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As the U.S-led DefenderEurope 2021 war games continue in twelve European nations into June, NATO has recently concluded both naval and ground war exercises in the Baltic states.

The DefenderEurope 2021 exercises include estimates of as many as 37,000 troops from at least 27 NATO member and partner states and appear to be based entirely in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Balkans and the Black Sea. Comprehensive figures are not verifiable, but there is every reason to believe this is the largest U.S.-NATO military exercise since the Cod War; and moreover one occurring as Russia and Ukraine, steadfastly backed by the U.S. and NATO, are at loggerheads over renewed fighting in the Donbass region of what was formerly Eastern Ukraine.

NATO’s Allied Command Operations website reports today that the military alliance completed the eight-day Crystal Arrow 2021 exercise which was run by U.S. Army forces in conjunction with two NATO enhanced Forward Presence Battle Groups, from Latvia and Lithuania. (The other two NATO Battle Groups are in Estonia and Poland.)

The following paragraph is a condensed case study in NATO war plans:

“NATO Allies and partners from across the globe came together to support and participate with NATO enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battle Group Latvia to increase cooperation, compatibility and interoperability in the event of a real-world fight against any foreign aggressors who would threaten Latvia’s boarders.”

The use of the plural in the word aggressors is disingenuous. NATO and the U.S. are training “allies and partners across the globe” for a “real-world fight” against only one alleged aggressor, Latvia’s neighbor Russia. The same country that the massive DefenderEurope war games are aimed at. (Though in both series of exercises Belarus will also be targeted as a “frontline state.”)

As regards the launching of the Crystal Arrow exercise on March 23, the NATO report waxed lively: “U.S. Abrams tanks joined German Leopard tanks to race across the open field marking the start of an eight-day exercise at the Ādaži military training area, Latvia….”

It would have to have been the very archetype of Cold War nightmare themes among Russians in the Soviet Union to see American and German tanks on their border. Now they’re right there. And not alone.

Overlapping with the ground exercise, NATO also held three-day naval drills off the coasts of Latvia and Estonia with half of NATO’s Standing Naval Forces, Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1) and Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group One (SNMCMG1). NATO Standing Naval Forces are described by the bloc as “the core of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (Maritime)” which “provide constant high-readiness maritime capabilities that can quickly and effectively respond across the full spectrum of operations in support of any NATO operations.” The SNMG1 was led by the Canadian frigate HMCS Halifax.

By way of reminder, in the past twenty-two years NATO operations have included air and ground wars in Europe, Asia and Africa.

The SNMG1 and SNMCMG1 are permanently assigned to Northern and Western European waters, including the Baltic Sea, North Sea, Norwegian Sea “and their maritime approaches.” Russia borders the Norwegian Sea and the Baltic Sea with its Kaliningrad exclave where Russia has its Baltic Fleet.

The U.S. and NATO would desire nothing as much as detaching Kaliningrad (former German Königsberg) from Russia and evicting the Baltic Fleet – as it is supporting Ukraine’s claim to Crimea so as to evict Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. That dual objective accomplished, Russia is cut off from the West by water approaches to the North and Mediterranean Seas.

Through the incorporation of fourteen new Eastern European nations as members, and forty nations around the world as partners, in the last thirty years, NATO has transformed the Baltic and Black Seas into its military outposts. What separates the two seas is Ukraine, the final link in the military cordon the U.S. and NATO have solidified along Russia’s western border. What in former eras would have been known as a siege. With a naval blockade into the bargain.

ANTI-BELLUM

By Silvia FOTI

It was with great interest that I read the op-ed jointly penned by Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and his Lithuanian counterpart, Gabrielius Landsbergis, in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post. As could be expected, such initiatives are usually written to offer a rosy picture of the wonderful relations between two countries and the bright prospects for future cooperation. As a descendant of Lithuanian Jews, a frequent visitor to Lithuania ever since independence, and the co-author of a recent book on the rampant Holocaust distortion orchestrated by successive Lithuanian governments, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

On the one hand, it would not be difficult to create a false image of wonderful and flourishing relations between Israel and Lithuania, because the bilateral relations between the two countries have indeed developed exponentially during the past two decades, and especially since 2015, when Israel opened an embassy in Vilnius (Vilna). On the other hand, the underlying basis for the “honeymoon” described in the article by both foreign ministers is the proverbial “elephant in the room.” Israel’s absolute failure to categorically reject, and protest against, the false narrative of the Holocaust promoted by every Lithuanian government since the fall of the Soviet Union, is what has nurtured this ostensibly wonderful relationship.

