The Eastern European leader emphasized the importance of NATO in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionism.
Michelle Zheng
Staff Writer, The Buckley Beacon
On October 22, President of Estonia Alar Karis visited Yale University to deliver a lecture titled, “Hack the Miracle: Estonia’s Spirit of Freedom and Democracy.”
The event was hosted by Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and organized with support from Bradley Woodworth, program manager for Yale’s Baltic Studies Program and Professor at the University of New Haven. Karis’ lecture, which took place in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall, discussed Estonia’s journey from decades of Soviet occupation to becoming a hub of technological innovation and democratic resilience in the face of continuous Russian aggression.
Throughout his lecture, Karis emphasized the urgent need for Western nations to remain vigilant in safeguarding democratic institutions and shared insights on the evolving nature of global threats, connecting Estonia’s experience to the broader responsibilities of the United States and its allies.
“Russia’s big picture aim is to weaken the West and change the world in accordance with its interests – a world where might triumphs over right, where freedoms are only for the chosen ones, where the state always comes before the person,” Karis said. “We cannot let it happen.”
Former United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who headlined an October 9 lecture co-hosted by the Buckley Institute and Young America’s Foundation, similarly warned against Russian territorial aggression. Johnson denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s partnership with Iran and China, and criticized Western voices he views as sympathetic to Putin—such as right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen.
Bradley Woodworth, who is the Program Manager of Baltic Studies at Yale, helped organize the event with Karis. Yale University and the University of New Haven, where Woodworth is a professor of history, co-host the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies’ (AABS) biannual conference. Woodworth secured Karis’ visit by meeting the Estonian ambassador to the United States at the AABS’s conference in 2024.
Woodworth emphasized the significance of targeting a university audience. “This has to do with why nations want to come,” he told The Buckley Beacon in an interview. “Part of the foreign policy of these countries is largely dependent on their image abroad, what people think and believe.”
The ongoing war in Ukraine, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, has since killed between 190,000 and 480,000 Russian soldiers and over 160,000 Ukrainian soldiers, and displaced over 6 million Ukrainians across Europe. For Karis, the conflict mirrors Estonia’s own struggles with independence and sovereignty during decades of Soviet occupation, highlighting the importance of collective defense and the need for NATO members to honor their treaty commitments.
In his October 22 lecture, Karis underscored the strategic necessity of defending small democracies amid Russian aggression, particularly in light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “Russia must be put back,” he asserted, outlining Estonia’s development since regaining independence in 1991. “We are a nation that has been living in the same place for more than 8,000 years. […] Only in the last 100 years have we had our own sovereign state.”
The Baltic region spent 200 years under Russian rule before gaining independence at the end of World War I, only to fall back under Soviet control from 1940 until 1991.
“Peace in Ukraine will not automatically mean that Russia has changed, that Russia is eligible to be readmitted to the international framework from which it has been excluded,” Karis said. “It is more certain that Russia will stay aggressive, retaliatory, and stick to its goals of weakening the West. To contain Russia, we should formulate a common strategy to keep Russia engaged in introspection within its borders. Their lust for others’ land should be kept at bay.”
Karis also criticized Europe’s military posture. “Turbulent times need better preparedness and a stronger, more up-to-date military,” he said. “Achieving that requires many times more resources and a dramatic increase in the capacity of the defense industry.”
At the inception of their independence, the Baltic states’ security was fragile. Having been under Soviet control for decades, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania possessed no armed forces separate from those of the USSR until they regained independence in August 1991. In the years that followed, they prioritized defense, and thus ended up joining NATO in 2004 to safeguard their independence.
More recently, uncertainty over the U.S. commitment to NATO has raised concerns among smaller democracies like Estonia. President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of upholding NATO Article 5 commitments, which state that “an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies.”
Karis underscored that modern threats are increasingly complex, extending far beyond traditional military challenges. “The application of threat is under transformation. It is not only military anymore; it is more complex and complicated. Destabilizing effects could be imposed on states and people through very diverse and different means and domains,” he said.
Estonia was the target of a large 2007 Russian denial of service (DDOS) cyberattack, part of an ongoing campaign of “gray zone” aggression, which are actions that are not peaceful but do not rise to the level of open warfare.
Karis warned that nearly every aspect of society could be weaponized. “Many things can be weaponized: targeted migration, manipulation of energy and food supplies, rigging elections, bending truth and information, flying unidentified drones around critical infrastructure, and constant and never-ending cyberattacks. This is a new reality.”
By highlighting these multifaceted threats, Karis emphasized the shared responsibility of the United States and its allies in ensuring global stability. “What is at stake for Europe is at stake for America,” he said, linking Eastern European security directly to U.S. national interest and asserting that the challenges of the modern world require coordinated political, economic, and military strategies.
On November 6, the MacMillan Center will host another lecture focused on the vestiges of the Soviet Union titled, “Afterlives of Soviet Secularism: Belief and Skepticism amid the Islamic Revival in Kyrgyzstan.”