There is something about the Baltic states… something refreshing, inspiring and courageous.
Their recent history after the breakup of the Soviet Union is an economic success story with double-digit GDP growth rates. Estonia is the most high-tech society in Europe - with e-government & online voting - having earned the nickname "E-stonia".
Yet listening to the their three foreign ministers speaking about the 85 years of US-Baltic relations at the Heritage Foundation last Thursday, some differences do become obvious. Especially concerning their relationship with Russia.
The most pro-Russian stance was the Lithuanian one. Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas, with a strong Russian accent, underlined several times that "Russia is not the USSR anymore, it differs profoundly" when the discussions were becoming too critical of Moscow. He also spoke of a "political brand of the three Baltic states", a brand that was not reflected in their very different views on Russia.
"We need Russia, so in our relationship, patience is the word" - Petras Vaitiekunas, Lithuanian Foreign Minister
Trying to strike a balance, the Latvian Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks first payed his tribute to the role of the US in the Baltic states' quest for freedom:
"All our achievements, in our economies, but also on a personal and professional level, could not have been accomplished if we weren't free countries. During the Soviet occupation, we used every opportunity to listen to Radio Free Europe, despite the Russian scrambling, and we really believed that one day we will be free countries."
But talking about the Latvian relationship to Russia, Pabriks said that "this relationship shouldn't be a prisoner of the past".
Latvia just recently ratified a border-treaty with Russia, and the Foreign Minister proudly announced that his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov promised to visit Riga, Latvia's capital, soon. Of the three Baltic states, Latvia should be considered the occupier of the middle ground with respect to how they view Russia.
A tougher stance came from Urmas Paet, the Estonian Foreign Minister, who was much more outspoken and than his Slavic counterparts.
"Russia is building up its foreign policy through confrontation with the US & EU, and through confrontations with its neighbors and the new democracies surrounding it."
The recent row with Russia over the displacement of a Soviet statue and the following cyber-attacks against Estonian websites prompted the government in Tallinn, Estonia's capital, to take a firm stance against the Kremlin: Estonia successfully pushed to expand NATO powers onto the Internet.
"We experienced three weeks of cyber attacks, with 400 times greater traffic than normal, aimed to completely paralyze our country. The Internet has become the battlefield of the 21st century. It is possible to inflict serious damage in highly digitalized societies, just like a regular attack on conventional infrastructures", explained Paet.
The Estonian Foreign Minister requested that a "legal definition of cyber warefare" be formulated as soon as possible and announced the upcoming opening of a "cyber defense center" in Tallinn.
Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, confirmed the fact that "NATO is already working on the technical cooperation" regarding "these unconventional threats: Using energy for political aims, cyber attacks or financial pressure", obviously alluding to Russia's new power policies.
"Russia's policy is to surround these countries, to encircle them. The EU is very many things, but certainly not a conquering imperialist force. And isn't it in Russia's best interest to be surrounded by democracies? Russia should have learned from its experience that it is not democracies who pose a threat, but totalitarian regimes and dictatorships." - Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State
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Jun 17th, 2007
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“Foreign Minister Petras Vaitiekunas, with a strong Russian accent…”
A what? That would be a Lithuanian accent, not a Russian accent.
“A tougher stance came from Urmas Paet, the Estonian Foreign Minister, who was much more outspoken and than [sic] his Slavic counterparts…”
Neither Pabriks nor Vaitiekūnas are “Slavic” — Balts are not Slavs.
Inspiring as it may be to see that people interested in European affairs have finally learned to distinguish between the Baltics and the Balkans, this article demonstrates that much remains to be done.
The word “Baltic” is used in many ways, but it never includes “Slavic”. Geopolitically, “Baltic” is a convenient term for the three small countries, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania which, although quite different, suffered remarkably similar fates during the 20th century. Linguistically, the term can be applied to Estonian only as an areal designation. From the standpoint of its origins, Estonian is neither Baltic nor even Indo-European, but rather Finno-Ugric, and thus genealogically a close relative of Finnish and a more distant one of Hungarian. Estonian is the modern form of the language spoken by the pre-Indo-European population of foragers who inhabited the Baltic area before the arrival of Indo-European-speaking agriculturalists from the south more than four millennia ago. Latvian and Lithuanian, in contrast, are the two surviving members of the Baltic group of Indo-European languages, within which Slavic also constitutes a distinct group. Even today, Latvian gives the impression of being Lithuanian spoken with an Estonian accent, this reflecting the consequences of the northward expansion of Indo-European speech into territory once inhabited by speakers of Finno-Ugric lanuages. Culturally, Estonia and Latvia have a long history of interaction with Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and Lutheranism, while Lithuania has had more involvement with Poland and Roman Catholicism. All three also share a history of interaction, much of it turbulent, with neighboring Eastern Slavic cultures. High on the current political agenda of all three countries is dealing with the legacy left by the last episode of such interaction,. This was the motivation for the three Baltic foreign ministers’ meeting at the Heritage Foundation.
Eugene Holman