Trump could become the Churchill of our times, says Estonian foreign minister during visit to SA

Estonia's foreign minister Minister Margus Tsahkna meets SA communications and digital technology minister Solly Malatsi. (Photo: Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

By Peter Fabricius

19 Nov 2024

Margus Tsahkna does not share the universal gloom about what Donald Trump will mean for Ukraine.

Donald Trump could become “the Churchill of our times” by saving Ukraine from Russia, says Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna.

There is widespread gloom in Europe that Trump will end US support for Ukraine in its desperate fight against Russia and force it to surrender its occupied land in exchange for peace. And there are also fears that Trump might pull out of or otherwise weaken Nato.

Tsahkna is more sanguine, noting that President Joe Biden will still be in office for two months, with indications that he would continue to give up to $6-billion of military support to Ukraine. And Biden has just lifted restrictions on Ukraine using long-range US missiles to fire into Russia in Kursk, the Russian region Ukraine invaded in August.

Tsahkna also believes it is too soon to write off Trump. He was defence minister when Trump was first elected in 2016 and he recalls the same misgivings about him then. But during the Trump administration “we got more troops on the ground, military support, financing support in Europe, in our region as well”.

“Now Estonia has Nato troops on the ground trained by [the] UK, US and France.

“So let’s see what he is going to do,” Tsahkna told Daily Maverick on his visit to South Africa last week.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Süddeutsche Zeitung that he had spoken to Trump at length about Ukraine in a call on 10 November and got “the impression that he has a more differentiated position than is often assumed here”.

Tsahkna implicitly agrees with Trump that Europe must do more to defend itself, as Estonia has. It is now spending 3.2% of GDP on defence, well beyond the Nato-prescribed minimum of 2%. And generally Europe is spending more on defence after the wake-up call of Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. “But we need to do more and it is obvious.”

Even so, “without [the] US the situation will be really, really, really critical”.

Trump US president-elect Donald Trump speaks at a House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill in Washington on 13 November 2024. (Photo: Allison Robbert-Pool / Getty Images)

Echoes of Hitler

Tsahkna believes Europe’s clock has turned back to 1938, with Putin threatening the continent and the world, as Hitler did then. That year, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously went to Munich to sign an agreement with Hitler and returned proclaiming “peace for our time”. Britain, France and Italy had traded Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland for Hitler’s promise not to occupy any further territory. Within months Hitler reneged by invading the rest of Czechoslovakia and Poland, triggering World War 2.

Read more: War in Ukraine

Read more: Ukraine Crisis Archives

Tsahkna suggests that the world is now about to appease Putin in the same way by doing a deal with him that allows him to keep the 20% of Ukraine he has occupied in exchange for no further incursions into Ukraine or beyond.

But Putin is not interested in peace treaties and the only diplomacy he understands is that which is backed up by military force, he says. And he believes the role British Prime Minister Winston Churchill played in 1939 by confronting Hitler militarily now falls to the US as the world’s superpower.

So, “Trump has now the opportunity to become the Churchill of our times”.

Ukraine must be offered membership of Nato to secure peace in Europe. That would deter future Russian aggression against Ukraine but would also considerably strengthen Nato by adding an ally with about one million battle-hardened soldiers under arms.

Path to Nato

Tsahkna acknowledges it would be difficult to admit Ukraine to Nato while it is still fighting Russia. However, he says Volodymyr Zelensky’s “victory plan” does not call for full Nato membership for Ukraine right now but for a formal invitation from Nato to join “to give the clear message that Ukraine will be in Nato”.

And importantly, he says, the plan calls on Nato countries to lift their restrictions on Ukraine using their long-range missiles to attack Russia in its own territory “and especially now when North Korea is in Russia and fighting in Kursk and we know where they are located”.

Tsahkna was speaking just days before news emerged that Biden had lifted his restrictions on Ukraine using US ATACMS missiles which have a range of about 305km. The New York Times quoted US officials as saying Biden had specifically authorised Ukraine to use the ATACMS to defend itself against an expected large offensive of Russian and about 10,000 North Korean troops against Ukrainian troops occupying parts of Russia’s Kursk region in August. But some other Nato countries still forbid Ukraine from using their longer-range missiles.

