Ege Hirv: About national defense from a citizen's perspective, or about involving the entire civilian population in national defense
Ege Hirv calls for a million Estonian citizens to be involved in national defense — every owner of a tractor, car, and mobile phone must know their role in case of danger.
Please allow me to think along, what then, for a complete profane person — a flower child turned Sunday general, a self-proclaimed amateur, who is not bothered by either an internal defense academic or military background, service oaths, gang spirit, or strict chains of command.
On the Facebook wall of the "Soldier's Newspaper", the discussion about refugees immediately became heated. A few comments exuded a complete inability to dialogue — contempt for militarists armed to the teeth, a negative and dismissive attitude towards the wise civilian aunts, contempt for those who are rushed to protect at the cost of their lives, although their opinion is not even worth listening to. So take it easy, calm down and relax and understand: this democratic state order, which you are so bravely rushing to defend, gives me the right to speak out and obliges you to listen — in a democratic state, the military is, as is well known, subject to civilian control.
A million citizens versus 30,000 soldiers
There is a huge difference between 30,000 men fighting or a million citizens defending themselves, who know exactly what to do in case of danger and what each person's task is. The whole point of my talk is that every owner of a tractor, car, watercraft, computer and mobile phone must know what to do in case of danger — not to mention a nurse and an electrician. And vice versa: every military crawler and a Willy with a rain hose must be able to be used both in the event of natural disasters and other civil disasters — fires, drunks and sheer stupidity. Structures must be mobile, flexible and usable in conditions of hybrid warfare.
To increase the country's defense capability , the skills and activity of a million citizens should be involved. The entire population must be able to mobilize within an hour and know its role in repelling a threat, even when there is no electricity and communication systems are down. However, to do this, the power structures first need to change their attitude towards the civilian population — to stop treating it as a disruptive element — and then integrate the full capabilities of civilians into the defense concept.
The enemy has passed the army.
Has the military understood one simple thing: the enemy has bypassed the army in attacking Europe — directly at the civilian population? At the people who still fervently believe that armies can protect them, but armies have long been tactically rendered useless and out of the game. Europe's current attackers lack any military capability in the Western sense, and they know it — but their cunning has overcome this deficiency. That is why they attack in the shop, in the square, on the train, and in the parking lot .
The higher the fences of other countries rise, the more mass will begin to pour into our country's line of control. It is extremely difficult to focus on survival, to trust your instincts and intuition, when the media daily and massively peddles and replicates artificially created flea problems — without realizing that 500,000 pending invaders, 4 million Turks in Germany, a million scammers in Sweden , and millions of Erdogan supporters impatiently waiting for visa freedom have not come to Europe to nod along to a festival of opinions.
A special defense concept for a small country
Yes, survival is still possible and the continuation of the state and nation is still possible — but for this, everyone must change their way of thinking, behavior and defense concept and act as a unified force. Our country is so small that there is not enough space to turn a tank around — so Stalingrad-style tank battles are out of the question. The small size of the country and the small population require a completely special defense concept. Why this has not been done yet is a question that has less and less time to analyze.
Diplomacy may be able to protect us from becoming a battlefield for the great powers, but we cannot leave the task of repelling terrorists hiding in the refugee masses on the streets and in villages to unprepared elderly people, women, children, and random passersby at a time when the defense forces are languishing in barracks. There is no air force, shipping has been destroyed, cyber defense, together with the ground forces, may somehow function. What is left when there is nothing?
Suggestions
I fundamentally believe that a situation where borders are essentially left unprotected in the context of hybrid warfare and potential terrorists are hidden among the refugee masses created through criminal human trafficking is wrong. Based on this, I make the following proposals:
Demand an audit from the National Audit Office on the spending of 89 million euros in international aid provided over the years to mark the Line of Control.
Immediately restore the militarized border guard and involve local residents as an auxiliary service to prevent a sudden invasion by masses of refugees.
Demand the return of all illegals to the country from which they crossed the border — not to furnish new nests and strongholds for hundreds of accomplices in human trafficking. People who pay criminals are accomplices to the crime, and these networks cannot be allowed to emerge.
Lay landmines on the Line of Control and abandon landmine ban treaties.
Engage all civilian capabilities to repel attacks.
To be mentally and morally capable of fighting and to repel corruption that is being modified into war.