The horrific fate of Lithuanian Jewry during the Holocaust is no secret. Nor is the highly significant role played in the murders by local collaborators from all strata of Lithuanian society. Of the approximately 220,000 Jews living under the Nazi occupation, 212,000 were murdered (96.4%, the highest percentage of victims among the large European Jewish communities). Some 90% of them were shot near their homes in Lithuania, in many cases by their neighbors.

If we add the more than 5,000 German, Austrian and French Jews murdered in Lithuania, and the approximately 20,000 Jews murdered in 1941-1942 by the 12th Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalion sent to Belarus in October 1941, the figure of victims is staggering for such a small country. What is virtually unknown, however, is that there were less than 1,000 Germans stationed in Lithuania during the Nazi occupation. Given the fact that all of these victims had to be murdered individually by shooting, and buried in some 250 mass graves, primarily in Lithuania (234 mass graves), but also in Belarus, one begins to grasp the incredibly critical role played by Lithuanian collaborators.

If Lithuania’s leaders had admitted the scope of local participation in Holocaust crimes, incorporated those unpleasant facts in its educational curricula, and make an honest effort to punish those perpetrators who had escaped prosecution, there would have been no reason for Israel to take “revenge” on the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators, or on the country as a whole. We could even bask in the friendship of these two erstwhile enemies.

CONTEMPORARY LITHUANIA, however, doesn’t deserve our friendship or cooperation. Instead of boldly and honestly confronting the tragedy of its Jewish population, Lithuania became a leader of the post-Communist Eastern European initiatives to distort the narrative of the Holocaust in four ways:

• It grossly minimized the crimes of local collaborators (none of whom have ever been punished in Lithuanian courts).

• It inflated the small number of Lithuanian Righteous.

• It has brazenly promoted the canard of equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes, and vigorously lobbied for the observance of a memorial day for all victims of totalitarian crimes, which would make International Holocaust Remembrance Day superfluous.

• And it has glorified anti-Soviet fighters, even if they committed Holocaust crimes which, in theory, should have disqualified from being turned into national heroes.

So when an article lavishing praise on the ostensibly wonderful contemporary relations between Israel and Lithuania opens with the quote of the Gaon of Vilna, who no doubt would have been murdered had he lived in Vilna during the Holocaust, that “The goal of the redemption is the redemption of truth,” one truly doesn’t know whether to cynically laugh or cry many tears.

jpost.com

Questions were raised in Canberra about Abbott’s obvious conflicts-of-interest in having intimate knowledge of the current Australian Liberal Party government’s trade secrets and his new role as the United Kingdom’s trade adviser. In Britain, there were also concerns about Abbott’s dual loyalties.

Australian shadow Attorney General Mark Dreyfus of the Labor Party was one of the politicians to raise the loyalty issue. In questioning Abbott’s new job in London, Dreyfus said, “It’s up to the [Scott] Morrison government to explain how a former Liberal PM can now work for a foreign power advising on matters potentially in direct conflict with Australia’s commercial interest.” British shadow Trade Minister Emily Thornberry of the Labor Party also voiced opposition to Abbott’s appointment, saying that Abbott had “never been involved in detailed trade negotiations, he thinks that issues like climate change and workers’ rights are just not important, and during the two years that he was prime minister of Australia he was personally responsible for killing off Australia’s car industry.” British Liberal Democratic party leader Sir Ed Davey said that Abbott had “no place in any British government.” Echoing opposition to Abbott, Kirsten Oswald, the Scottish National Party’s deputy leader in the House of Commons, called Abbott’s appointment “beyond indefensible.”

Abbott is not the only right-winger who has taken an official job with another government, something that is anathema to the nationalist policies of the political right. Valdas Adamkus, born Voldemaras Adamkavičius in Kaunas, Lithuania, later became a U.S. citizen. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. 5th Army Reserve’s military intelligence unit and later was a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Adamkus moved back to Lithuania, where he served as president from 1998 to 2003 and from 2004 to 2009. He renounced his U.S. citizenship at the U.S. embassy in Vilnius prior to becoming Lithuania’s president.

Toomas Hendrik Ilves was a U.S. citizen who worked for Radio Free Europe, which was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, from 1984 to 1993. Upon Estonia’s restoration of independence, Ilves, after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, became Estonia’s ambassador to the United States, Foreign Minister, and president of Estonia for a decade, between 2006 and 2016.

Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, served two terms, from 2004 to 2007 and 2008 to 2013. After leaving Georgia, Saakashvili served as the governor of Odessa Oblast in Ukraine from 2015 to 2016. His Georgian citizenship was stripped from him by the government in Tbilisi in 2015. Saakashvili acquired Ukrainian citizenship in 2015. In 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of his Ukrainian citizenship and he became a stateless person while living in the United States. In 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky restored Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship. Saakashvili, by far, has become a classic case of a leader-for-hire in any country that will have him.

