This article focuses on the Baltic Strategic Institute for Security Studies (BASIS). The institute was one of Estonia’s first think tanks and an initiative of the former President of Estonia Lennart Meri. BASIS was founded on 28 October 1993 with the aim of establishing better contacts between Estonia and Western countries. The aim of the article is to give an overview of BASIS, the contacts it managed to establish, (especially with NATO), and its activity.

The most notable event organised by BASIS was its inaugural conference held from 15 to 17 December 1993, which featured six different topics ranging from Estonia’s security situation and cooperation between the Baltic states to NATO-Russia relations and possible future geopolitical changes. The conference featured many well-known political figures such as the Lithuanian and Latvian presidents, Algirdas Brazauskas and Guntis Ulmanis, the Swedish diplomat Lars Fredén, the historian Max Jakobson, and NATO representative Erica Bruce, who was the director of NATO’s Information and Press Bureau at the time.

Other members of the Council of BASIS included the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the political scientist Samuel Huntington. It was quite clear that BASIS wanted to become a well-known and respected think tank in the Baltic area.

However, the lifespan of BASIS was cut short, and all its possible achievements were stopped in their tracks as it turned out that one of its council members, Harry Männil was suspected of collaboration with German occupation forces in Estonia during World War II. Männil denied all allegations but the damage to the Institute was done and two of its members, Henry Kissinger and Paul Goble, left the council. Due to the damage to its reputation, it was difficult to find financing for the Institute’s further activities. Furthermore, BASIS had a successful competitor in Latvia (the Latvian Institute of International Affairs), which operates to this day and demonstrates what BASIS could have developed into with better financing, organisation, and perhaps also luck.

As a result, BASIS serves mainly as a reminder of what could have been. The general idea of being a think tank sponsored largely by the private sector was idealistic, considering the population of Estonia and the country’s dire economic situation in the 1990s. Even so, the entire undertaking cannot be considered a failure. Meri’s objective in connection with BASIS was to help integrate Estonia more firmly into the Western world, to improve Estonia’s reputation, and to make Estonia more widely known in the world. BASIS also created an unfortunately short-lived platform for contact and dialogue between NATO and Estonia that served the objectives of Estonian diplomacy at the turn of 1993 and 1994.