In the eye of a Baltic storm Prosperous but uneasy on Russia's border

“ESTONIANS OUT OF
SIBERIA—SOVIETS OUT OF ESTONIA”. Amid the protests against the imposition of
martial law in Poland in 1981, that slogan—on a banner carried by two elderly
émigrés outside the Polish embassy in London—stood out as seemingly the most
lost of all lost causes. True, Britain, like most other Western countries,
recognised Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as still existing de jure, but
de facto, they were occupied by the Soviet Union and likely to remain
that way for the foreseeable future. Britain had even handed over to the Soviet
authorities the Baltic gold reserves entrusted to the Bank of England for
safekeeping by the pre-war governments. Complaining about the occupation inside
Estonia meant arrest and deportation. In the outside world, it just looked
futile.

src="http://www.economist.com/images/columns/2008w46/tallinnSHU.jpg" alt=Shutterstock
width=220 height=310 hspace="5" vspace="5" border=0 align="right">Undaunted by this gloomy
prospect, your diarist promptly hitched himself to the Baltic cause, spending
many of the years since then living in, travelling to, and writing about the
Baltic states. In 1990, he received Lithuanian visa 0001, issued by the
authorities there in defiance of Soviet border controls (he was deported from
the Soviet Union a week later). In the years that followed, he lived there and
edited a newspaper. His eldest son was born in Tallinn Central Hospital—the
first baby from a Western country to be born in Estonia since the Soviet
occupation of 1940.

So a few days in Tallinn
recently offered the chance both to reflect on the past and to worry about the
present. In both cases the picture is mixed. The humming streets of the Estonian
capital, now dotted with skyscrapers and clogged with large western cars,
epitomise a return to prosperity and freedom that on that cold December
afternoon in 1981 would have seemed as unimaginably miraculous as Atlantis
re-emerging from the waves.

Indeed, Estonia’s
success has excited other countries. President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia,
for example, is a huge fan of Estonia, and based his policies of deregulation,
low taxes and privatisation explicitly on policies pioneered by Estonia in the
1990s. Scores of Estonians have spent time in Georgia, advising on everything
from anti-corruption efforts to spy-catching.

The temperaments could
hardly be more different: Estonians are reserved, unhierarchical and efficient.
That makes them excellent team players—one reason why Estonia’s public
institutions are the strongest and cleanest in the ex-communist world.
Georgians, by contrast, are emotional, status-conscious and individualistic.
This leads to a rather different style of work, to put it mildly. But opposites
attract: Estonians and Georgians get on splendidly (much more so, in fact that
either country does with its immediate neighbours).

But Estonia’s enthusiasm
for “Misha” Saakashvili is now dented, partly because of distaste for some of
his policies, and also because of what is seen in Tallinn as his scaremongering.
After the war in Georgia, he proclaimed that “the Baltics are next”. Although
Estonians and their neighbours are glad to have international attention for
their problems with Russia, they are not happy about being bracketed with
Georgia. “We are members of NATO and the EU; they are not. Misha’s wild talk
makes it sound as if we are as crazy and vulnerable as they are,” said one
official frostily.

Tuesday

THE skies over Estonia
are full of American and Danish warplanes conducting a large exercise involving
mid-air refuelling. It is the biggest such drill ever to take place in Estonian
airspace. That is a sign of how NATO (and especially America) is already
devoting more attention to Baltic security.

When Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia joined the alliance, Russia was officially not a threat; indeed, it
was a NATO partner. So NATO’s presence in the Baltic states has been minimal,
just a few fighter planes, supplied by a rota of other NATO countries, based at
an airfield in Lithuania. The alliance bases its contingency planning on threat
assessment: and if Russia is not a threat, then what is there to
plan?

src="http://www.economist.com/images/columns/2008w46/USwarplanesAFP.jpg" alt=AFP
width=220 height=304 hspace="5" vspace="5" border=0 align="right">

NATO membership for the
Baltic states had excellent effects on many fronts (your diarist remembers the
alarming days when excitable militias in both Lithuania and Estonia mutinied
because they disliked the politics of the defence ministries). The Baltic states
are far more stable, prosperous and predictable neighbours for Russia now than
they were when they first regained independence. But the reverse is not the
case. Russian warplanes have probed Baltic airspace to see if the foreign
fighters would bother to scramble (first they didn’t; then they did; the
provocations stopped). Across the border in Pskov, Russia’s most modern army
units regularly practise intervention and reconquest of what some Russian
politicians see as their country’s renegade Baltic provinces.

Since the war in
Georgia, that has been changing. America’s top commander in Europe has
specifically said that the alliance needs to work out new contingency plans to
protect the Baltic states. Estonia is working out a new defence plan of its own,
highlighting the need not only to engage in operations far afield (Estonia has
more than 100 troops in Afghanistan) but also to protect the home
front.

That will mean more
anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, and more robust radar systems. NATO’s
planning machinery is lumbering into action; the threat assessment in 2009 is
likely to take formal note that Russia—perhaps not under this regime but
another, nastier one—could be at least a potential military threat to alliance
members such as the Baltic states and Poland. In practice, this will mean making
sure that enough NATO resources—troops, helicopters, ammunition—are available in
Europe for use at short notice. That will mean less for other places: not a
costless policy.

NATO is also raising its
visibility in the Baltic states; more exercises are planned. NATO’s
cyber-defence centre is in Tallinn, and although it is not fully operational
yet, it is already attracting inquiries from countries as far away as South
Africa and India. A cyber-attack on Estonia in April 2007, during riots about a
Soviet war memorial, failed to do much damage—Estonia is one of the most wired
countries in Europe—but caused consternation in Washington, DC and elsewhere. An
official speaks darkly of the possible threat created by countless billions of
microchips in devices from cars to household dryers, increasingly networked but
largely unsupervised. He highlights four levels of threat: disruption of the
public internet; defacement of websites; theft of data (such as banking or
passport details) and—worst of all—the hijacking of critical computers and
introduction of false commands. That could shut down a nation’s power supply,
telephone exchange or financial system.

The new centre is more
of a think-tank than an operational outfit, but its experts are already in
demand in other countries: two Estonians rushed to Georgia when, as war broke
out, that country’s government websites were replaced with images of Hitler.
Welcome to the world of cyber-commandos.

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