ebook img

Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community PDF

278 Pages·2021·3.414 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community

Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community sandis sraders Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community Sandis Sraders Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community Sandis Sraders Baltic Defence College Tartu, Estonia ISBN 978-3-030-53762-3 ISBN 978-3-030-53763-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53763-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such namesareexemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreefor general use. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeen made.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictionalclaimsinpublishedmaps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To My Wife, Madara Contents Introduction 1 Small Baltic States: Sensitivities and Vulnerabilities 7 Military 14 Economy 35 Social Capital 49 The Surge of the Euro-Atlantic Community: 1956, 1968, 1981 71 A Road to Hungary, 1956 80 Prague Spring, 1968 100 Solidarity in Poland, 1981 114 American Foreign Policy and the Baltic States 129 Malign: Between the Wars 130 Benign: The Cold War 137 Redemption: NATO Refined 151 The Baltic Predicament: Russia’s Shadows 167 Ideas Defining Russia Today 171 Yeltsin’s Democratic Experiments 183 Putin Curbs Democracy 197 vii viii CONTENTS The Baltic States in Europe 221 Germany: Reluctance 223 France: Ambivalence 232 The United Kingdom: Reforms 238 New and Auxiliary Actors 244 Conclusion 257 Index 267 List of Figures Small Baltic States: Sensitivities and Vulnerabilities Fig. 1 UN Member states: 1945–2011 (Source UN) 10 Fig. 2 Military Spending, % of GDP (Source SIPRI) 22 Fig. 3 Baltic Embassies: Number and Location, 2019 (Source Web pages of Baltic Foreign Ministries [Accessed on January 05, 2020]) 50 Fig. 4 Latvian Emabassies, 1994 and 2004 (Source Yearbook of the ministry of foreign affairs of the republic of Latvia 2004 [Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia: McAbols, 2005], 113–128) 53 Fig. 5 The comparisonofGDPpcin2018(Nominal,USD) (Source World Bank) 55 Fig. 6 ConstitutionalamendmentsinLatviaandRussianspeakersin Estonia, 2012 (Source Central Election Committee of Latvia and Statistics Estonia) 63 The Baltic Predicament: Russia’s Shadows Fig. 1 The frontline 178 Fig. 2 Oil price, 1999–2016 (Source Europe Brent Spot Price FOB) 202 Fig. 3 Russian military activities, 2008–2016 (Sources The European Leadership Network Report [2015], The McCain Institute Report [2016], Report of the Information Agency under the auspices of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Latvia “Tevijas Sargs” [2015]) 210 ix List of Tables Small Baltic States: Sensitivities and Vulnerabilities Table 1 Baltic trade, 1995 and 2018 (Source World Bank [World Integrated Trade Solutions, WITS]) 38 Table 2 Diplomatic list in 1994 and 2004 (Source Ministry of foreign affairs of the Republic of Latvia [2016]) 52 The Baltic Predicament: Russia’s Shadows Table 1 Top 3 the most hostile by Russians, 2005–2018 (Source Russian Public Opinion by Levada Center [2019]) 181 xi Introduction Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians are known as people who love to live in peace, indulge their hard-working traditions, and enjoy their bond withtheirlandandnature.Quitefrequentlyandforsignificantperiodsthe Baltic lust for peace was obstructed by Swedish kings, Polish emperors, German noblemen, Russian tsars and communists. Moreover, Lithuania had ascended as a type of empire in its own commonwealth with Poland. Nevertheless, the recent five-decade occupation period under the Soviet UnionalmostledtoBalticnationsbecomingapiddlingdropontheBaltic littoral, but they survived. For centuries have the destinies of each of the Baltic States heavily depend on foreign policies of major powers in the region to which they belong. This experience has aggregated to the recognizable fact that the small Baltic States cannot withstand large power superiority. All Baltic States appeared as independent out of the collapse of the Russian empire by 1918—the result of the Russian revolution. The Soviet Union took the independence back by 1940, but the collapse of the Communist empire made independence possible in 1990s. Subsequently, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as well as the other small European states desperately looked for protection and a geopolitical asylum. In the 1990s, few choices existed to avoid the repetition of their historic predicament. Thankfully, since the beginning of the Cold War other European states had shared similar objectives at a time when the United States was ready to embrace Europe to avoid future conflicts. © The Author(s) 2021 1 S.Sraders,SmallBalticStatesandtheEuro-AtlanticSecurityCommunity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53763-0_1

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.