Less Borat, more Baltic
My new thinktank will boost European security and counter Kremlin talking-points
What does western Europe know about “eastern Europe”? It is “ex-Soviet”, with everything that implies: ie Russia’s backyard. Its people are exotic, often bigoted and backward, even comically so (remember those hilarious Borat films?). And the tiny little countries (Balkan/Baltic, whatever) are divided, weak and vulnerable. In short, not like “real” Europe.
I’ve been battling these patronising myths for decades. From my earliest childhood, I heard my father, a renowned Oxford University philosophy professor, challenge any mention of “eastern Europe” by pointing out “Prague is west of Vienna”. I did not know where these places were, or how and why the Iron Curtain had divided the continent. But if it mattered to my dad, it mattered to me.
It still does. As Europe dithers and shivers in the face of Russian aggression, it is vital to respect, and to listen to, the countries that saw the threat first, and cope with it best. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (along with Ukraine, Poland, Finland and others) see things that we in the “old west” don’t see. They smell things we don’t smell. They understand things we don’t understand. And they do things we don’t do.
This is why this week (on Tuesday in Vilnius and on Wednesday in Brussels) I am launching the Baltic International Security Centre (BISC). The message to the rest of Nato and the European Union is simple: “Be more Baltic”. This refers not just to the 5%-plus of GDP that the Baltics spend on defence. It’s their vigilance, their readiness, their resilience. The way that their security services tell the truth about Russian grey-zone attacks, and arrest Kremlin spies and thugs. In Britain, we botch the investigations, or hush everything up: it’s too difficult (and too embarrassing). BISC will highlight Baltic security insights and amplify their messaging to the people who most need to hear it: opinion-formers and decision-makers in the lazy, complacent, timid, disorganised countries of “old Europe”.
BISC will call out the worst foreign media coverage of the Baltics. Examples include the absurd contention that the Suwałki-Alytus corridor is the “most dangerous place in Europe”; the endless pieces saying that “Narva is Next”, and the investigation in the Daily Mail that claimed that Estonia’s digital ID was a disaster. Sadly, culprits also include scaremongers (naïve or cynical? I’m not sure) from Ukraine.
I have compiled a list of the “seven deadly sins” that distort reporting and commentary about the Baltics. The worse of these is to echo the Kremlin talking points that depict the three countries as “Failed, Friendless, Fascist and Fragile”: depopulated losers, internationally isolated, riven with conflict, plagued by extremism, and ripe for collapse. Wrong on all counts. I’ll be presenting the whole list at the launch events.
BISC conducts its own research too. We have a regular publication called the Baltic Barometer. The first edition takes on the “doom loop” narrative in which looming Russian invasion spooks trade and investment. Instead, it points out, financial markets attach no significant geopolitical risk premium to Baltic sovereign bonds. Borrowing costs are low, around the same as France. Nor has foreign investment “stopped” (as a leading German security commentator, Carlo Masala, claimed carelessly in a recent interview about Estonia). It’s thriving, particularly in Lithuania.. Another BISC research programme, already under way, is Kaliningrad 2050. This will highlight the real regional security problem: the growing internal mess in Russia’s geopolitical trophy. Tensions and decay there are a sharp contrast with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: successful, stable, innovative countries, in Europe’s most dynamic and promising region.
The Baltics are not a “problem” They offer solutions. Will Europe’s sleepwalkers realise that in time?
I reviewed Robert Service’s new book on the August 1991 Moscow “Putsch” in the Times this week. Link here and pasted below for paid subscribers.
The Fiasco that Changed the World
The abortive 1991 coup in Moscow felled the Soviet Union and foreshadowed Putin’s crackdown, writes Edward Lucas
The August Coup: The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991
https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/robert-service/the-august-coup/9781529065787
The Soviet leadership was out of money, ideas, popularity and willpower by the time the putschists made their move on August 19th 1991.