Communications between the suspected top spy and his commanding officer seemed like a throwback to the Cold War. Investigators allege that in order to send messages to his Russian contact, Herman Simm, 61, used a converted radio which looked like a relic from yesteryear’s world of consumer electronics. But there was nothing old-fashioned about what Simm, a high-ranking official in the Estonian Defense Ministry in Tallinn, reportedly transmitted to Moscow over the years. It was the very latest intelligence information.

Although Simm was arrested with his wife Heete in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Sept. 21, this spy story — which has been largely kept under wraps until now — primarily concerns the European Union and NATO based in faraway Brussels. Since Simm was responsible for dealing with classified information in Tallinn, he had access to nearly all documents exchanged within the EU and NATO. Officials who are familiar with the case assume that “virtually everything” that circulates between EU member states was passed on to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR — including confidential analyses by NATO on the Kosovo crisis, the war in Georgia and even the missile defense program. Investigators believe that Simm was a “big fish.” ~Der Spiegel

Besides being militarily useless, highly vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and a dangerous potential flashpoint for NATO-Russian conflict, Estonia as a member of NATO now seems to have another significant drawback, which is that a member of its government has turned out to be a conduit for valuable intelligence to the very state against which NATO expansion is directed. The implications for further NATO expansion should be obvious: another round of expansion will expose the Alliance to compromises of the security of the allies we already have, just as the last round has already managed to do. Surely even those who believe that NATO still has a purpose as a defensive alliance in Europe can see the absurdity of exposing the Alliance to more risks of such security breaches.

This might be a good moment to pay attention to the recommendations of Jeffrey Tayler at The Atlantic, which include these remarks on NATO expansion:

In view of all these factors, what steps can the United States take to redefine its approach to Russia, and show that it means business? First, Obama should seek to overturn the NATO Freedom Consolidation Act of 2007, which advocates, and allocates funding for, the accession of Georgia and Ukraine. NATO expansion hardly made the news in the United States until the Russia-Georgia war, but it has stoked unprecedented suspicion, incredulity, and even ire both in the Kremlin and among the Russian population at large. American and European assurances that NATO expansion “isn’t directed at Russia” sound fatuous, laden with the tone-deaf arrogance of their bearers. NATO was created to counter the Soviet threat, and its expansion is meant to check Russia’s potential for reviving its influence beyond its borders. But to end the “Russia threat,” the West needs to engage Moscow as a partner. Sooner rather than later, Obama should decisively announce that NATO will grow no further, citing, perhaps, the expense involved in bringing the Ukrainian and Georgian militaries up to speed, and the many strategic problems those two countries would pose as members.