People’s Republic of China in the Baltic States Edited by Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova and Kārlis Bukovskis, Riga, Latvian Institute of International Affairs, 2023, 154 pp., ISBN 978-9934-567-67-4
This collection of analytic essays describing political/security, economic, and people-to-people interactions between Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides a welcome and useful elucidation of similarities and differences among the Baltic states. It also identifies (albeit without specifically doing so) the kinds of challenges facing all small and mid-sized countries in their dealings with much larger powers. Asymmetries of scale in the size of populations, firms, government bureaucracies, and other capacities make it difficult to identify and exploit opportunities, maintain multifaceted relationships, and manage the deluge and sometimes manipulative intent of initiatives from the larger partner. Small state governments must play a larger brokering and facilitating role than is true in bigger economies because sub-national actors have limited knowledge and capacity. This is certainly the case with respect to Baltic state interactions with China. Moreover, as these essays make clear, disparities in size and national objectives create vulnerabilities and dependencies that can be manipulated by the larger partner. A recurring leitmotif of the book is that China attempts to exploit dependencies for political reasons.
For the complete book review, read it online or download the text above.
Significant progress has been made in improving the defense situation in the Baltic states since 2014, but NATO can take some relatively modest steps to further enhance its deterrence and defense posture in the region, according to a report by Michael O’Hanlon and Christopher Skaluba, which was based on an Atlantic Council study visit to Lithuania. The Atlantic Council was kind enough to include me on the trek, which began in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and included visits to troops in the field and the port of Klaipeda. I largely concur with Mike and Chris’s comments and supplement them below with several additional observations.
First, one can understand the preoccupation of Lithuania’s senior political and military leadership with the country’s security situation. Lithuania has had a difficult history with the Soviet Union and Russia. Some in Vilnius believe that Moscow regards the Baltic states as “temporarily lost territory.”
A Russian military invasion of the Baltic states is not a high probability. However, the Lithuanians cannot ignore a small probability, especially in light of the Kremlin’s recent rhetoric, the Russian military’s ongoing modernization of its conventional forces and exercise pattern of the past five years, and Russia’s use of military force to seize Crimea and conduct a conflict in Donbas.
When the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defense (MNOD) looks around its neighborhood, it can see specific reasons for concern. Russia is upgrading its military presence in the Kaliningrad exclave on Lithuania’s southwestern border. The MNOD now counts Kaliningrad as hosting some twenty thousand Russian military personnel, including a naval infantry unit and substantial anti-access, area denial capabilities, such as advanced surface-to-air missiles. The Lithuanians assess that the Russian military could mount a large ground attack from Belarus, to the east of Lithuania (the border is less than twenty miles from downtown Vilnius). These forces are backed by an additional 120,000 personnel in Russia’s Western Military District, including a tank army. Russia has substantial air assets in the region as well as warships in the Baltic Sea.
For its part, Lithuania can muster fourteen thousand soldiers and sailors (four thousand of whom are conscripts serving just nine months). They are backed up by five thousand volunteers, similar to the U.S. National Guard. Under NATO’s enhanced forward presence program, a German-led NATO battlegroup adds 1,300 troops, mainly from Germany, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. In addition, NATO member air forces rotate small fighter squadrons into Lithuania to provide air policing for the Baltic states.
Second, Lithuania has a logical plan to enhance its defense capabilities. The MNOD is making good use of its defense dollars (Lithuania now meets NATO’s two percent of gross domestic product goal, having tripled its defense expenditures over the past six years). Eschewing shiny objects such as F-16 jets, the MNOD focuses on upgrading the capabilities of its two primary ground units, a mechanized brigade and a recently-established motorized brigade. The main procurement programs of the past three years have purchased infantry fighting vehicles, self propelled artillery and short-range surface-to-air missiles to equip the brigades.
