Small Baltic States and the Euro-Atlantic Security Community

278 Pages·2021·3.414 MB·English

by  Sandis Sraders

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
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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