Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have spent decades warning that Russian aggression would not stop at Ukraine. This summer, with NATO’s eastern flank more militarised than at any point since the Cold War, those warnings have crystallised into a security architecture that defines Europe’s new strategic reality. The Baltic states are no longer asking to be taken seriously. They are leading.
A new normal on NATO’s edge
The trend is unmistakable. Over the past four years, NATO has shifted from a tripwire posture in the Baltics — small multinational battlegroups designed to signal commitment rather than provide meaningful defence — to something far more substantial. All three Baltic nations now host reinforced brigade-level formations numbering in the thousands of troops, with prepositioned heavy equipment and permanent command structures.
Germany commands the multinational brigade in Lithuania. The United Kingdom anchors the force in Estonia. Canada and France have deepened commitments in Latvia. This is not temporary rotation. It is a structural change to Europe’s military geography — one that Baltic governments argued for relentlessly and eventually won against considerable internal NATO scepticism.
Defence spending as a way of life
Estonia spends approximately 3.4% of GDP on defence this year — the highest proportion of any EU member state. Latvia and Lithuania are not far behind. For context, Germany — with an economy roughly sixty times Estonia’s size — only recently crossed the 2% NATO threshold after years of political resistance.
This disparity is not lost on Baltic leaders. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now serving as the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, has consistently used her platform in Brussels to push for higher European defence spending and to remind larger member states that security is not a burden to be carried disproportionately by those closest to the threat.
Cyber defence: a quiet strategic advantage
Estonia’s contribution to European security extends well beyond tanks and troops. Tallinn hosts the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE), which has become the alliance’s primary hub for cyber threat analysis, training and doctrine development. Estonian expertise in digital infrastructure — forged partly in the aftermath of Russia’s crippling 2007 cyberattacks — is now an asset that NATO relies on daily.
Lithuania has become a key node in the region’s intelligence-sharing network and has been particularly active in identifying and exposing Russian hybrid warfare operations targeting EU institutions and Baltic civil society groups. These contributions sit largely out of public view, but their operational value is well understood in Brussels and Washington.
The social dimension
Perhaps the most striking trend is attitudinal. Surveys conducted by the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences this spring found that over 80% of respondents in all three countries support maintaining or increasing current defence spending — a figure unmatched elsewhere in Europe. Conscription, reintroduced or expanded across the region, is viewed not as a burden but as a civic norm.
For younger Balts especially, security awareness is woven into daily life in ways that much of Western Europe is only beginning to contemplate. Emergency preparedness kits, civil defence training in schools, and government wartime communication protocols are standard — not exceptional. The Baltic states have always understood the stakes. Now, the rest of Europe is catching up.