In the event of war, the forces in Lithuania would likely fight a defensive holding action while awaiting NATO reinforcements. The MNOD and Ministry of Transport are working together to enhance the country’s ability to flow in NATO forces, including by upgrading the rollon/roll-off capacity at the port of Klaipeda and building a European standard gauge railroad line from Poland to the main base of Lithuania’s mechanized brigade. The railroad line, which o obviates the need to change the railroad gauge at the Polish-Lithuanian border, a cumbersome process involving changing out the wheels of railcars, ultimately will be extended north to Latvia and Estonia.
Third, the Lithuanians value NATO’s enhanced forward presence in the form of the NATO battlegroup. The battlegroup is fully integrated into Lithuania’s Iron Wolf Brigade, and in wartime would come under the tactical control of the brigade. The rotational NATO force is based with and trains side-by-side with major elements of that brigade.
One potential question is, if Russian forces were to cross the border and the Iron Wolf Brigade deployed, then how quickly would the NATO battlegroup take the field with it? The latter would need a NATO command to do so, and likely also national authorizations from Berlin, The Hague and Prague. Hopefully, those authorizations would be transmitted early as a crisis developed so that the NATO battlegroup could deploy immediately. It adds significantly to Lithuanian combat capabilities, including by providing the only armor unit in the country.
Fourth, as pleased as Vilnius is to have a NATO military presence, the Lithuanians very much would like to add a U.S. component to it. With a U.S. armored brigade combat team deployed in Poland on a rotational basis, the U.S. military has the assets to consider periodically rotating an armored company to Lithuania (and to Latvia and Estonia). These rotations would be useful military exercises in case there is a crisis that requires a reinforcement move from Poland to Lithuania through the Suwalki Gap.
Lithuania is moving in the right direction in bolstering its defense capabilities, with prudent steps taken over the past six years and sensible plans for the future. As Mike and Chris point out, modest steps by NATO and, I would argue, the United States could significantly add to the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture in the Baltics.
This lecture is the first in a new series co-sponsored by The Europe Center and the Stanford Archaeology Center on how modern Europe has been shaped by the concepts, materials and ideology of its past inhabitants.
This first speaker highlights both the ecological and socio-political ramifications of conquest. Based on work undertaken in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, Dr. Aleksander Pluskowski discusses the way that relationships created during one of the most dynamic epochs of European history, the period of crusading, have left a profound legacy for modern Europe. The process of crusading resulted in massively modified landscapes and catalyzed population reconfiguration at the frontiers of Europe, during the period of Christian expansion. The archaeo-historical backdrop to these events is presented, along with a discussion of how Europe and the relationship Europe has with non-Christian societies, was permanently altered.
Aleksander Pluskowski's research focuses on frontier societies, colonization and ecological diversity in medieval Europe. He is primarily concerned with the nuanced relationships between ecology and culture, moving towards a complete integration of environmental and social archaeology, history and art history. His ultimate aim is to further a holistic understanding of this formative period of European society, contributing to the management of cultural and ecological heritage today. His other interests include cult praxis in the past and the construction of religious identities.
Welcome Remarks – Eric T. Wakin, Robert H. Malott Director of Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Opening Remarks – Amir Weiner, Stanford University
9:15-10:45 AM – Chair: Amir Weiner
Toomas Hiio, Estonian War Museum. Multi-ethnic (or Multi-national) Student Body of the University of Tartu and the WW I: Choices, Political Movements, Volunteers, Mobilizations, and Postwar Consequences
Darius Staliunas, Lithuanian Institute of History. Anti-Jewish Violence in Lithuania at the Turn of the 20th Century
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM Chair: Aivars Stranga, The University of Latvia
Ēriks Jēkabsons, University of Latvia. The War for Independence of Latvia and the United States
Tomas Balkelis, Vilnius University. Paramilitarism in Lithuania: Violence, Civic Activism and Nation-making, 1918–1920
Conference organizers: Professors Lazar Fleishman (Slavic Department) and Amir Weiner (History Department)
Sponsored by: Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Office of the Provost, Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Global Studies Division, The Europe Center, Stanford University Libraries, Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of History, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center.
