Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Estonia has been recognised as a leader of the Baltic states in their transition to becoming democratic powers. Estonia is often portrayed as a technological powerhouse; due to its Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre, Estonia plays a prominent role in Baltic regional security. Besides transitioning into an essential security position through technological advancement, the state also boasts the highest level of political participation from its citizens out of all post-Soviet states. However, Estonian policies towards its Russian-speaking minority creates a divide in the state’s population. With the COVID-19 pandemic wreaking havoc globally, one wonders how the virus will impact a state that struggles to include roughly a quarter of its population in civic participation. This article will explore the subject in detail, providing an analysis of Estonia’s policies as they relate to the country’s Russian-speaking minority, and the potential for COVID-19 to increase the rift between the Estonian population due to its economic impact on the state.

Brazil is amongst the most unequal countries in the world, as the nation’s social-economic inequality in particular has reached extreme levels. Despite country-wide campaigns to eradicate poverty there are still roughly 24 million Brazilians who live on less than $2 per day, and 56% of the population earns less than the minimum wage. Although inequality is one of Brazil’s most pressing matters, as a source for violence and instability, it has never been truly securitised. In contrast, Brazil did consider the issue of drug trafficking at its borders to be an existential threat that required the mobilisation of scarce resources and extraordinary measures. This security issue recently reached the phase of de-securitisation, not as a result of its success, but because of financial and political pressures. It was simply too costly and not feasible to protect the roughly 17,000 kilometres of remote land, water, and air that separate the country from Bolivia, Peru and Colombia, South America’s coca sources, and Paraguay, the continent’s main producer of marijuana. In this brief article, I will demonstrate that Securitisation Theory, as defined by the Copenhagen School, offers the analytical framework to display the process behind Brazil’s adoption of security threats, and that, in turn, allows us to critically assess these political decisions.