The Baltic is a region increasingly characterised by unease and tension, fractured into hostile “fortresses” of military infrastructure by the NATO-Russia standoff. Igor Zhukovsky explores contemporary political and military conditions in the Baltic, calling for a renewed push to establish institutional frameworks that would uphold region-wide stability in the security dimension.
On 20 May, the Moscow platform of the Valdai Club hosted a discussion entitled “The Baltic Region: Risks of Military-Political Escalation”, during which invited experts examined the logic behind the unfolding crisis phenomena and the ways in which key regional and extra-regional actors are responding to them. Under the impression left by this highly substantive discussion, I would like to set down an observation that occurred to me: the key process shaping regional dynamics today is the formation of “national security fortresses” in the Baltic amid the dismantling of mechanisms for effective interaction and communication that had previously been the defining feature of this unique region.
Reflecting on the contemporary manifestations of the global political crisis in the Baltic, we proceed from an understanding of the regional system of international relations as a set of specific interactions between the states surrounding the Baltic Sea, grounded in their shared regional-geographical and military-political characteristics. The growing conflict situation in the Baltic is a projection of the crisis of global governance, which neither originated in the region nor can be resolved solely within the Baltic itself.
It is important to note that, from the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of new independent states on the political map of the region, the Baltic region became an extraordinarily popular subject of attention for both practitioners and scholars. This popularity was determined, above all, by the broader increase at that time in the capacity for agency possessed by regional systems within world politics—systems distinguished by the particular dynamism of interactions within their spatial and political boundaries.
Attention to developments in the Baltic was further intensified by the intriguing fact that the emerging regional system of international relations was, in essence, the product of political engineering undertaken in the course of attempts to overcome the legacy of the Cold War. The final decade of the twentieth century witnessed a genuine boom in the activity of pan-regional cooperation networks and in the launch of the operational mechanisms underpinning them. Some of these structures transmitted the global agenda—as was the case with the OSCE and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights based in Warsaw—while others developed an exclusively regional agenda, creating a fundamentally new model of international relations. These included the Baltic University Programme, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, and an entire network of mechanisms for cooperation and the harmonisation of interests operating under the umbrella of this regional organisation.
At the turn of the century, it seemed that the states surrounding the Baltic had reached a long-term—if not permanent—agreement around shared goals in economics, ecology, and politics; had defined principles for joint activity; and had established the most favourable conditions possible for intensifying interaction at every level—from municipalities to the coordination of interstate interests. Even the so-called “Kaliningrad Puzzle”, known precisely by this term in historiography outside of Russia, which revolved around the joint search for an optimal strategy to ensure the viability and guaranteed economic development of the Kaliningrad Region following the accession of Poland and Lithuania to NATO and the EU, was regarded at the time as having been resolved in a spirit of mutual consideration of interests and broad goodwill.
Indeed, the unprecedented scale of the trade, economic, and infrastructure projects implemented in the Baltic during the first decade of the twenty-first century, together with the steady expansion of opportunities for intra-regional mobility and tourism, allowed both politicians and scholars to publish optimistic forecasts regarding the long-term development of the Baltic region within the paradigm of a “region of consensus”.
The romantic enthusiasm surrounding the idea of a “sea that unites” was disrupted by the so-called eastern enlargement of NATO and the EU. In pursuing what they regarded as their extraordinary choice, the Baltic states and Poland sought to become politically, economically, and symbolically part of the famed “Western world”. A direct consequence of their integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions was the evident temptation to transform the Baltic into an “internal sea” of the EU and NATO, assigning the European Commission the role of sole regulator of the political and economic dimensions of regional dynamics, and the North Atlantic Alliance the status of principal actor in the sphere of security policy.
The concept of the Baltic as an “internal sea of the EU”, formulated without regard for Russian interests and accompanied by the practical securitisation of any Russian participation in regional affairs, emerged within the activities of the “Baltic Europe” intergroup in the European Parliament following the accession of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland to the European Union in 2004. The instrument for the exclusion of Russia from mechanisms of cooperation and interaction became the “EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region”, first presented at the conceptual level in 2006 as a mechanism for coordinating interests and organising joint activities among European Union member states in the Baltic. Within this strategy, Russia was understood as an external participant lying beyond the perimeter of integration.
As contradictions between Russia and the European Union accumulated and sharpened over economic and political questions, opportunities for involving Russian partners in Baltic projects at the municipal, regional, and state-programme levels steadily diminished. Following the “Crimean Spring” of 2014 and the subsequent crisis of trust between Russia and EU states, Russian participants began gradually to be excluded from the financial mechanisms of cooperation. Their continued presence in EU programmes and regional projects—such as the Northern Dimension, HELCOM, VASAB, and others—persisted merely through inertia until interaction was completely terminated in 2022.
Changes of a similar nature—albeit in differing variations—were introduced into the security policy strategies and other foreign-policy planning documents of the Baltic states themselves. The result was systematic action by national governments aimed at increasing their capacity for autonomous operations in the event of a hypothetical conflict with Russia.
From that moment onwards, the regional system of international relations began to assume a form that can appropriately and accurately be described as an “archipelago of national fortresses in the Baltic”. The Russian Federation has been systematically strengthening the defensive potential of its two Russian fortresses—the Kaliningrad special district and the St Petersburg agglomeration—while the national governments of the Baltic states have been steadily transforming their own coastal territories into fortresses as well.
Every EU and NATO state in the Baltic has embarked upon extraordinary military procurement programmes. Intensive construction of national air-defence and missile-defence lines is under way. Defence-industrial enterprises are being re-equipped, and personnel for them are being trained at pace. Accelerated modernisation has begun on dual-use civilian infrastructure facilities—bridges, port terminals, railway loading complexes, stretches of motorway suitable for use as reserve runways, and so forth.
Changes are also taking place within the legislative frameworks of the Baltic states, connected with clarifying the role of crisis-management institutions. Advanced solutions for the integrated management of military and civilian infrastructure are being introduced, while measures are being taken to increase crisis awareness among civilian populations.
Today, the eyes of politicians and researchers are once again fixed upon the Baltic. The region has become a tightly stretched line of direct contact between Russia and the EU/NATO states. Both sides are employing an increasingly confrontational logic. Both regard their respective “fortresses” as highly vulnerable, and both are prepared for escalation—as demonstrated by regular military exercises—in response to potential hostile actions by the opposing side.
The situation is unfolding according to the familiar logic of confrontation: any measure taken by one side to enhance its own security provokes retaliatory measures by the other side aimed at strengthening its own security. And so the cycle continues.
What we are witnessing in the Baltic is a unique situation. Each fortress possesses its own highly autonomous capacity for responding to crisis situations, including “sub-threshold” threats. Communication between the NATO and Russian fortresses is impeded, trust is absent, and hostility is increasing. Clearly, under such conditions, one cannot discount not only deliberate actions by the parties, but also the risk of accidental, unintended incidents capable of triggering the tightly wound spring of conflict.
The archipelago of fortresses in the Baltic today constitutes a centre of instability, with a growing risk of local crises and incidents leading to escalation.
The emerging world of fortresses in the Baltic must remain a world of peace between those fortresses. This means that new regional formats for interaction and communication must be created afresh. It would seem that such a scenario could suit all centres of decision-making, including those located beyond the Baltic region itself.
Sapienti sat.
