Baltics’ NATO Dream May Be Too Elusive

The joke at NATO’s, a smoky bar on a cobbled street in this picturesque Baltic capital, is that this drinking hole with its mock missiles and land mines is as close as Lithuania will ever get to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But NATO jokes are starting to wear thin in the three tiny Baltic republics on Russia’s militarily important northern European border. Right at the bottom of the list of NATO wannabes from Eastern Europe, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are beginning to fear they will never be allowed in.

“Partial security for us can also be seen as partial insecurity,” said Vytautas Z. Landsbergis, leader of the conservative Homeland Union party, which won recent elections in Lithuania. “Any new world order that could mean sacrificing smaller countries would be evil in essence. . . . If we are left with only partial security, the gate will be open to pressure, intervention and destabilization.”

With high-level talks between NATO and Russia scheduled for next week on the admission of Eastern European nations, Baltic politicians fearful that their onetime rulers in Moscow will grab them back are wondering whether they should have been looking at other options all along.

Russia, which ruled the Baltics for half a century until they won independence on the eve of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, is touchy about the Western alliance expanding into any of the countries that once formed the Soviet sphere of influence in Communist Eastern Europe. Moscow is especially hostile to the admission of its immediate neighbors and former subjects.

Despite determined Baltic lobbying for entry, virtually no NATO member state seems willing to risk Moscow’s wrath by expanding to include the three former Soviet republics on Russia’s doorstep.

Although the United States insists that the Baltic states have as much chance of NATO membership as anyone else, the countries at the top of the application list are Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Balts believe they are getting a polite brushoff.

In September, in what was perceived here as a thinly veiled attempt to put off the persistent trio, U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry announced that the Baltics are not militarily ready to join NATO. “But,” added Perry, “the emphasis is on ‘not yet.’ ”

Many Baltic observers suspect that the United States and most other NATO countries cannot bring themselves to say it but really mean something else: “Not ever.” Behind closed doors, Western diplomats have been saying as much for months.

And some analysts suggest Balts have been making a mistake all along by believing that their future security should be tied to NATO.

Anatol Lieven of the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington believes that Russia would respond angrily if the Balts did join NATO--which could make the three little countries less safe than ever. But Lieven also believes that the economically battered, militarily inept Russia of today is no longer a threat to its small neighbors. NATO membership, he says, should simply not be an issue.

“NATO is not a charitable organization,” he says. “It is a military alliance with a specific military role. It should not be handed out as a child’s comforter to remove imaginary fears.”

Other skeptics argue that the Baltic states’ location between the Baltic Sea and Russia makes them militarily indefensible and a potential liability to NATO. But Estonia’s American-born foreign minister, Toomas Ilves, passionately rejects this notion. “Because it is difficult or even impossible to defend an area . . . does not mean one simply writes it off,” he said.

Many Balts complain that the West is too ready to see security questions Russia’s way. “Everybody is dancing around Russia like it is some psychiatric patient, thinking, ‘Oh my, what do we do with him next?’ ” said Juris Sinka, a member of the Latvian parliament’s foreign relations committee.