Tsahkna believes Estonia is well positioned to grasp the threat posed by Putin since it is on the frontline with Russia of both Nato and the European Union and had been warning of Russia’s aggressive intentions for more than 20 years before Putin launched the 24 February 2022 invasion.

He says Russia is already launching cyberattacks against Nato countries “24-7”, as well as frequent hybrid attacks. Estonia arrested more than 10 people in 2023 who were funded and coordinated by Russian secret services to attack Baltic assets. In one instance, the personal car of the Estonian interior minister had been destroyed.

And he says Russia is also manipulating elections in countries such as Georgia and Moldova, and fighting proxy wars in Africa (through the state-sponsored Wagner mercenary group now renamed as Africa Corps and taking orders directly from the Kremlin).

Estonia’s foreign minister minister, Margus Tsahkna, meets Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi. (Photo: Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Enduring Russian threat

Estonia also knows Russia well because it was occupied by the Soviet Union for 50 years [until 1990] when, he says, it lost about one-fifth of its population to killings and deportations and flight into exile. It now has a population of just 1.3 million. “And we are sure that Russia will remain a threat for Europe.” Which is why he says Estonia does not believe, as some do, in a grey zone of neutral countries around Russia.

“To be neutral close to Russia and also to not be guaranteed by Nato, it’s like the green light for Putin to enter.”

Estonia is instead helping build a stronger defence and security architecture for Europe and is very happy that Sweden – ending 300 years of neutrality – and Finland have just joined Nato, “which is the only security guarantee in our region”. That had made the Baltic Sea “Nato’s lake”.

Tsahkna says one of the reasons he was visiting South Africa – the first Estonian foreign minister to do so – after also visiting Argentina, Chile and Columbia was to warn these countries that democracies are under threat everywhere, not only by Russia but also in the Middle East. There, for example, Iran is “more active than ever before and has already twice launched attacks against Israel and nothing has happened”.

“With Argentina, Estonia is leading the President Zelensky 10-point peace plan, point number five. And this is about territorial integrity and the United Nations charter. This is like the core of any peace plan” since it is about respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other nations. This should concern the whole world and not just Europe.

And yet the UN Security Council cannot deal with Russia’s war against Ukraine because Russia is a permanent member with a veto, he notes.

‘Common understandings’

In some ways, Estonia, with its deep, historic mistrust of Russia, and South Africa, which has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in part because of historic ties with the Soviet Union, are at opposite ends of the global spectrum.

Despite these differences, though, “we have some very common understandings as well”, Tsahkna says. One was that both countries were trying to find the 20,000-plus Ukrainian children Russia abducted and deported, and return them to their families.

Tsahkna says he and International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola discussed the two countries cooperating on this. Estonia was “more than ready to share our intelligence and information” to help South Africa, and believed that, in some cases, a country not so close to the conflict in some ways might have a better chance of mediating.

“Finally we are sharing the same values and the same understandings about territorial integrity, about the United Nations Charter (which demands respect for national sovereignty), about the United Nations Security Council reforms, and many other things.”

These are values shared by all democracies, he adds. He says he discussed all these issues with Lamola.

“Also we have a common understanding about the Middle East, about the two-state solution. Estonia has clearly voted in favour during the last two resolutions on Palestine in the United Nations.

“So we have taken very clear position about the international law,” Tsahkna adds, saying that Estonia supports South Africa’s referral of Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for alleged genocide in Gaza as well as the indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israel.

Read more: What Trump’s victory means for you, the world and SA — seven takes from Daily Maverick writers

Tsahkna was also in South Africa to attend the Africa Tech Festival and to discuss digital cooperation with communication and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi. He said Estonia was one of the most digitalised countries in the world, including in the public sector, “and the South African Republic has plans as well to digitalise the public sector more”.

He said Malatsi was also interested in Estonia’s plans to personalise digitalised public services. South Africa would be chairing the G20 summit next year and Estonia would participate in the meeting to discuss digitalisation.

Tsahkna also brought a delegation of Estonian businesses with him to South Africa, mainly in the field of IT and particularly fibre defence security. Estonia regarded South Africa as the gateway to the region for Estonian business.

Tsahkna also officially reopened Estonia’s honorary consulate in Cape Town, which had been opened in 1933 while another one had been opened in Johannesburg in 1937. Both were closed after the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940. DM

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Politics

Echoes of Hitler

Path to Nato

Enduring Russian threat

‘Common understandings’