Adam DeCollibus is the author of Caravan. I mentioned the excellent Caliphate podcast in the conversation.

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I’ve talked

about the Baltic republics, and Ukraine before – their governments, and to a

large extent their people – are anxious to make alliances to the West, join

NATO, join the EU. It’s notable that of the former eastern bloc countries, the

Baltic states that once were part of the Soviet Union, occupied by the Soviet

Union they would say, have been the most anxious to integrate with the west,

joining NATO and the EU, and adopting the euro currency as soon as they were

permitted to do so.

You don’t

really have to be a cynic to realize that they were doing this not so much out

of love of the west as fear of the east. Joining NATO allowed them to access

its common defense commitment. That means that an attack on one is an attack on

all, to which all must respond.

In short,

that means that any invasion by Russia of the Baltic States is deterred by the

knowledge that Russia would also be attacking nuclear-armed states such as the

US and the UK. That is also a good explanation why Russia wanted to contrive to

occupy some of the territory of the former Soviet states of Georgia, Ukraine,

Moldova and Armenia – while they are not in control of all their own territory,

they are not able to join NATO.

There is

one other country in that region that has gone down a different path. Belarus

is situated between Poland and Russia; it has a population just under 10

million, and it is about the same size as Great Britain or the state of Minnesota;

they have their own language, Belorussian, which is closely related to Polish,

but written in the Cyrillic alphabet, much like Russian. However that language

is very much in a minority, the leadership and elite all speak Russian, as do most

of the people in the cities, although speaking Belorussian has become somewhat fashionable