Plea From the Baltics: As U.S. Pivots to Russia, ‘Where Are We Going?’

EXPERT INTERVIEW — When it comes to Europe’s “frontline states” that worry about aggression from Russia, the Baltic nations stand apart. They were under the control of the Soviet Union from 1940 until the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet state, and long before that their populations were subjects of the Russian empire. Today, anxiety in the three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – has multiple sources: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s often-expressed ambitions for a “greater Russian world”; his nostalgia for the Soviet Union (he called its demise the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century“), and his complaints about NATO’s eastward expansion – given that the three Baltic states are all NATO members that border Russia.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, as the Trump administration has moved more closely to Moscow, the Baltic nations are also overindexed when it comes to defense spending and advocating for a stronger European stand against Russia. After a pledge last week by Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal, all three Baltic states will spend at least 5% of GDP on defense this year — a figure far higher than the NATO average — and all have cited the Russian threat as the reason for the shift.