Bill Clinton and the art of getting Russian troops out of the Baltics

• In Event: Baltic Geopolitics Network panel: Re-emergence of the Baltic states in great power strategy after 1991

Abstract

This paper grapples with the Washington-Baltic-Moscow negotiations concerning Soviet troop withdrawal from the Baltic republics. In the early 1990s, all three Baltic republics hosted thousands of former Red Army troops, together with various Soviet-era military installations ranging from a nuclear submarine training facility in Estonia to a massive anti-ballistic missile radar in Latvia. This Soviet-era carcass was the key issue hanging over the newly-freed Baltics.

Moscow held firm and wanted to keep its military foothold in this part of Europe for years to come. The Baltics vehemently objected. The Clinton administration played an instrumental role in mediating and accelerating this official divorce. In retrospect, this was a crucial inflection point that, if unresolved, may have taken the Baltics in a different strategic direction. Even a minimal Russian presence for a longer time, according to Baltic senior officials, may have ended their aspirations of one day reaching NATO. Drawing from a wealth of declassified Bush and Clinton administration documents as well as archival materials from the Baltics, the chapter pulls back the curtain on a US post-Cold War era diplomatic success story.

Author

• Andris Banka, Greifswald University