There’s an interesting article at Foreign Policy by Paul D. Miller on how a major war could start in the Baltics:
Perhaps Russian-speaking Latvians or Estonians (a quarter of Latvians and Estonians are ethnically Russian) will begin rioting, protesting for their rights, claiming to be persecuted, asking for “international protection.†A suspiciously well armed and well trained “Popular Front for the Liberation of the Russian Baltics†will appear. A few high-profile assassinations and bombings bring the Baltics to the edge of civil war. A low-grade insurgency may emerge.
Russia will block all United Nations Security Council resolutions, but will offer its unilateral services as a peacekeeper. The North Atlantic Council will meet. Poland will lead the effort to invoke Article V, declare the Baltics under Russian attack, and rally collective defense against Russian aggression. The Germans and French will fiercely resist. Everyone will look to the United States to see which way the alliance leader tilts.
If the Alliance does not invoke Article V, NATO’s mutual security guarantee becomes functionally meaningless. No alliance member will put any faith in the treaty to guarantee it’s own defense against Russia in the future. The geopolitical clock will rewind to 1939.
which I think is about right. It also explains why admitting the Baltic countries to NATO was so feckless. One of George W. Bush’s many foreign policy miscalculations. It simultaneously encouraged more aggressive actions on the part of those countries—which they’ve taken by making life harder on their own Russian-speaking citizens—and made it all the more imperative for Russia to respond to provocations, real or imagined.
The question that should been asked is which course of action is more likely to keep the Baltic countries secure? Posing a risk to Russia or being uninteresting to Russia?
I agree with Dr. Miller that Putin is not a purely rational calculator. No person is but neither does he operate in a purely irrational fashion. I believe he’s a politician who responds to political incentives. He’s very popular in Russia because he’s a keen observer of Russian opinion and does things that will maintain that popularity. I think the Russian people are wary of war but will respond to provocations.
It’s important to point out that article V does not require going to war or even an armed response. It’s also not clear that A Russian-style hybrid war utilizing non-military means and limited violence via covert action would be construed as an “armed attack.”
Aww, is big ol’ Russia scared of the wittle Baltics? Run, giant bear, run! It’s the Latvians!
It is past time to stop indulging Russia’s national victimhood myths. Here’s a rather slow time-lapse of Russia’s expansion since the 7th century or whenever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzAwfJbXShw Russia is not a victim, Russia is an aggressor.
Before Hitler invaded the USSR, the USSR had already invaded Poland and Finland. The USSR had also engaged in systematic, widespread efforts to destabilize western governments which of course helped pave the way for Hitler. It’s not that the Russian people deserved what came next, of course they didn’t, but Russia was hardly an innocent victim.
Who helped to train the Gestapo? The NKVD, parent to the KGB, surrogate parent to Vladimir Putin. Who laid the foundation for modern anti-semitism with the Protocols? The Okhrana, father to the NKVD, father to the KGB, father to Vladimir Putin. Who helped the rise of Naziism by undermining western governments? Moscow Central. Who purged the Soviet Army, leaving it vulnerable to the Wehrmacht? Stalin. Who alienated the Ukrainians many of whom then fought with the Nazis? Stalin.
This whole notion of Victim Russia is bullshit. No doubt the Russian people believe it, but then they are a nation of credulous sheep, manifestly incapable of self-government. The Russian people need a lash on their backs and a boot on their necks. Whenever they manage to stumble drunkenly in the direction of freedom they panic and rush en masse back to a strong man to feel some of that iron fist they so admire.
Russia, population 143 million, versus the Baltic states, total population 7 million. And the Russians are worried. Uh huh. Just like I live in terror of my wife’s crippled Chihuahua.
What Andy said. On the Russian side this international intervention stuff makes Russians feel great again. I think he would push it to the edge but try to retain plausible deniability.
Steve
… a lash …
A knout would be more fitting.
I’m not convinced that the 1999 expansion with Albania and Croatia was a bad thing — it seems more like a thing. We should probably bring in Bosnia and Montenegro, and stand strong against the Serbs (there’s a pretty clear line in the Balkans between the East and the West — alphabet and religion suddenly switch)
Throughout history, though, the great empires have traditionally had their sphere of influence. The US has the entire Western Hemisphere, for instance. And NATO pushed that to include all of Western Europe during the Cold War.
We can pretend that Latvia (for instance) is an independent country free to align as it likes, but in reality it isn’t. It’s a minor country caught between two large empires, and welcoming it into NATO increased the chances for conflict.
The Baltics are to Russia as Cuba is to the US.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. Either you’ve got large, multi-ethnic empires, small indefensible countries that speak a language spoken nowhere else, or ethnic cleansing and genocide.
We’ve been vetoing large, multi-ethnic empires for the last century and genocide is off the menu. What alternative do we have?
I think the best course is brinksmanship. Others obviously feel differently.
I think the best course is brinksmanship. Others obviously feel differently.
You, sir, are a commie bastard, and the “others” are properly known as red-blooded Americans. Where is Sen. McCarthy when you need him, and Speaker Ryan should reestablish the House Un-American Activities Committee to root out commie sympathizers.
President Trump needs to tear up those arms agreements, and the US need to start reinstalling the MIRV back on the ICBMs. When the US’s ICBMs had MIRVs, the Russians did not interfere in US elections. Think about it.
The US won the Cold War and the arms race, but this time, the US should finish the job. I am sure the new Russia hawks will agree that it is time to eliminate this menace once and for all. If we got a good 50 peaceful years out of two atomic bombs, think of how many peaceful centuries we will get from hundreds of ICBMs burning out the commie eyes and melting the commie flesh of those Russian bastards.