Mark von Hagen teaches the history of Eastern Europe and Russia, with a focus on Ukrainian-Russian relations, at Arizona State University, after teaching 24 years at Columbia University, where he also chaired the history department and directed the Harriman Institute. At the Harriman Institute, he developed Ukrainian studies in the humanities and social sciences. He was elected President of the International Association for Ukrainian Studies in 2002 and presided over the Congress in Donetsk in 2005. He also served as President of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (2009). During his New York years, he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and remains a member of the Advisory Board for Europe and Asia at Human Rights Watch. He has worked with historians, archivists, and educators in independent Ukraine and with diaspora institutions. He has served on the advisory board of the European University in Minsk (in exile in Vilnius, Lithuania), to the Open Society Institute; on the Board of Directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the International Fellowship Committee of the Social Science Research Council.
Ambassador Vlad Lupan has been the Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the United Nations, in New York, since January 2012, where he is focusing on development issues, rule of law and human rights, and conflict resolution. He has held a variety of diplomatic posts since 1996 till 2008, last one being Head of Political-Military Cooperation Department and was a negotiator on Transnistrian conflict settlement. He also worked with OSCE field Missions in in Georgia, Albania and Croatia. In 2008 Mr. Lupan joined the civil society, and became a member of the advisory board to the Ministry of Defense. During this time he was also the host of the “Euro-Atlantic Dictionary” radio talk show. In 2010 he became the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Acting President of the Republic of Moldova, and was later elected as a Member of the Parliament.
Educated at the State University of Moldova and at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest, Romania, Ambassador Lupan earned his international relations degree, and later a master’s degree in journalism and public communications from the Free Independent Moldovan University in Chisinau. Ambassador Lupan has published mainly in Romanian, though he also published in Russian or English, on foreign and domestic politics issues, including international security matters, Security Sector Reform, Transnistrian conflict settlement and European Union Eastern Partnership.
Dr. Yaroslav Prytula is an Associate Professor at the Department of International Economic Analysis and Finance at Lviv Ivan Franko National University (LIFNU) and a Professor at the Lviv Business School of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. Previously he served as an Academic Secretary of LIFNU and a Vice-Dean of the Faculty of International Relations at LIFNU. He is a member of the Supervisory Board of Lviv Ivan Franko National University. His scholarly interests are in macroeconomic modelling, quantitative methods in social science and higher education in transitional societies. His current research is related to socio-economic regional development in Ukraine. During 2001 he spent a semester in The George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs under William and Helen Petrach scholarship and continued his research during 2003-04 in The George Washington University Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning under the U.S. Department of State funded Junior Faculty Development Program. During 2004-07 he was a fellow of the Open Society Institute Academic Fellowship Program. During 2007-09 Yaroslav was a fellow of the Global Policy Fellowship Program of the Institute for Higher Education Policy (Washington, DC). In 2011 Dr. Prytula was a visiting scholar at the George Mason University under the University Administration Support Program funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and administered by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). Currently Dr. Prytula is a Fulbright Research Scholar at the George Washington University School of Business. Dr. Prytula was awarded his PhD in Mathematical Analysis from LIFNU in 2000. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of LIFNU. Yaroslav Prytula has received numerous awards and scholarships.
Presented by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and co-sponsored by The Europe Center and the Stanford Humanities Center.
Levinthal Hall
Mark von Hagen
Professor of History
Speaker
Arizona State University
Ambassador Vlad Lupan
Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the UN
Speaker
Yaroslav Prytula
Associate Professor
Speaker
Lviv Ivan Franko National University
Robert Crews
Associate Professor of History
Moderator
Stanford University
World War Two, the most violent period in the modern history of Europe and Asia (1937–1945), left deep scars still evident on both continents. Numerous and often conflicting narratives exist about the wartime era, ranging from personal memoirs to official accounts of wartime actions. Many issues, from collaboration to responsibility for war crimes, remain unresolved. In Europe some issues that have been buried for decades, such as the record of collaboration with Nazi occupiers, are now resurfacing. In Northeast Asia, World War Two’s complex, painful legacy continues to impact popular culture, education, diplomacy, and even economic relations.