The global political right becomes apoplectic when people advance the concept of “world citizens.” However, around the world there have been cases of right-wing governments pushing such a notion by hiring foreigners as their government officials. This has especially been pronounced in Israel, but succeeding governments argue that it is simply adhering to the “aliya< the right of Jews anywhere in the world to emigrate to Israel.

The United States has seen a number of its citizens renouncing their American citizenship in order to acquire high offices in other countries. Among them are President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, Afghan ambassador to China and the United States Eklil Ahmad Hakimi, Afghan ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghan ambassador to the United States Ishaq Shahryar, Foreign Minister Raffi Hovannisian of Armenia, Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian of Armenia, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of Great Britain, Latvian ambassador to the United States Ojars Kalnins, Premier of New South Wales Kristina Keneally, Director of the Central Bank of Taiwan and Minister Without Portfolio Kuan Chung-ming, President of Peru Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong Lawrence Lau, Deputy Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands Akierra Missick, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell of Grenada, Colombian ambassador to the United States Luis Alberto Moreno, President of Somalia Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Tien Hung-mao, and Ukrainian First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko.

U.S. citizen Natalie Jaresko served as Ukrainian Finance Minister from 2014 to 2016. She was conveyed Ukrainian citizenship but under U.S. law was not required to relinquish her American citizenship. She currently serves as the executive director of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico. Jaresko was not the only foreigner to serve in the government of President Poroshenko. Others included Lithuanian citizen Aivaras Abromavicius, who served as the Economy Minister and Georgian national Aleksandre Kvitashvili, who served as Health Minister. From 2004 to 2005, French citizen Salome Zurabishvili served as the Foreign Minister of Georgia in Saakashvili’s administration.

There were always suspicions about the U.S. citizenship status of Cook Islands Prime Minister Tom Davis, a Harvard graduate who conducted “medical research” for the U.S. armed forces and the NASA space agency.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was also a citizen of Germany. Right-wing 2016 U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada, belatedly renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2015 after it became a campaign issue. California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger retained his Austrian citizenship while serving in office. The current leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Andrew Scheer, is also a U.S. citizen. The former Governor General Michaëlle Jean, whose represented Queen Elizabeth as head of state, was also a citizen of France. While the head of Canada’s New Democratic Party, Thomas Mulcair also held French citizenship.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the right-wing National Party Barnaby Joyce was forced to resign his post in 2017 after a court discovered that he was, in fact, a citizen of New Zealand. Joyce’s election to the Parliament was invalidated. Australian law does not permit foreign citizens to hold office. Joyce renounced his New Zealand citizenship and he successfully ran again for Parliament. After his election, he was allowed to resume the post of deputy prime minister.

The nationality that Ivory Coast president Alassane Ouattara was not eligible to serve as either prime minister or president resulted in a 2002 judicial decision that conferred Ivorian citizenship on Ouattara and permitted him to run for president of the Ivory Coast. Ouattara was eventually successful in being elected president but his opponents maintain that he still is ineligible to be president because he was born in Burkina Faso and held Burkinabe citizenship. The complaints about Ouattara being a Burkinabe Muslim immigrant has resulted in sectarian violence between the Muslims of the north and Christians of the south.

As so-called “populist” leaders of the right call for enhanced immigration controls and tighter border security, it is both ironic and hypocritical that so many of them are willing to hold high political office in foreign countries while maintaining dual or multiple passports.

One of his recent “jobs” was to write an op-ed for the Irish Times in which he castigated the European Union for appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Linkevicius used a hoary old historical analogy comparing the EU with British leader Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement in 1938 of Nazi Germany’s Hitler.

Apart from the ignorant historical waffling, the other curious thing about Linkevicius’ op-ed piece in Ireland’s so-called “paper of record” was the timing. It was published on December 17, three days before EU foreign policy officials were to meet in Brussels on the issue of extending sanctions against Russia.

As it turned out, the EU agreed to extend sanctions on Moscow by another six months until July 31, 2019, when the matter will come up for review again.

For the past four years, the EU has imposed sanctions on Russia in line with Washington over pejorative claims that Moscow “annexed” Crimea. This claim is made in spite of the fact that the Crimean people voted in a referendum to secede from Ukraine, which had been taken over by a NATO/EU-backed Neo-Nazi coup, and to join the Russian Federation.

EU sanctions have been rolled over every six months for the past four years, each time given impetus by some new dubious issue, such as the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in July 2014 or the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England in March 2018.

Typical of the Baltic states and their rightwing governments, Linkevicius’ world view is dominated by an abiding Russophobia.

Before becoming Lithuania’s foreign minister in 2012, he was the country’s permanent representative to the NATO military alliance. The 58-year-old politician’s top concern is to ensure that European states never normalize relations with Russia. He is frequently quoted in Western media or writes op-ed pieces in which he lambasts European calls or inclinations for re-engagement with Moscow.

