Participation in international military operations
ENThe topic is multi-faceted and there are plenty of angles from which to examine it, and plenty of themes worth analysing. This chapter considers how and why the Baltic countries began to participate in operations in the 1990s, what their reasons and motives for deployments have been since then, and where they have reached today. It also examines the place of operations within the Baltic states’ defence systems, and how operations have been perceived and how participation has changed over twenty years. The central question, however, is why, as none of the three countries had earlier been involved or even interested in the distant locations in which they are now active. To answer these questions, this chapter first looks at the emergence of the idea of peacekeeping in these countries in the early 1990s. It then takes three episodes from the now almost twenty years of Baltic states’ operational experience: the first is the very first deployments of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian troops to the UN mission in the Balkans in the mid-1990s; the second, from the beginning of the present century, concerns the launch of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan where the Baltic countries were among the first and most dedicated contributors; and the third is the case of Libya, in spring 2011, to which none of the Baltic countries contributed with military means, but which still offers insight into the state of affairs at the end of the period under observation. A complete list of the operations that the three states have contributed to is contained in an appendix to this chapter. [...] One important source for this chapter is the set of interviews with key defence officials who either were themselves behind the decisions concerning Baltic participation, or stood close to the making of these decisions.Interviews were necessary firstly because not everything is documented, especially as concerns the earlier years, but also, because the perception of the situation by decision makers, which is an important variable in decision making, is not so apparent from official documents. Further, the interviews added a personal touch to an issue which is on the one hand highly political, regulated by law, and run in large part by bureaucracies, but at the same time is very much influenced by the people who happened to be in key positions at particular times. Memory is selective and subjective, certainly, but the decisions on participation in international operations were (and still are) also taken by subjective people with selective memories. [...] Participation in international operations has been somewhat different for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, demonstrating quite well the different national characters and circumstances of the three states. However, the last twenty years have also shown many similarities in the policies of these three coun tries, including in foreign and security affairs. No less importantly, western countries have tended to take them as a set since their re-independence, which has also had an impact on their courses of action. This chapter, there fore, mostly describes the similarities of the three states in their participation in operations, rather than dwelling on the detailed differences between them. [p. 202-204].