While differences exist in the wartime circumstances and reconciliation processes of Europe and Asia, many valuable lessons can be gained through a study of the experiences on both continents. The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) facilitated a comparative dialogue on World War Two, bringing together 15 noted experts for the Colonialism, Collaboration, and Criminality conference, held June 16 to 17 at Stanford. Each of the event’s five panels paired an Asia and a Europe scholar addressing a common theme.
The debate over remembrance of World War Two
Asia’s relative lack of progress in achieving reconciliation of the painful legacies of the war in Asia and the Pacific continues to bedevil current relations in the region. This is a consequence of the way the Cold War interrupted the resolution of wartime issues and blocked dialogue over the past, particularly between Japan, China, and South Korea, suggested Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC. The widely held image of an unrepentant Japan ignores the fierce debate within Japan over wartime memory, often obscured by the prominence of rightwing nationalist views. Meanwhile, within China and Korea, wartime memory is also increasingly contested ground, from the issue of collaboration to the emergence of a more nationalist narrative in China, further complicating relations among those Asian neighbors.
Daniel Chirot, a professor of international studies at the University of Washington, emphasized that immediate postwar economic and security needs, including the growth of Communism, accelerated West Germany’s willingness to reconcile with its Western neighbors. He concurred with Sneider, saying that no such imperative existed in Northeast Asia until the need for economic cooperation three decades after the war. He suggested that the growth of regional integration might, as in Europe, drive Northeast Asia toward greater reconciliation.
Divided memories
Justice for sensitive historical human rights issues, such as World War Two atrocities, bears increasing importance in today’s ever-globalized economic and political climate, stated Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston University. Berger noted the challenge that Japan’s factional politics poses to a revision of the country’s official wartime narrative, and suggested that a strong regional structure, such as the European Union, could effectively facilitate reconciliation in Northeast Asia.
Frances Gouda, a professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam, examined the use of Anne Frank and former Indonesian president Sukarno as “icons of memory” in Dutch interpretations of World War Two. She asserted that Frank’s victimization allows people to come to terms with Nazi war crimes, but that Sukarno’s vilification as a Japanese collaborator oversimplifies history and allows the Netherlands to avoid confronting its own colonial past.
Collaboration and resistance
France’s Vichy regime, responsible both for collaborating with the Nazis and acting independently to persecute Jewish citizens, remains a painful and unresolved subject in the country’s contemporary quest for national identity, said Julian Jackson, a professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London. He pointed to French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s act of making a national martyr out of Guy Môquet, a young communist who died resisting the German Occupation, as a key example of the complexities involved in trying to come to terms with France’s past.
Ongoing territorial disputes over islands located between Japan and its neighbors in China and Korea are a product of the unresolved legacy of the wartime era in Asia. Sovereignty over those islands was left deliberately unresolved by the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty which formally ended the war, suggested Alexis Dudden, a professor of history from the University of Connecticut. As a result, the territorial disputes have become a battleground on which larger questions of historical memory about the war are contested, not only by Japanese conservatives but also by Koreans and Chinese, she said.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s press statement at the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
(U.S. National Archives)
Paths to reconciliation
Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC and a professor of sociology, suggested that while Europe’s experience with war and reconciliation offers lessons for Asia, significant differences exist between the wartime and post-war situations of the two continents, and that reconciliation in Asia requires time. Increased economic interaction between the countries in Northeast Asia serves less to foster reconciliation, he said, than to spur competition for regional dominance. Shin emphasized that the United States, which has greatly impacted the region’s post-war history, can play a critical role as a facilitator in establishing lasting regional accord.