His recent diatribe in the Irish Times was thus his usual run-of-the-mill Russophobia. Given Lithuania’s appalling history of collaborating with Nazi Germany, it surely is twisted irony for Linkevicius to level duff analogies about Russia.

However, the poison pen of Linkevicius is not just a simple matter of one politician airing his warped view of the world. Linkevicius and his rightwing anti-Russian ilk are appointing themselves as the arbiters of relations between the entire 28-member EU bloc and Russia. In other words, a minority of ideologues who view everything through a prism of Russophobia are trying to dictate to the rest of Europe on how to conduct relations with its biggest and, arguably, most strategically important neighbor, Russia. And that dictated conduct is to be unrelentingly hostile. How democratic of Linkevicius.

The Republic of Ireland, like several other EU members, has counted the cost of sanctions on Russia dearly. Between 2014 and 2016, Irish exports to Russia were slashed by half, from €722 to €364 million. The loss was due to Moscow enacting counter-sanctions on EU countries which badly hit Irish agricultural exports of beef, pork and dairy.

As with other EU economies, the Irish have been rueing the whole sanctions war with Moscow. Last year, a senior Irish government delegation travelled to Russia in a bid to “reset relations”. As the Irish Times reported: “Trade the target as Ireland seeks a reset in relations with Russia.”

More recent data shows that trade relations between the Irish republic and Russia have recovered hugely from the low-point in 2016. Total bilateral trade had risen by 40 per cent to €800 million for the year ending 2017, which is almost back to the level it was before the Ukraine conflict started. (Ireland’s bilateral trade with Lithuania is estimated to be about half that with Russia.)

There are plenty of indicators that the Irish economy is still struggling from the 2008 global financial crash. Ireland’s rural economy is particularly hurting with harrowing cases of farmers going bust and having their dwellings repossessed due to debt arrears.

As with many other EU countries, the Irish economy and society can’t afford the continuing futile new Cold War with Russia. The premises for the conflict are entirely bogus but the damage is entirely palpable for many ordinary people from loss of jobs and business.

The crucial thing about the EU sanctions policy on Russia is that it requires unanimity among the 28 member states for the measures to be extended.

If, say Ireland, were to have voted against the renewal of sanctions at the last December 21 European Council meeting, then the EU would be have to revoke its policy against Russia.

Given the background trends in the Irish economy and the behind-the-scenes moves by Irish officials to restore trade relations with Moscow, it can be fairly speculated that the Lithuanian foreign minister spotted a possible “weak link” in the EU chain of sanctions.

Linkevicius’ article in the Irish Times on December 17 was a diplomatic hit job, knowing that the paper is widely read by Irish representatives in the Brussels administration.

There was no news value in Linkevicius’ op-ed piece. It was a pointed sabotage against any notion of normalizing trade ties between the EU and Russia. Historical appeals about appeasing Nazi Germany were grotesque falsification of current events, and a blatant bid at moral blackmailing. The article was headlined: “How many wake up calls about Putin do we need?” More to the point, the Irish Times should publish an article with headline: “How many wake up calls about Russophobia do we need?’

Here’s a prediction. Next time the EU meets to decide on extending sanctions against Russia on July 31, you can bet Linkevicius will dust off another poison pen piece to some paper in a European capital considered to be going soft (that is, coming to its senses) on ending sanctions.

Photo: Flickr

The US Defense Department's 2019 fiscal budget became law on Aug. 13. It allocates $6.5 billion for the European Defense Initiative (EDI), $2 billion more than the previous fiscal budget, and nearly double the $3.4 billion the military received in fiscal 2017. The increase is evidence of the focus on building up a robust military force to threaten Russia. Infrastructure improvements in the Baltic states and Poland are a high priority.

According to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry, the updates to the Lithuanian armed forces’ Kazlų Rūda training ground, in the district of Marijampolė, to get it up to NATO standards, are almost complete. The facility will be used to train air crews and controllers. This is a joint project with the United States, funded through the European Reassurance Initiative. American B-52 strategic bombers have already dropped dummy munitions there. The firing range was part of the NATO Saber Strike exercise that was held in June. US National Guard soldiers are there to prepare Kazlų Rūda for another exercise.

The training ground is less than 60 km. from the Russian border. This is a risky move. On Aug. 7, a Spanish warplane accidentally fired an air-to-air missile over Estonia in the Pangodi area of Estonia’s Tartu county, less than 50 miles from that country’s eastern border with Russia. Suppose it had been an air-to-surface missile that went astray and landed on Russian territory? Why should NATO’s training events be conducted so dangerously close, making the alliance responsible for such perilous possibilities?

