The Latest Estonian-Russian “Border Scare” Is An Example Of “Reflexive Control”

Russia creatively employed “reflexive control” to troll Estonia by placing its officials in a zero-sum dilemma whereby whichever response they’d resort to would advance Russia’s soft power interests.

Estonia’s temporary closure of a road through the Russian-controlled “Saatse Boot” after around 10 Russian troops were spotted standing in the middle of it prompted another round of hysteria. Some connected it to last month’s alleged maritime airspace violation to speculate that “Russia has entered ‘Phase Zero’ — the informational and psychological condition setting phase — of its campaign to prepare for a possible NATO-Russia war in the future.” That’s arguably not the case as will now be explained.

The “Saatse Boot” is a legacy of the Soviet era from when Russia and Estonia were part of the USSR. Moscow never foresaw that this sliver of territory would one day connect two rural parts of a hostile military bloc, NATO, when delineating the border between these then-Soviet Republics. The road that passes through it, along which non-Russians (including tourists) are allowed to transit but not stop, was never significant to begin with and is even less so in recent years after an alternative was built.

This geopolitical-logistical oddity is therefore capable of easily attracting outsized attention, ergo the likely reason why Russia reportedly decided to order some troops to stand in the middle of it recently, not to saber-rattle against NATO but to troll Estonia. That country is one of the loudest anti-Russian voices in NATO and the EU, which are complementary US-controlled organizations at this point, and its regular harangues against Russia have fueled both blocs’ increasingly aggressive actions as of late.

Seeing as how neither of the aforesaid trends is expected to abate, thus leading to the prediction that NATO-Russian tensions will persist with varying degrees of seriousness (whether in general, as regards the Baltic region, or specifically centered on Estonia), Russia might have thought to make the best of it. Symbolically reaffirming its sovereignty over the “Saatse Boot” with “little green men” could have been meant to unsettle Estonians since it would remind them of the Crimean Operation with all that entailed.

For that to happen, local and international media would have to inadvertently play their part in sowing panic among the population, which contextualizes Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna’s tweet downplaying the situation. His response is still a soft power victory of sorts for Russia, however, since it represents a successful example of so-called “reflexive control” whereby Moscow was able to manipulate him into doing something that advances its own interests without him even realizing it.

To elaborate, he could either go along with the anticipated media hype at the cost of sowing panic or downplay the incident at the cost of people questioning his recent fearmongering about Russia’s alleged maritime airspace violation, thus placing him in a dilemma. He ultimately calculated that the latter was the least bad option, perhaps believing that the potentially resultant confusion and possibly associated demoralization would be more comparatively manageable than widespread panic, which makes sense.

In any case, no “border scare” objectively exists seeing as how the latest incident took place entirely within Russian territory and concerned only a handful of troops, which in no way suggests “preparations for a possible NATO-Russia war in the future” like some speculated. All that arguably happened was that Russia creatively employed “reflexive control” to troll Estonia by placing its officials in a zero-sum dilemma whereby whichever response they’d resort to would advance Russia’s soft power interests.