry.

But what the three Baltic states need most at the forefront of the geopolitical fault line is an alliance with the United States. They can ensure their national identity and economic security with the presence of U.S. forces in their country, if possible, rather than Germany whose military power does not meet its economic might and France whose words often speak louder than actions. The Baltic Sea — once surrounded by independent Sweden, NATO member countries and Russia — is turning into a NATO lake after Finland joined the league in 2023 and after Sweden applied for NATO membership that year. The only exception is Kaliningrad, a nuclear-armed Russian port city sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania in the Baltic Sea. The Russian territory signifies a lasting legacy of the Cold War.

During my visits to security-related agencies of the Baltic states two months ago, I asked them if they were still anxious about Russia. Surprisingly, they gave a firm answer. “As we are NATO members now, we will be all right. We won’t be like Ukraine. Never,” they said. Then they asked me, “What about South Korea? Is the extended deterrence reliable and the tripartite Korea-U.S.-Japan security cooperation solid?” Questions and answers went back and forth, which ended with a joint confirmation of the perennial axiom: United we stand, divided we fall.

The era of neutrality is receding in Europe. It was in the mid-1990s that the three Baltic states recognized the vulnerability of nonalignment. Strengthening its security posture after the Ukraine war, Finland ended its 75-year nonalignment to become a NATO member. Thanks to the country’s 1,340 kilometer (833 mile) border with Russia, NATO could further expand to the east. Sweden is just a few steps away from its NATO membership. Switzerland and Austria — still considered permanent neutral states under international law after the Cold War — nevertheless take the same position as the West in international affairs.

I wondered how Finland perceived its “balanced diplomacy” between the West and the East during the Cold War. In response, a Finnish security official tersely said, “Did you say ‘balanced diplomacy’? A weak country cannot afford it. What we did was diplomacy for our survival!” His answer was a bit straightforward. But that survival strategy did help strike a delicate security balance in the fault zone. Finland’s determination to safeguard its democratic political system is brazen enough to dare a battle against Goliath. The country with a 5.5 million population has the mightiest military and civilian defense power in Northern Europe.

“The collapse of the rule-based international order and the weakening of the West means a big crisis,” said former Latvian president Egils Levits. A former member of the European Court of Justice from 2004 to 2019, he has been serving as the special representative of Latvia in matters of international law and national responsibility since his retirement as the president last summer. The veteran politician and lawyer perceived the retrogression of geopolitics to “power politics” as a crisis. The first victims of a collapsing international order are weak countries placed in geopolitical fault zones. Values and principles are not the exclusive property of strong countries. Rather, they are a means weak countries need more desperately to survive.

Many security experts I met at the 2023 NATO Summit in Lithuania expressed a keen sense of crisis about the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House. If America sticks with the isolationist path — and if a self-survival-based international order unfolds as a result — Europe and NATO will lose their unity, while Russia and China will certainly augment their influence by exploiting the fracture.

After normalizing relations with Taiwan and severing ties with China in 2021, Lithuania has been suffering colossal retaliation from China. Regardless of its low economic reliance on the Baltic state, China hampers nearly all aspects of the country’s global business. And yet, Lithuania still stands on the front line of battling against China by refusing to accept the country as a partner after China sided with Russia in the Ukraine war. If the United States and the West shake, it will certainly push Lithuania to a corner further. South Korea and Japan are no exception. Who will pose a bigger security threat to the 2024 Eurasian geopolitics — Putin or Trump? A bitter question lingers.

South Korea has an economy much bigger than the Baltic states or Finland. It can play a bigger role in international society than them, economically and militarily. But the geopolitical challenges the country faces from China, Russia and North Korea are not that different from the ones the Baltic countries confront. Policy decision-makers and experts we met in the Baltic states said with one voice, “We want more dialogue with South Korea. We have many agendas to share.” They have much interest in Korea’s defense industry, too. Korea needs to pay more attention to multilateral security networks like the Baltic Security Conference or the Riga Conference than before. Japan is already deeply involved in the conferences.

The Ukraine war awakened Korea to the new military and economic security paradigm. A new international order being shaped through the ongoing multiple conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Northeast Asia — and through a complex blend of geopolitics, geoeconomics and technology competition — suggests that crises are linked to one another, not being confined to a certain region. In the international order in which uncertainties spread fast, the last thing to do is to rely on your counterpart’s goodwill and your optimistic forecasts. Sad history is easily repeated and wishful thinking can’t be realized. That’s the fate of geopolitics.

The era of nonalignment is coming to an end. We must bolster our negotiating power by building bilateral and multilateral relations while further consolidating our alliance with the United States. At the same time, we must proactively participate in shaping new rules for global security. Only then can we draw international support for our solutions on the Korean Peninsula issues. While watching Korea from the Baltic countries on the frontline of NATO’s defense against Russia, our delegation reached the conclusion that South Korea must become a global security player with a broader perspective if it really wants to survive its treacherous geopolitical terrain. The time has come.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.