Highlights From The Inaugural Eastern Flank Summit

The “buffer zone” which Russia envisages creating “from the Arctic region through the Baltic and Black Seas” as part of the reformed European security architecture that it’s negotiating with the US will now be impossible to implement in full.

The leaders of the Baltic States, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria met in Helsinki last month for the inaugural Eastern Flank Summit, which produced a joint declaration that can be read here. They assessed that “Russia’s strategic goals remain unchanged: to create a buffer zone stretching from the Arctic region through the Baltic and Black Seas to the Mediterranean.” Accordingly, seeing as how this vast space overlaps with the Eastern Flank, their shared goal is to continue militarizing instead.

To that end, they support “Strengthening the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base” and welcome the new “Eastern Flank Watch” initiative, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for in September together with a complementary “European Drone Wall”. The Polish and Finnish Prime Ministers said during the summit that their states will jointly lead the Watch. This aligns with President Karol Nawrocki’s goal of Poland “building the strength of NATO’s Eastern Flank”.

He also declared during his inaugural address, which was when he shared the aforesaid goal, that “I dream that in the long term, the Bucharest Nine will become the Bucharest Eleven, together with the Scandinavian countries.” The Eastern Flank Summit brings Poland together with Finland and Sweden, NATO’s two newest members, and thus helps advance that goal of his too. Even though Tusk is his rival, they’re aligned on this vector of foreign policy, which demonstrates its bipartisan support in Poland.

Moving along, the Eastern Flank Watch is expected to complement the EU’s Black Sea Maritime Security Hub while the “Baltic Defense Line” and “East Shield” were welcomed, which have collectively been referred to as the “EU Defense Line” (EDL) in the past and are supposed to form the Watch’s flagship project. Although not mentioned in the joint statement, given Finland’s joint leadership of the Watch, it can be assumed that the EDL will expand along the Finnish-Russian border to the Norwegian tripoint.

The inaugural Eastern Flank Summit therefore demonstrated that the “buffer zone” which Russia envisages creating “from the Arctic region through the Baltic and Black Seas” as part of the reformed European security architecture that it’s negotiating with the US will now be impossible to implement in full. Its members will continue militarizing, plan to construct the EDL with “Drone Wall” capabilities built therein, and will work closely together per Poland’s vision with Finland as the Watch’s second leader.

From Russia’s perspective, the best that it can thus expect is for any hypothetical Non-Aggression Pact (NAP) with NATO to include the US pulling back from this vast space so that its members don’t feel emboldened to saber-rattle or worse, ideally also being told that the US wont’ back them up if they do. Moreover, any NAP or informal understanding with NATO would have to include Polish and Finnish parts due to their leading roles in the Watch, without which tensions might ultimately become unmanageable.

Given this development, which handicaps Russia and the US’ ability to reform the European security architecture for resolving the security dilemma at the heart of the continent’s current crisis, the Kremlin might now be less inclined to consider major compromises in Ukraine. After all, such compromises might have been considered worth it if they helped achieve this grand strategic goal, yet it’s now impossible to fulfill in full. This could consequently prolong the conflict unless something big changes.