The possible enlargement of NATO to include the Baltic states will inevitably run up against Russian interests. The alliance will consider this and related matters at its Prague summit next year. In the meantime President Bush has opened up the debate, notably during his recent Warsaw visit.
Russia opposes further enlargement near its borders for obvious geopolitical and military reasons. The Baltic states on the other hand hope passionately for acceptance by NATO.
The Baltic states first appeared in our school atlases in the wake of the first World War. There is evidence that the new states made good use of their freedom. But their independence was not to last for long. In August 1939 the Soviet-German Pact cleared the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of the second World War.
The invasion brought Britain and France into the war, ostensibly to help Poland. Conscription in Britain was not introduced until July 1939 and only two divisions and a few tanks were sent to the Continent - a modified "limited liability" policy. France called up one man in eight, Britain one in 48.
The Soviet-German Pact put Estonia and Latvia (and eventually Lithuania) in the Soviet sphere of influence. After France fell, Stalin broke his pledges to the Baltic states by abolishing their independence. Sham elections were held and Communist sympathisers replaced the legitimate governments.
During the war the Baltic states were a year in Soviet hands, during which time there were mass deportations to the Soviet interior. Then, in June 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, defying the lessons of history concerning time, space and the Russian climate. The Germans quickly drove out or trapped Soviet troops in the Baltic states. Thousands of settlers were transported from Germany.
In 1944 the Red Army was back on the Estonian Border. In that year, Prussian generals in Hitler's HQ, or fighting doomed withdrawal actions in Italy, France and Yugoslavia, heard of the over-running of their homes. Thousands of German refugees took to the roads. Some were evacuated by sea. In the greatest single maritime disaster in history a ship carrying 6,0008,000 refugees and troops was torpedoed near Kiel in January 1945.
The Baltic States were back under Soviet rule. But these thrice-occupied people did not forget their period of independence in the decades that followed.
East Prussia, meanwhile, had been wiped off the map. It was divided between Lithuania and Poland, its puritan and industrious traditions lost. The Soviet Union and later Russia held on to 15,000 sq kms of the central area, now called the Kaliningrad Enclave. No descendants of the original inhabitants remain there, or so it seems. The present population of 935,000 is 79 per cent Russian, 9 per cent Belorussian and 7 per cent Ukrainian (1999 figures). Kalinin (formerly Koenigsberg), the enclave's capital, is Russia's only ice-free port on the Baltic and is the HQ of its Baltic fleet.
There are about 15,000 troops and 800 tanks in the area. No one expects Russia to give the enclave up, although it is geographically separated from Russia and its rail communications run through Lithuania.
By 1990 there was resistance to Soviet conscription in many parts of the USSR. When the Moscow coup failed in 1991 the local authorities refused to enforce conscription legislation. Unit strengths fell to 50 per cent. Since that time the Baltic republics have acquired formal independence and Russian occupation troops have left. However, the Baltic states have Russian minorities, with the proportion in Latvia as high as 34 per cent.
Clearly Russia cannot welcome the enlargement of NATO to include the Baltic states. The states themselves insist that enlargement is not expansion because that implies gaining new territory. The Baltic peoples consider themselves European.
It is also argued that NATO's boundaries have traditionally been determined by sets of values, not by geographical factors. Clearly the Baltic states embrace the basic democratic values and a belief in the market economy.
The states also have conscription and can mobilise trained troops quickly. Some 7,570,000 people, with a GDP of $21.2 billion, have 23,000 troops and 9,800 border guards.
Col E.D. Doyle is a retired former head of the Army's Signal Corps.