#13 - RW 268
Balts Bury Hatchet with Russia
By Ira Straus

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Baltic States officials are changing their diplomatic behavior: They are far more relaxed about their giant Russian neighbor than anyone could have imagined as recently as two years ago.

Representatives of the three tiny Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were in Washington recently discussing regional security problems at a meeting of the Transatlantic Studies Center at the School for Advanced International Studies, but they did not say a word about any Russian threat. Ont he contrary, there was a complete absence of anti-Russian rhetoric.

Instead, instead, the Baltic officials said they saw their security in terms of the threats faced by the entire Euro-Atlantic world: terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, intra-European stability, and demographic imbalances in light of declining European populations.

Russia arose as a problem in this context: because of its shrinking population, implicitly coupled with the rise of the Islamic population around and inside its borders. But the solution to this looming problem, according to the Baltic officials, was a stronger, more effective Russian naitonal state, not a weaker one. Russia needed a state strucutre better able to control crime and give hope for a future to its European population, and this was essential for Baltic security as well, they said.

Just two years ago, when NATO membership for the Baltics was still an open question, a similar session in Washington, held by Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation had the opposite result. It was a non-stop exercise in anti-Russian comments; the central argument made for letting the Baltics join NATO was that Russia was against it.

The only doubts about the wisdom of an anti-Russian approach at that time came in questions from the American audience, and the Balts redoubled their anger in response. The Estonian ambassador, in what in the diplomatic world passes for "a thinly veiled threat", said the Estonian people would not be nice to their ethnic Russian minority if, after all the concessions recently made to the Russians at NATO's request -- that is to say, the reduction of existing discrimination against them -- Estonia were nevertheless denied NATO membership.

But this time, the roles were reversed. The only mention of a Russian threat came in aquestion from the audience. And the Balts put her down squarely. They knew that they lived next door to Russia and that Russian involvement in their countries was not in itself abnormal; they explained that the dangers, while not completely gone, were fading and being dealt with normally.

Why the change? Because the Baltic states have finally been invited into NATO and the United States. has ratified their membership protocols.

This has brought a sense of security to the Baltic states that they never had before. It has enabled them to face Russia in a more calm, objective manner. And looking east calmly, they can see that their actual living dangers arise from Russia's weaknesses, not its strengths.

This confirms the theory lying behind NATO expansion: that by providing genuine security to countries that have historical grievances against their neighbors, it makes it possible for nations to put aside the fears connected with their grievances. This in turn makes it possible to look at their neighbors in a more objective manner, and to begin to construct a new set of relations based on reasonable hopes and future opportunities rather than ingrained suspicions.

Historical resentments might still be insisted upon by immature politicians as a matter of national pride, but this no longer feels like a necessity for national security. It becomes possible for the more mature politicians to start building constructive relations. The model is the Franco-German rapprochement, built through NATO and the European Union, which reconciled not only France and Germany most of the historic powers of Europe and laid the grounds for ending the 500-year cycle of major wars.

Also, NATO decided in the 1990s to set a new precondition for membership: that countries must establish basic good relations with their neighbors and tolerable relations with their domestic minorities. NATO began to enforce this requirement upon the Baltic countries before it extended its membership invitations to them. The EU helped out with similar pressures and programs to "assist" the countries improve their behavior.

The work of building better relations thus already began years ago on the practical level. Now, with the NATO assurances in hand, it has begun to penetrate on the level of mindset and rhetoric as well.

This process is working, but it remains vulnerable to disruption as long as its premise -- that NATO provides security to both sides of an old ethnic dispute -- goes unfulfilled for the Russian side.

In principle this anomaly could be overcome; NATO committed itself, with the Partnership for Peace in 1994, to help any PFP country move toward membership, including Russia. However, actual hopes for this have been fading since 1994; every Russian feeler for joining has been rebuffed. The Franco-German model is thus being only half-followed. Germany had been brought into NATO, ending its humiliation; Russia is being kept on the outside with only a restricted relation under contemplation.

Russia long viewed this as cause for opposing NATO's expansion to other countries, lest it be isolated as the sole European country left out. NATO in turned treated Russia's disagreement on expansion plans as a cause for viewing Russia still as an adversary.

After the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, both sides realized that they were facing more urgent threats from elsewhere, toned down their rhetoric without actually changing their postures on expansion, and moved forward on developing closer relations in practice.

This has made it possible for Baltic membership to proceed in a constructive pan-European tone, and for the Balts themselves to relax their anti-Russian proclivities. However, there is no guarantee that this favorable atmosphere will continue. The strategic conjuncture favors it, but conjunctures can change rapidly. The atmosphere will be truly consolidated only when Russia joins NATO and the expansion of the alliance is brought to its logical conclusion.

The events of 9/11 served to bring home to the Baltic peoples the seriousness of the new security threats. Compared to this, the idea of a future renewed Russian threat receded in most minds to its proper proportions: a hypothetical contingency, not a centerpiece for current security planning. The idea that "the danger from Russia comes from its weakness, not its strength" became a living maxim for policy after 9/11. Russia was an ally not an enemy in the war against the Taliban, and it was seen to be a much needed and valuable ally at that. Its vulnerabilities along its borders to Islamist extremists were reassessed as part of the global problem the West was facing: a real problem on which to cooperate.

The Balts have learned quickly. In this, there is hope for the Atlantic alliance. It shows that NATO's power to generate a broad consensus among its member states is still enormous and constructive. This underlying vitality of the Alliance should not be overlooked. It is a source for trans-Atlantic hope in this troubled new 21st century

-- Ira Straus is coordinator of the Committee for Eastern Europe and Russia in NATO and teaches international relations to the University of Tuebingen and to the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

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