RUSSIA: The Baltic Nations are Subject Matter Experts Here, we Should Listen.

These are small nations from Estonia’s 1.3 million, Latvia’s 1.8 million, to Lithuania’s 2.8 million. These little ethnostates each have a unique language, culture, and have survived as a people since pre-history. They are survivors who have not had many years to be masters of their own fate.

The fall of the Soviet Union gave them their latest chance, and they’ve made a good run of it. They, more than most, know Russia – indeed, all three have significant Russian minorities in their nations who decided to throw their lot in with their Baltic neighbors after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Though they are small, when they speak about Russia, larger nations should listen. Their larger neighbor, Poland with 38 million souls, also has a long and brutal history with the Russians. All four nations will be the first to feel the results of making the wrong decisions towards their big neighbor to the east. A no kidding existential threat. They are also NATO allies, so their threat is in a very real way our threat.

They cannot afford vanity-filled feel-good theories.

Neither can we, but our leaders don’t care.