In July, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry signed a contract with the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) in regard to infrastructure development projects that will significantly improve the training conditions. Thirteen facilities are to be completed for the Lithuanian armed forces by 2021. According to Vice Minister of National Defense Giedrimas Jeglinskas, the scale of the NATO deployments necessitates a larger military infrastructure to accommodate those forces. Once the upgrade is completed, Kazlų Rūda will be the only military facility in the country able to host and provide logistics for a brigade-size force including hardware. The modernization program also applies to the Gen Silvestras Žukauskas training ground — a joint project funded through Lithuania’s military budget, the NATO Security Investment Program, and the US European Reassurance Initiative. The NATO Security Investment Program (NSIP) is also financing the construction of facilities to accommodate the NATO Air Policing Mission, Host Nation Support, military training grounds, and, in part, the NATO Force Integration Unit. 

Estonia’s Amari air force base near Russia’s border is another facility that is being updated to support American A-10, F-15, F-16, F-22, and F-35 aircraft, which will include refueling infrastructure as well as special ops forces.

The Baltic states signed Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs), allowing the presence of American forces within their borders as far back as early 2017.

In May, the foreign ministers of the Baltic states paid a group visit to Washington to ask for a larger US military presence in their countries. Back then, they said the current build-up would only be the starting point for a larger effort. So far NATO has deployed four battalion-sized battle groups (roughly 4,500 troops) to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. In June, all three Baltic states came out in support of the idea of building a permanent US military base in Poland.

Added to this is the ongoing militarization of the Scandinavian peninsula that goes largely unnoticed. And the rearming of Poland. And NATO’s build-up of logistics infrastructure in Eastern and Northern Europe. And the formation of a military alliance between the US and two northern European states: Sweden and Finland. And the US Air Force presence that has expanded in Eastern Europe. Don’t forget the tensions in the Black Sea near Russia’s shores. Russia is being confronted by 29 NATO member states.

Given all this, can anyone claim that Moscow’s concerns are unjustified? NATO talking about how Russia is threatening the Baltic states (or whoever) is like the pot calling the kettle black. The media should be paying more attention to the alliance’s war preparations so that readers could form a rational opinion about who is really threatening who and whose behavior is provocative. 

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion

In his book 2017: War with Russia published a few months ago, former deputy commander of NATO Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff predicts that to prevent NATO expansion Russia will annex eastern Ukraine and invade the Baltic state of Latvia in May 2017. Most dismiss the book as sensationalist fantasy, but it draws attention to the fact that NATO is in fact aggressively expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.

Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.

The argument begins with the assertion that Vladimir Putin (conflated with Russia itself, as though he were an absolute leader, a second Stalin) wants to revive the Soviet Union. His occasional comment that the collapse of the USSR was a “catastrophe” is repeatedly cited, totally out of context, as proof of this expansionist impulse. It continues with the observation that there has been tension between Russia and the Baltic states since their independence in 1991. And while Russia has never threatened the Baltic states with invasion or re-incorporation, the fear mongers like to conjure up Sir Richard’s World War III scenario.

So it’s not difficult to understand why NATO, in its largest war games since the end of the Cold War, would choose Poland, which borders both Russia (the Kaliningrad enclave) and Lithuania, as their setting. Dubbed Anaconda-2016, the ten-day exercise involves 31,000 troops from 24 countries including non-NATO members Kosovo, Macedonia and Finland. Germany, whose foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has actually criticized the exercise as “saber-rattling and warmongering,” has sent 400 military engineers but no combat troops.

This follows the June announcement that NATO would deploy four multinational battalions (about 4000 troops) in the Baltic states and Poland to “bolster their defenses against Russia.” The idea is that Russian actions in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014 show that Russia poses a grave threat to European security.

It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s.  It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”

But since the Baltics have become the focus of (supposed) NATO-Russian contestation, let’s look at what the problem is all about.

The three states, with just six million people today, were part of the Russian Empire under the tsars from the 18th century up to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. While most of the component parts of that empire soon became Soviet Socialist Republics (such as George, Armenia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc.), others, including Poland, Finland and the Baltic states gained their independence at that time.

But in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there remained large ethnic Russian, and Russian-speaking minorities, as there are today. In 1940 the Soviet army invaded these countries and incorporated them into the USSR. This was part of a strategy to avoid German invasion through the signing of the “Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact” that also meant the temporary division of Poland. (We can criticize this, as I surely do, but that’s the history.) A year later the Nazis invaded the Baltic republics and the Soviet Union as a whole. But the Soviets won the war, and the Baltics remained Soviet up to 1991.