The Nazi regime’s systematic attempt to completely wipe out all traces of Jewish history and culture in Europe, even as closely bound as it was with Germany’s own traditions, is a unique case, stated Fania Oz-Salzberger, a professor of history at Haifa and Monash Universities. She explored universal elements in the German-Jewish reconciliation experience, noting, like Shin and Chirot, the important element of time that is needed to reflect upon painful events of the past. Oz-Salzberger especially spoke of the healing that takes place at the level of society and culture, sometimes even before governments are ready to reconcile with one another.
Continuing political impacts
Gilbert Rozman, a professor of sociology at Princeton University, suggested that Northeast Asia’s wartime history debates will continue to complicate regional relations unless China, Japan, and Korea reach a point of mutual reconciliation. He noted the role that Japan’s government, in the 1980s during its financial heyday, and more recently, China’s leaders during a similarly strong economic era, have played in prolonging the debate.
Memories of war are transmitted across the years through a complex process involving multiple actors and they can later influence political behavior, explained MIT political science professor Roger Petersen. He described the process within the context of the Lithuania’s successful declaration of independence from the former Soviet Union in January 1991. Petersen stated that Lithuanian émigrés, in part, helped keep the narrative of Soviet aggression and Lithuanian martyrdom alive until the conditions were right for action many decades later.
The Colonialism, Collaboration, and Criminality conference grew out of Shorenstein APARC’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, which for the past three years has examined the legacy of war-era memories in Northeast Asia and the United States and explored possible means of reconciliation. Shorenstein APARC has already published the first in a series of four books based on the project, and an edited volume of papers from the June 2011 conference is forthcoming next year.
The 100th Conference of the Society for the Advancement of
Scandinavian Study (SASS) and the 22nd Conference of the
Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS):"Region, State, Nation, Community:
New Research in Scandinavian and Baltic
Studies" taking place April 22 – 24, 2010 in Seattle,
Washington.
AABS welcomes
papers, panels, and roundtable presentations for the first joint conference of
Scandinavian and Baltic Studies in the United States. The conference aims to
highlight and foster academic inquiry that draws comparisons between Scandinavia
(Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland) and the Baltic states (Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania). Papers that examine stateless peoples and those left
outside of the Scandinavian/Baltic approach, but sharing the same geographic
space, are equally welcome. Papers and panels devoted to individual states are
also welcome. Contributions are encouraged from disciplines including (but not
limited to): anthropology, architecture, communication, cultural studies,
demography, economics, education, environment, ethnic relations, film studies,
fine arts, gender studies, geography, history, international relations, law,
linguistics, literature, memory, political science, psychology, public health,
religion, sociology, tourism, and advancing Baltic and Scandinavian studies.
Presentations are not to exceed 20 minutes in length.
Proposals from
Ph.D. students will be considered for a Presidents’ Panel on Scandinavian and
Baltic Studies that recognizes the most accomplished and innovative work of new
scholars.
Paper and panel proposals must include an abstract (no
more than 250 words) and a one to two-page curriculum vitae. Send this
material embedded in the body of an e-mail (no attachments) to Aldis Purs at (aldisp@u.washington.edu) by December
11, 2009. Paper submissions can be mailed to:
22nd AABS Conference
Chair University of Washington, Box 353420 Seattle, WA
98195-3420
Conference Website: http://depts.washington.edu/aabs/ Date:
April 22-24, 2010 Location: Crowne Plaza Hotel, 1113 Sixth Ave., Seattle,
Washington 98101
Registration information will be available on the
website. All presenters must be SASS or AABS members in good standing. If you
are in need of assistance in finding potential co-panelists from either
Scandinavian studies or Baltic Studies, please contact the conference organizer
(listed above) to help with such networking by November 1, 2009.
According to Professor Muiznieks, since the early 1990s, the Baltic states have been seen as unfriendly in the eyes of Russians due to their "return to the West" attitude. Professor Muiznieks explains the key features of Baltic-Russian relations while looking at how these problems may be resolved in the future.