I know the new Russian hawks just had a tingle run up their legs thinking about it.
(For those who do not keep up, you really should. Some of this might be satire, sarcasm, nonsensical nonsense, or maybe not. I doubt our host is a commie bastard, but maybe, I am the commie bastard. No wait, forget I wrote that.)
To secure the baltics, it’s too bad it’s too late to pursue the Finnish or Austria options, that worked well since WWII. After that, friendlier relations with Russia, but given the hysteria… Lastly, develop strategic industries there a la Taiwan that forces the West to defend them to the death no matter the cost.
I wonder how much political support there would be for the baltics if there is a Northern Ireland scenario of civil unrest, would we support keeping troops there if they are subject to terrorist attacks, or they are used to keep civil order?
We’ve been vetoing large, multi-ethnic empires for the last century and genocide is off the menu.
When did we veto large, multi-ethnic empires? We’ve transformed them into a more federal system with local control of local issues, but tied together with a system of alliances (NATO) or dominance (Latin America).
There are some differences between our current system of alliances and traditional empire building, but when the Russians are seeking to exert political influence over the areas that they previously controlled by force, it’s pretty clear that it has the same effect.
(Western Europe has different territories, since no one ever succeeded in uniting Europe before, and there is the overlapping EU (German dominated) and NATO (American dominated))
We have kinder, gentler large, multi-ethnic empires.
(And, sadly, genocide is not always off the table)
It’s like when you look at demographic maps of the US in present day, and see the slave states staring back at you (teenage pregnancy, unemployment, uninsured, syphilis, etc). We have the same divisions and conflicts.
After WWI the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a large, multi-ethnic empire, was divided into distinct countries under the terms of the armistice. The Ottoman Empire was also broken into smaller states. It’s those states that are collapsing in the Middle East now.
After WWII the British Empire and French Colonial Empire were both greatly reduced in size and within a decade or so for practical purposes didn’t exist at all. Many, including me, believe that was our price for protection and for providing them economic assistance.
At that point the only remaining large, multi-ethnic states left were the United States, the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Brazil, no? I guess it depends on the operative definitions of “large” and “empire”. Presumably, I don’t need to go into what happened to the Soviet Union.
Within the last couple of decades the remaining multi-ethnic states of Europe have been under substantial stress. Yugoslavia disintegrated with our help. There are separatist movements practically everywhere.
We’ve replaced a lot of multi-ethnic empires with multi-national alliances that cover the same people and areas. Looser empires. I think more often than not, the behaviors of these groupings matches the behavior we would expect from empires.
Also, we didn’t help break up Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was held together by Tito, and a little bit of inertia after he died. Yugoslavia was never really a unified country before WW II — the various regions/provinces/countries that made up Yugoslavia were handed back and forth between the Byzantine/Ottoman Empires and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
There is a really important issue here and it is one where I diverge sharply from my friends on the farther left. I have never accepted the notion that we should encourage ethnic or religious separatism, or that we should use multiculturalism as an excuse to shrug off bad deeds. We are a nation-state built around a set of ideas, not a set of competing nationalities.
I think we had to intervene to stop the massacres in Yugoslavia, but the idea that it is somehow obvious that Serbs and Croats and Muslims cannot share a state is pernicious. It’s not some sort of triumph that Yugoslavia split apart, it’s a tragedy. We didn’t do a good thing, we did an unfortunately necessary thing. When we accept the idea that different groups have a right to self-govern it sounds swell, but it leads in a direct line to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and threats against the Baltics. We are back to Hitler claiming he was rescuing ethnic Germans.
We are also at that point endorsing every sort of disintegration, from the end of the EU, to the end of multi-ethnic countries like Spain or Belgium. What are we to say to counter separatist movements in India?
It also subverts liberal efforts at tolerance and inclusion. You cannot with one breath say that Bosnians have an inherent right to self-govern solely because of their ethnic-religious identity, and then deny that same ‘right’ to white Americans. We either believe that we are primarily a nation of principle, or we believe that we are a nation of ethnicities; one unites, the other divides.
And we cannot run around accusing pro-lifers of hating women while at the same time excusing the way conservative Muslims or Orthodox Jews treat women. It cannot be simultaneously true that woman are equal, but the systematic oppression of women by a religious or ethnic group is just a difference we should tolerate.
So I categorically reject Russian claims to the Baltics simply because there are Russian speakers present. The Baltics are free and democratic. They are what we supposedly want to see more of. If our devotion is to liberty then we would oppose any Russian moves against the Baltics and do so on bedrock American principles. If on the other hand we believe in ethnic self-government then we have no logical basis to oppose Russian separatism within Baltic states, or for that matter a Chinese move against any nation with a substantial Han population. Chairman Xi could announce that the ethnic Chinese population of San Francisco is being displaced so they’re gonna step in.
The US should have no problem with Mexico and Russia forming a military alliance, and Russia establishing ports, bases, and air stations in addition to deploying nuclear missiles to Mexico should be alright.
The Baltics are irrelevant. The strategic center in Europe is Belarus and Ukraine. If Russia does anything remotely aggressive, they will occupy Ukraine and install a puppet government. The best way to prevent this is to implement Minsk II. Poroshenko won’t do that because he fears the militias. They have to be disarmed and disbanded (with many going to prison) before there can be peace in Ukraine. Hopefully, Trump can give Poroshenko the support he needs to act against the militias.