The Baltic states, never truly happy campers in the Soviet Union, initiated the breakup of the country when, from June 1987, protests in Latvia and Estonia led to demands for secession, which the USSR recognized in September 1991.  These demands for independence were generally supported by ethnic Russians in the republics. They no doubt expected that they would retain their longstanding linguistic rights.

(This issue of language rights is a huge problem in the former Soviet republics, including especially Ukraine. But it is little understood nor appreciated by U.S.opinion-makers, especially U.S. State Department officials and their media echo chamber.)

Today the Baltic republics have a population of a little over six million, including about one million ethnic Russians. The Russian figure has declined by about one-third since 1991. It is currently lowest in Lithuania (6 to 14%), and 24-30% in the other states.

The restoration of independence produced a wave of nationalist sentiment that included an attack on existing rights of ethnic Russians, distinguished from the others less by looks than by language. As recently as May 2016 a survey co-conducted by the Estonian and Latvian governments found that 89% of ethnic Latvians and 84% of ethnic Estonians are unhappy with this presence and want the Russians to “move back to Russia,” although many are from families who have lived in these countries for centuries.

In Latvia, the State Language Law (passed in 2000) requires submission of documents to local and national government to be submitted in Latvian only, submitting documents to government (local included) and state public enterprises is allowed in Latvian only, as the sole national language. (Earlier they could be submitted in Russia, or even English or German.) Aside from being perceived by the minority as an attack on their own culture and identity, it is a hardship especially for older citizens who have never mastered the “national” language. A similar situation pertains in Estonia. Protests not only by Russia but by other countries have resulted in rulings against Latvia by the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Moscow sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians from Ukraine to the Baltics. This should not be so hard to understand. But that does not mean that Moscow—however annoyed it is by NATO expansion to its borders—has plans to invade its neighbors and spark a general conflagration. NATO in 2013 had 3,370,000 service members in 2013, to Russia’s 766,000 troops. NATO expenditures in 2015 were $892 billion on defense in 2015, compared to Russia’s $70 billion.

The idea that Russia poses a threat to any NATO nation is as plausible as the notion that Saddam Hussein threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction. Or that Libya’s Gadhafy was preparing a genocidal campaign against his own people. Or that Iran plans to use nukes to wipe Israel off the map. These are all examples of the Big Lie.

Wait, some will ask, what about Georgia? Didn’t Russia invade and divide that country? Yes, it did, in defense of South Ossetia, which had resisted inclusion in the Republic of Georgia formed in 1991, fearing its ultranationalist leadership. South Ossetia, inhabited by an Iranian people, had been included as an autonomous oblast in the Georgian Soviet Republic but as the Soviet Union dissolve sought unity with Russia. So did Abkhazia. These two “breakaway republics” had been involved in a “frozen conflict” with Georgia until real war broke out in August 2008, producing a Russian invasion of Georgia and Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia as well as Abkhazia as independent states.

One can see this as tit-for-tat for the U.S. dismemberment of Serbia in 1999 and subsequent recognition of Kosovo as an independent state in February 2008. This act in plain violation of international law, condemned by U.S. allies such as Greece, Romania and Spain, was explained by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a sui generiscase. Well then, that 1999 NATO war on Serbia has led to more sui generis cases, hasn’t it?

And what about Ukraine? The limited moves Russia has taken there have been in direct response of the U.S.-led effort to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, most notably in backing the pro-NATO (and neo-fascist) forces who pulled off the coup of February 22, 2014.  Any support Russia has offered to ethnic Russians in the Donbass opposed to the ultranationalist (and dysfunctional) new regime in Kiev hardly constitute an “invasion.”

It’s all about NATO. Unfortunately, the U.S. masses don’t even know what NATO is, or how it’s expanding. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press; its existence is never problematized, or discussed in U.S. political debates (except when Trump says the U.S.’s NATO allies are getting a “free ride”); the fact that its dissolution is not subject to questioning is all very depressing.

But wait, I must correct myself. Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, got an op-ed published in the Boston Globe a few days ago, entitled “Is NATO Necessary?” Without calling for its outright abolition, he declares, “We need less NATO, not more.”

But the next day the newspaper website included (as if by way of apology) an op-ed by Nicholas Burns, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the George W. Bush administration and now professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It’s entitled, “Why NATO is vital for American interests.”

Burns adduces four reasons for NATO’s continuing necessity.

“The first is Vladimir Putin’s aggression — his division of Georgia and Ukraine, his annexation of Crimea, his threats to the Baltic states, and his military’s harassment of US forces in international airspace and international waters.” (In other words, Russia’s restrained response to NATO’s provocations is reasons for NATO to continue, as a provocateur. And what “threats” of Putin can Burns cite? There have been none.)