Synopsis
Professor Muiznieks begins by discussing the less than warm relations between the Baltic states and Russia. He explains how this is particularly due to the Baltic states’ desire to “return to the West” since the early 1990s and escape Russian influence after so many years of occupation. This is particularly evident in the EU and the UN where Poland and Baltic States form a sort of anti-Russian “axis.” However, the Baltic states’ membership of such organizations means a share of their secrets, which, as Professor Muiznieks explains, the Russians subsequently exploit for intelligence purposes.
At the same time, Professor Muiznieks cites another crucial security issue for the Baltic states, energy security. Currently, there is less oil transit through the Baltic states then there was before; Professor Muiznieks believes this has helped issues of corruption. However, he notes energy companies still play a significant role both locally and in relations with Russia. Looking the future, Professor Muiznieks believes that while there are options for the Baltic states to lessen their electrical dependence on Russia by looking to Scandinavia, the shutting of Lithuania’s nuclear plant will most likely mean Latvia and Lithuania will turn to Russia for further supply. To Professor Muiznieks, the current situation holds opportunities but also many risks.
Unfortunately, the strategic power-plays continue on another platform, memory wars. Professor Muiznieks feels World War II is the key point of debate between the Baltic states and Russia. While Russia sees the war as a great triumph, the Baltic states view the conflict as a catastrophe which led to further occupation. Professor Muiznieks discusses the fact that this battle plays out locally through monuments or textbooks but also internationally through border disputes and UN resolutions. He cites the European Court of Human Rights as a new strategic arena for this war because of its utmost authority on the continent and the fact that its rulings can cement one group as victims and force others to pay compensation. However, Professor Muiznieks believes any truce is unlikely. For him, this conflict is too linked to many personal family histories and not government based enough to be put to a real end.
Professor Muiznieks also looks to “compatriots” as a focal point of Baltic-Russian relations. “Compatriots,” in this case, are Russian citizens living abroad, particularly in the Baltic states. This issue is serious because Russian speakers comprise over a quarter of both Latvia and Estonia’s populations. Professor Muiznieks explains that tension was caused in the Baltic states after Russia’s war with Georgia as to how Russian policy would change towards its diasporas. In addition, Professor Muiznieks reveals that there is further concern over the possibility that Russia is encouraging speakers abroad to take up citizenship to create legal basis for any action against other states in the future. Professor Muiznieks also argues that funding for these “compatriots” is perhaps to counteract increasing EU influence in the region.
Overall, Professor Muiznieks believes that the Baltic states are seriously suffering from the global economic crisis which in turn is making it difficult for them to counteract Russian policy and be effective. Professor Muiznieks argues this makes the Baltic states quite vulnerable.
In a lengthy question-and-answer session, a multitude of points were raised. One of the key issues addressed was where the Baltic States, and in particular Latvia, fit in the European framework. This led to discussion of several other issues such as Scandanivia's changing role in the Baltic States, the role of the Baltic States in NATO, and language integration. Finally, another possibility much emphasized was the potential creation of nuclear power plants as a way to offset surging prices for Russian energy.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Nils Muiznieks
Director, Advanced Social and Political Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Latvia
Speaker
There are some peculiarities in conducting interviews
about the Soviet past in post-Soviet space. What details of everyday
life do interviewees reveal? And how do life stories shaped during
Soviet times, but recalled and reconsidered in the post-communist era
influence the interview?
Prof. Dalia Marcinkeviciene is chair of
the Women’s Studies Center, and a lecturer in History Department at Vilnius University. Her research interests
include Lithuanian family history during the period 1795-1990; theories
in Sovietology. Marcinkeviciene was awarded Fulbright (2002-2003) and AAUW (2005-2006) research
fellowships. She is an author and editor of three books (published in
Lithuanian): Famous Lithuanian Women, the
19th – the Beginning of the 20th Century. Vilnius
University Press, 1997; The Society of Married People: Marriage and
Divorce in Lithuania,
the 19th – the Beginning of the 20th Century. Lithuanian Institute of History,
1999; Life Stories of Lithuanian
Women. Vilnius University
Press, 2007
