Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 21 – Latvia may be
as prepared as any small country next to a very large one to defend itself
against a military invasion. It has a modernized military, albeit one trained
for peacekeeping rather than national defense, and it is a member of NATO, on
whose Article Five Latvians rely. At least, that is what most analysts in both
Riga and the West now say.
But as Vladimir Putin has proved in
Ukraine, one can occupy and annex part of a neighboring country and destabilize
much of the rest of it without officially sending tanks and troops across the
border by using more deniable means of subversion, including the provocation
and exploitation of the attitudes of some of the population in the target
country.
Given Putin’s past declarations
about what he sees as the illegitimacy of NATO’s expansion eastward after 1989
and especially the inclusion of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as member states
and Russian subversion in Latvia already, it is now an open question whether
the Kremlin leader may try to test and weaken NATO by further actions there.
That test would not necessarily take
the form of an attempt to seize a portion of Latvia or force Riga to withdraw
from the alliance, although some in Moscow might like to do either or both of
these things. Instead, it could involve creating the kind of social and
political instability that no defense alliance is designed to block and thus
call its utility into question among some.
There are at least three reasons for
concern on this point. First, Latvia’s demography and economy would seem to
provide Moscow with opportunities. More than half of the population is
Russian-speaking, a third is ethnically Russian, a slightly smaller share is
made up of non-citizens, and there are tens of thousands of retired Soviet
officers.
Moreover, the ethnic Russians and
non-citizens are concentrated in the largest cities, where they have
pluralities or even majorities, and Russian business interests form a
disproportionate share of the economy, at least potentially giving Moscow levers
it could deploy against the Latvian authorities.
Second, there is the longstanding
problem of Latgale, a region in the southeast adjoining the Russian border most
of whose population speaks what it believes is a distinct language as well as
Russian, is much poorer than other regions of the country, and views itself as
neglected (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2012/12/window-on-eurasia-latgalia-catalonia-on.html).
And third, some Latvians have been
expressing concern about the state of Latvia’s defense forces, noting that it
has had trouble maintaining troop levels, has had to take many men from Latgale
whose loyalty may be divided, and has in recent years lost many of its officers
to retirement or resignation (newsbalt.ru/detail/?ID=26928).
Concerns about each of these have
intensified since the Russian Anschluss of Crimea, especially given Moscow’s
actions regarding Latvia itself. Russian
television had become so bombastic and anti-Latvian that Riga felt compelled to
block Moscow channels lest they mobilize Russian speakers against it (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/04/window-on-eurasia-moscow-tv-threatening.html).
Worries
about Latgale have intensified given Russian surveys there and Russian
demonstrations in Moscow whose participants declared “Latgalia is a Russian
land.” And when the media suggested that
many in Latgale did not even know the name of the Latvian president, he
scheduled a visit there (baltictimes.com/news/articles/34732/, rus.delfi.lv/news/daily/politics/piket-nacbolov-v-moskve-latgaliya-russkaya-zemlya.d?id=44409205
and rosbalt.ru/exussr/2014/03/27/1249451.html).
And
nervousness about the state of Latvian defense forces appears to be rising. A
Riga lawyer, while saying he was unsure of what Moscow planned to do, called
for the restoration of the draft to ensure that the military had enough men to
be able to slow a Russian advance until NATO forces could arrive to repulse it (rus.db.lv/nachalo/mnenija/grutups-davajte-prevratim-rigu-vo-vtoroj-stalingrad-58962).
Such worries are likely to continue
to intensify as some Russian speakers and especially non-citizen activists stir
the pot. Aleksandr Gaponenko, a leader of the Congress of Non-Citizens, said
his group will hold a meeting in Riga this coming weekend to demand change, a meeting he described as “our Maidan” (rus.tvnet.lv/novosti/obschjestvo/255516-kongrjess_njegrazhdan_objeschajet_v_rigje_ustroit_maydan/).
These concerns need to be kept in
perspective: most Russian speakers in Latvia are loyal to that country, and few
earlier Moscow efforts to provoke instability have achieved very much. As a
result, Latvian officials and experts are confident that they do not face a
Ukrainian scenario or even something short of tht.
One Riga analyst argued last week
that Latvia’s NATO membership prevents any Russian move like the one in Crimea
or elsewhere in southeastern Ukraine because the alliance views any attack on
one as an attack on all. And while she
conceded that Russia could continue its campaign of subversion, she insisted
that in Latvia, “Putin’s influence on ethnic Russians is limited (regnum.ru/news/fd-abroad/1793259.html).
That may all be
true, but it may not be sufficient. On
the one hand, most ethnic Russians in Ukraine opposed Moscow’s intervention,
but that opposition did not block Russia from using a minority within a
minority to advance its aims. As the ongoing violence in Ukraine shows, armed
minorities can play a serious, even decisive role against more passive
majorities.
An on the other,
while few question that NATO would respond to an overt Russian military move
into Latvia or any other NATO member country, the Western defense alliance is
not designed to counter the kind of subversion that Moscow has already used in
Ukraine and that it could deploy in Latvia to undermine that country’s
independence and test the alliance as well.
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