“The second challenge is a dramatically weakening and potentially fractured European Union, now exacerbated by the possible departure of the United Kingdom.” (In other words, as the contradictions within European capitalism intensify, the U.S. must keep its camp together as—if nothing else—an anti-Russian alliance. What logic is this, other than fascist logic?)

“The third is the tsunami of violence spreading from the Levant and North Africa into Europe itself.” (In other words, when NATO actions result in so much pain in Libya and Afghanistan, and U.S.-led wars to so much chaos in Iraq and Syria that a million people flood into Europe, destabilizing European unity on the question of migration policy, the U.S. needs to be there somehow using the military alliance to hold it all together.)

“The fourth is uncertain and sometimes seemingly unconfident European and American leadership in the face of these combined challenges.”

(In other words, the U.S. needs to instill confidence by taking such actions as the invasion of Iraq that Burns supported as a State Department official, and the Libya slaughter he supported as a Boston Globe op-ed writer.)

Strength. Power. Confidence.

Burns and Gen. Jim Jones (former National Security Advisor for Pres. Obama) “believe NATO should station military forces “on a permanent basis in Poland, the Baltic states, the Black Sea region, and the Arctic,” and that the “US should extend lethal military assistance to Ukraine so that it can defend itself.” As though it has been attacked.

His final point is “that our most complex challenge may come from within the NATO countries themselves. Our strongest link is that we are all democracies. But, many of us, including the United States, are confronting a wave of isolationist sentiment and ugly extremism in our domestic political debates. NATO will need strong, unflinching American leadership to cope with these challenges.”

This conclusion is of course a reference to Donald Trump and his “extremism” in daring to—-among his many inchoate and clueless pronouncements—opine that the U.S. is protecting Europe for NATO, but spending too much money on it, and Germany should do more for Ukraine. It seems a statement in favor of that Iron Lady Hillary, who was so unflinching in her support of the Iraq War, and the Libya regime change, and who is hot to trot to bomb government buildings in Damascus.

«We, the parents of children in ethnic-minority schools … oppose the city’s nationalist and discriminatory policy toward the education of ethnic minorities. Today we are defending ourselves and our children», stated Renata Cytacka, the leader of the Parents Forum for Polish Schools in Lithuania.

«We’re furious about the way the Lithuanian authorities are treating us … They have a double standard, under which some schools receive accreditation while others do not», emphasized Tatiana Korzeniewska, a spokesperson from the Committee to Protect the Władysław Syrokomla School (named for the Polish poet).

The Polish protesters spoke out to defend not only the Polish but also the Russian schools in Vilnius.

The demonstrations were supported by Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania (AWPL), a political party led by Valdemar Tomaševski, a member of the European Parliament. That party works alongside Russian NGOs to fight Lithuania’s assimilation policy. AWPL included representatives of the Russian Alliance on its ballot during the elections to the Lithuanian Seimas in 2008, and again during European Parliament elections in 2009. And that party affiliated itself with the Russian Alliance once more during the 2011 local elections.

There are currently around 200,000 representatives of the Polish diaspora residing in Lithuania (data from 2011). The history of that diaspora can be traced back to the era of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, when Lithuania was under the rule of the Polish crown. Šalčininkai is seen as the most thoroughly Polish district in Lithuania: 80% of the population there is ethnically Polish. As are almost 19% of the inhabitants of Vilnius.

The Lithuanian government is trying to assimilate its ethnic minorities – which includes Poles. Poles are threatened with fines for posting bilingual signs in places where they make up a large percentage of the population, and the spelling of their surnames is forcibly changed to Lithuanian. Poles even suffer discrimination when land is privatized in «Polish» regions.

Seventy-nine percent of Lithuania’s Poles consider Polish to be their native language (according to 2011 census data). In the 1990s, over 20,000 ethnically Polish children were educated in Polish, but by 2012 that number had dwindled to 13,000. There is no precise data for 2016, but by all indications the Polish language is being increasingly marginalized. The state claims that the closure of Polish schools is a purely economic decision, although money is available for private Lithuanian schools.

Robert Winnicki, the leader of the National Movement party and a deputy in the Polish Sejm, claims, «This problem has been going on for 25 years now. Poland has the wrong strategic objectives for its relationship with the Republic of Lithuania. The goal of the Republic of Lithuania is to ‘Lithuanian-ize’ its Polish minority… This became the goal of the Lithuanian government during the interwar period and has remained a top priority since 1991… The Republic of Lithuania has been successfully ‘Lithuanian-izing’ its Poles for 25 years and Poland has not responded in any way whatsoever». 

Winnicki has called this a betrayal on the part of Warsaw and has urged the Polish government to add some ultimatums to its ongoing dialog with Lithuania.

