On the 27th of May the Stockholm Free World Forum hosted a conference on security cooperation around the Baltic: Security around the Baltic, 2013. The Forum gathered a number of renowned international and regional speakers.
From an international perspective the Baltic Sea is a quiet and peaceful corner of the world.
This peace is less than a quarter of a century old. Before the end of the Cold War half of the states around Baltic Sea were under Soviet occupation or dominance. Even if war never broke out the tensions were high with forces from the Warsaw Pact and NATO competing for influence.
Today, the Baltic Sea is surrounded by free and democratic states. Out of nine states eight are democracies and members of the EU. Six of these are also members of NATO. During the last two decades these states have developed close ties in most policy areas. Among the three Baltic states plus the five Nordic nations, including Norway and Iceland, there is a sense of community – a feeling of shared identity and destiny.
There are nonetheless questions regarding the security of the region that remain unanswered. Considering how closely the states around the Baltic Sea cooperate it is puzzling that there is no common policy on how to uphold the peace in the region.
It is against this backdrop that the Stockholm Free World Forum arranged the conference Security around the Baltic, 2013.
Speakers
 Anders Åslund is an expert on the East European economies, especially Russia and Ukraine. He is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and has been there since 2006. He is also Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. Before joining the Peterson Institute Åslund worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1994 -2005) as Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program. He has also served as economic adviser to the governments of Russia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. |
 Anna Jardfelt is the Director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (2010-). Previously, Jardfelt worked for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs at the Permanent Representation of Sweden to the European Union in Brussels. She has also worked for the OSCE and the European Parliament. |
 Artis Pabriks is the Latvian Minister of Defence (2010-) and PhD in political science. From 2007 to 2010 he was a member of parliament and of the Foreign Affairs and the European Affairs Committees. From 2004 to 2007 Pabriks served as Latvias Foreign Minister. In 2004, he became an MP and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Latvian Parliament. |
 Boris Nemtsov is former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and member of the Federal Political Council of the Russian opposition movement Solidarnost (Solidarity). Nemtsov was Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region (1991-1997) and from 1997 to 1998 he served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. From 1999 to 2003, he was a Member of the State Duma and headed the faction of the Union of Right Forces (SPS), a liberal party. |
 Bruce Acker is fellow at the Rote think tank. Mr Acker served as the US Defense Attaché to Sweden from June 2007 to May 2011, representing the United States Armed forces and Department of Defense to the government and Armed Forces of Sweden, as well as advising the US Ambassador to Sweden on defense and security matters. |
 Charly Salonius-Pasternak is a security policy analyst at the Finnish Institute for International Affais (FIIA) since 2006. His research focuses on American, transatlantic, and Nordic security and foreign policy. He is also editor of the institute’s NATO-report, officer in the reserve and has previously worked for the Finnish Ministry of Defence (2009-2010). |
 Jānis Kažociņš is the former (2013) director of the Latvian Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB). Mr Kažociņš was born in the United Kingdom of Latvian parents. He grew up and was educated in England. After a career of 30 years in the British Army he retired early in August 2002 with the rank of Brigadier in order to live permanently in Latvia. In May 2003 and again in May 2008 he was appointed Director of SAB by the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) for a period of 5 years. |
 Edward Lucas is International Section Editor at The Economist. He has also covered the central and east European region for over 25 years. His postings included stringing for The Economist in communist-era Czechoslovakia and later in the Baltic States, as well as being editorial director of the Economist Intelligence Unit in Vienna. In 2002 Lucas covered education and transport for the Britain section until 2005. Since then he has worked on the International section, which he now edits. He is the author of “Deception”, a book about Russian espionage, published in March 2012. His first book was the “The New Cold War” published in February 2008. He is a regular broadcaster on international and British outlets. |
 Rolandas Krisciunas is Lithuania’s vice-minister of Foreign Affairs. Before this Minister Kriščiūnas served in the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s Economic Department, worked at the Lithuanian Embassy to the United States, and served as finance vice minister. |
 Karlis Neretnieks is a Major General (ret.) and Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. From 1998 to 2002, he was Vice-Chancellor of the Swedish National Defence College. He has also served as Special Advisor to the Swedish Defence Minister on Baltic Security (2002–2004), Chief of Operations in the Central Joint Command (1997–1998), Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces International Centre (1994–1997) and Commander of the 18th Mechanised Brigade (1992–1994). |
 Kurt Volker is Executive Director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership, former US Ambassador to NATO and Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is also Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council of the United States. Previously, he was a career member of the US Senior Foreign Service, with over 23 years of experience working on European political and security issues under five US Administrations. Ambassador Volker contributes regularly to public policy debates, with frequent appearances on BBC, Al Jazeera English, CNN, Fox News, and with articles in such publications the Washington Post and Foreign Policy. |
 Mike Winnerstig is Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of the War Sciences and PhD in Political Science, Stockholm University (1992). He was Guest Researcher at the Centre for Defence Studies, Abeerdeen University (1994) and at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Germany (1995). Between 1997 and 1998 Winnerstig was a Research Fellow at Harvard University. Between 1993 and 1999 Winnerstig was a Researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Since 2000 he is Deputy Director of Research, Division of Defence Analysis, at the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). |
 Matthew Bryza is the Director of the International Center for Defence studies in Tallinn, Estonia. Mr Bryza just completed a 23-year career as a US diplomat. His most recent assignment was as US Ambassador to Azerbaijan from February 2011 to January 2012. Ambassador Bryza simultaneously served as the US co-chair of the OSCE’s Minsk Group mediating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and as US mediator of the Cyprus, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia conflicts. |
 Ståle Ulriksen is Researcher of International Politics and Sea Power at the Norwegian Naval College in Bergen, Norway (2007-). He is also researcher at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (1993-). |
 Thomas Malmlöf is researcher in International Security Studies at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, Division of Defence Analysis, FOI (2006-). Malmöf also has a background at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs as Desk Officer at the Department for Eastern and Central Europe (2004 – 2004). |
Session one
Security around the Baltic, 2013
Keynote Speaker Artis Pabriks Podcast (59:26)
Video (59:47)
Session two
The Baltic as a security complex Podcast
Edward Lucas, Mike Winnerstig, Anna Jardfelt, Katarina Tracz
Video
Session three
Regional security in the North Podcast (1:02:56)
Karlis Neretnieks, Charly Salonius-Pasternak, Ståle Ulriksen, Svante Cornell
Video
Session four
The importance of Gazprom for the Baltic region Podcast (57:31)
Anders Åslund, Tomas Malmlöf, Eitvydas Bajarunas, Maria Eriksson
Video
Session five
Russia in the Baltic Podcast (42:20)
Janis Kazocins, Boris Nemtsov, Stig Fredrikson
Video
Session six
Security cooperation around the Baltic
Kurt Volker, Bruce Acker, Matthew Bryza, Stefan Olsson
Video