After 25 years of freedom, Lithuania worries that Nato splits and US isolationism might open the door to Russian aggression
Donald Trump appeared overnight on a wall in the Lithuanian capital this spring larger than lifesize and locked in a kiss with Russian chairman Vladimir Putin.
The mural was mean as satire, a nod to the unexpected reciprocal appreciation between two macho demagogues on opposite sides of the world, and a wink at the long darknes of Soviet history that still hangs over the region.
Now, with Trump president-elect and Americas commitment to protecting the Baltics in question for the first time in decades, it seems to express something much darker.
This was a joke, about two tyrants, told artist Mindaugas Bonanu, whose image references a famous photo of two socialist leaders kissing that later became a Berlin wall mural. At the beginning we just wanted to show two douchebags kissing one another somewhere in the border between east and west. Now its a emblem of how darkest dreams can come true.
Trumps victory has been greeted with trepidation far beyond Americas perimeters. His confusing collect of policy promises and pride in his own unpredictability threaten disruption to the geopolitical order from South Korea to Syria.
But those dreads are felt particularly keenly in the Baltic states, western outposts of the Soviet empire less than three decades ago , now vulnerable republics on the doorstep of an increasingly assertive Russia.
For years in Lithuania, fear of their former occupiers has been tempered by a firm belief that America was covering their backs. Etched into the wall of city hall in Vilnius is a passage from a 2002 speech by George W Bush, long-forgotten in Washington DC but national legend here. Anyone who would choose Lithuania as an enemy has also made an adversary of the United States of America, it proclaims. That decisive referendum of trust arrived even before the still-new nation and its neighbouring Baltic states had been greeted into Nato, and helped underpin the regions renaissance.
Now, 15 years later, they are worrying for the first time if the promise will hold. Lithuanians and other Baltic nations have been concerned since Trump rose to prominence as a candidate about his apparent appreciation for Putin, a human they see as a dangerous and predatory autocrat.
They have watched the Russian leader foment war in Georgia and Ukraine, and seize Crimea, and have warned that they could be next, if Putin believes the protection from their US and European allies is faltering.
What we are trying to say is that everything we have achieved over the past 25 years is at stake, told Vaidotas Urbelis of the defence ministry, laying out the growing threat to Lithuania from Russian aggression.
Few in this tiny nation of three million think they could stand alone against their vast neighbour.
So when, in the run-up to the election, Trump refused to confirm his commitment to Nato, it brought their worst dread a step closer. He had already demanded that the alliances European members create their defence spending if they want to enjoy the security it offer. Lithuania, which recently reintroduced conscription and expects to meet the Nato spending target next year, has no quibbles with that.
Some of specific comments were quite legitimate I would say: criticism with regard to Europeans who are not paying enough attention to their own security , not spending enough resources, said foreign minister Linas Linkeviius.
More disturbing were remarks in a New York Times interview in July, where reference is appeared to question the commitment to common defence that lies at the heart of the alliance, enshrined as article five of its constitution.
Asked if Nato members including the new members in the Baltics could count on the US if assaulted by Russia, he said: Have they fulfilled their obligations to us? If they fulfil their obligations to us, the answer is yes.
Nobody in Lithuania wants to jeopardise the countrys most important relationship before Trump has even taken office. Politicians from all regions of the spectrum are insisting that his comments were just campaign talk, while frantically seeking reassurance from Trumps Republican allies. Congressman Peter King promised Baltic nations on election night that the US would honour its Nato commitments: America will be there. Donald Trump will be there.
But nor are they mince terms about what is at stake. If Trump backs away from the principle of common defence which has been invoked only once after the 9/11 attacks some Lithuanians believe the alliance will be destroyed, and one of Putins main goals achieved. If article five is revisited, it will be bad not just for Lithuania but for Europe and the entire north Atlantic community, Linkeviius told. If we agree that Nato is still important and relevant … article five is at the core.
Even more chilling for those willing to trust Trump was just indulging in election politicking were statements from key ally Newt Gingrich, who rejected Estonia the only Baltic nation that has hit Nato military spending targets for years as virtually part of Russia and scarcely worth defending. Im not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St Petersburg, he told CBS.
Many supposed this sounded like a line from Putins propaganda playbook. Russias president would love to see the end of Nato, which he considers a hostile force-out expanding on his doorstep, and most in the Baltic countries believe he resents their independence.
Recent Russian war game have, says Urbelis, included simulated operations on Nato territory. The biggest topic is, what are the Russians up to? Are they truly prepared to risk a big war for the Baltic countries? Whats the award? Nato? Take some pieces of Nato territory and make it obsolete?
Critics have accused Lithuanians of paranoia about Russia. You have a kind of phantom leg syndrome the Soviet Union is gone but you still feel the pain, a mocking European politician told his Lithuanian equivalent a few years ago.
But Lithuanians argue they are simply realists, who have learned from bitter experience that they will pay for naivety with blood. Soviet occupation is still vivid, living memory for many, and history gives further cause for wariness of their vast neighbour. Once a regional power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania came under Moscows control in the 18 th century, when Russia also tried to stamp out Lithuanian identity, banning volumes in Lithuanian and persecuting the Roman Catholic church.
Their concerns are anything but theoretical. Instantly south-west of Lithuania is the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, where it has been ramping up troops and military hardware. Those weapons, and Russias close relationship with neighbouring Belarus, entails the Baltics could be swiftly cut off from the rest of Europe, if Lithuanias short stretch of perimeter with Poland was threatened.
You could call it[ Kaliningrad] an unsinkable aircraft carrier which could avoid forces coming to the Baltics, told Urbelis.
This could construct defending the Baltics so costly to Nato, in lives and weapons, that many dread they would be abandoned to their fate. This is one reason that a cast-iron promise of reciprocal defence is so important, but Baltic nations have also been asking for more troops inside the area they fear that Russia might try to seal off.
Propaganda wars and real Russian aggressivenes have induced other nations more receptive to Baltic warns. We joke that Russia helped us promote this work, says Tomas Ceponis of the ministry of defences info warfare department. Crimea and Georgia were eye-openers.
Up to 4,000 Nato troops are being stationed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the alliance is increasing its own war game of the states of the region. But many in Lithuania fear that years of ignoring Russias threat have left their country vulnerable.
The past eight years have changed the strategic situation in Europe, and Putin was allowed to do that, tells former minister of defence Rasa Jukneviien. Now we are living a very dangerous situation in Europe.
At a former courthouse used by the KGB and Gestapo as prison, torture chamber, interrogation centre and execution cell, the grim memory of the Soviet Union has been preserved, as memorial and advising. Trumps election builds its message, for some Lithuanians, all the more urgent.
I am a little bit scared, acknowledges Darius, a 23 -year-old history student who works there as a guidebook. History is terrible: I hope it will not be repeated.
Read more: www.theguardian.com