But instead, the pro-government media in Poland (Nowa Europa Wschodnia, Gazeta Polska Codziennie, and others) have launched an attack on Valdemar Tomaševski and Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania. Polish activists in Lithuania have also been labeled as «agents of the Kremlin».

Przemysław Żurawski vel Grajewski, a representative of the Polish President’s National Development Council and an advisor to the foreign minister, expressed Warsaw’s official point of view. «Those Poles who insist that relations with Lithuania be severed until Vilnius recognizes the rights of Lithuanian Poles are committing a sin against Poland», he claimed. He has made other statements that are even more scathing. Previously, while speaking of his fellow ethnic Poles from the «Eastern Borderlands» (the Kresy region), he had this to say: «Every nation already has its own share of idiots. So it’s a good thing that the people who call themselves the ‘kresowiacy’ are not governed by Poland».

Warsaw is sacrificing the interests of Lithuanian Poles, hoping to work with Vilnius to create and then take leadership of an anti-Russian union in the Baltics. Lithuanian Poles are doomed to be victimized by the assimilation policy for ethnic minorities that is being pursued by the Lithuanian government. In 1989 there were 285,000 Poles living in Lithuania, but today 85,000 fewer remain. 

This amount is intended for testing and the commissioning of the LNG terminal itself. The next tanker from Qatar is expected in Poland in the first quarter of 2016, while commercial deliveries are not expected before the middle of 2016. Poland’s former Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz is loudly declaring that thanks to this LNG terminal, her country will no longer be dependent on Russian gas. Kopacz has also pointed out that the LNG terminal in Swinoujscie is the first investment of its kind not only in Poland, but in Eastern Europe. 

This is the front side of the story. Now let us try to figure out if what is happening really means gas independence for Poland. To start with, it may help to look at what is going on next door to Poland in Lithuania. The local LNG terminal at the Port of Klaipeda has already become a monument to the socially and economically disastrous policy of the Lithuanian authorities, where ordinary consumers are being forced to pay the price for the anti-Russian.

In order to recoup the costs of the terminal’s construction and its operation relating to the reception of Norwegian LNG, the Lithuanian government, in the style of an ultimatum, has called for businesses to buy part of the gas (at least 25 per cent of the total volume consumed) at the so-called ‘market price of the terminal’, which is higher than the price established by Gazprom for Russian pipeline gas. What’s more, it is higher both in terms of the ‘base’ price and the price taking into account the 20 per cent discount that Gazprom recently granted specifically to Lithuania.

The company responsible for the capital’s heating, Vilniaus energija, has no choice but to buy 65 per cent of the gas it needs from the LNG terminal at Klaipeda. As a result, heating costs for the residents of Vilnius, which fell following the reduction in the price of Russian gas, began to rise again after the LNG terminal was put into operation. The Lithuanian authorities’ plans to resell the liquefied natural gas to their Baltic neighbours in an effort to try and compensate for its losses have also failed. Estonia has adopted a wait-and-see approach, while Latvia is in favour of continuing its cooperation with Gazprom.

It seems that Poland has learned nothing from the experience of its Lithuanian neighbours, however. Only the source of their external energy dependence has changed. In Lithuania it has been swapped for Norway, and in Poland for Qatar.

Over the past two years, meanwhile, the supply of liquefied natural gas from Qatar has been steadily declining. An exception can possibly only be made for the Dolphin project, which provides for the export of Qatar’s gas to neighbouring monarchies of the Persian Gulf – the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. Qatar’s energy ministry stated back in September 2014 that the country had no plans to become an alternative supplier for Europe. The amount of gas supplied to Europe by all of Russia’s competitors, with the exception of Norway, fell considerably in 2014, while Gazprom’s percentage was almost five times higher than that of Norway. In addition, the Blue Stream and Nord Stream offshore cross-border pipeline systems ensured around 35 per cent of the total transit volumes to Europe.

In this regard, the Turkish media have been painting an even more graphic picture by pointing out the naivety of attempts to replace Russian gas with gas from Qatar or some other more ‘amicable’ country. As the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet points out, the authorities in Ankara should not forget that «the main supplier of natural gas to Turkey is Russia, then Iran, then Azerbaijan. Turkey is dependent on Russia and Iran for at least 73 per cent of its natural gas». Turkey imports 3.04 million tons of LNG from Algeria, 1.08 million tons from Nigeria, 0.81 million tons from Qatar, and 0.2 million tons from Norway, but more than a quarter of the electricity is produced at power stations operating on Russian natural gas.

This is the real balance of power on the energy map of Europe today. The situation being what it is, any attempts to replace Russian gas with gas from Norway let alone Qatar (and such projects also exist in Serbia and other countries in South East Europe) are blatant profiteering. And, as always, it will be the people of Europe who will have to pay the price for the profiteering of their own governments.