When Belgian warplanes streak over the three Baltic states this week, there will be rejoicing on the ground.
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia were among seven former Soviet bloc countries formally joining NATO yesterday, and they are realizing a long-denied dream -- entering a military alliance by choice instead of by coercion.
"It's good to know someone up there will be keeping bad guys away from our country," said Aurimas Sirvinskas, a 27-year-old salesman in Lithuania, referring to the NATO F-16s that will soon begin flying out of Lithuanian bases.
Who are the "bad guys"? No one says officially now that the end of the Cold War and collapse of communism have taken away the Soviet Union as NATO's foe. But many Balts point to Russia, which is resented for the forcible inclusion of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union in 1940.
The Kremlin, in turn, is leery of the expansion of NATO. And it is particularly angry over the alliance's inclusion of the three neighboring Baltic states, saying they should have been a no-go area for NATO.
Over the centuries, the Baltic states have been sucked into one power bloc or another. Their formal acceptance into NATO at a ceremony in Washington yesterday marks the first time in modern history that they have freely joined a military alliance.
Just 15 years ago, they appeared firmly rooted in the Soviet bloc, with more than 100,000 Red Army soldiers at hundreds of bases and airfields here. Then as the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania shrugged off five decades of occupation and regained independence.
Lithuania's prime minister, Algirdas Brazauskas, sees NATO membership as a treasured milestone for his nation.
"It will become a state free of the fear of being wiped off the map, a state where people can be sure of their future and their children's future," he said last week.
The Baltic states are the only former Soviet republics to enter NATO, with the others either expressing no interest or not appearing close to qualifying. The other ex-communist nations joining yesterday are Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Slovakia. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999.
Moscow has long considered the Baltics as Russia's backyard and doesn't welcome the advance of NATO forces next door.
"If NATO believes that there is any need for such protection in the Baltic region, Russia reserves the right to draw its own conclusions from it and, if necessary, to act accordingly," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying last week.
The strong Russian opposition to Baltic membership was one reason their entry once seemed so unlikely.
Their appeal as potential NATO allies also seemed limited, given their near lack of troops or weapons 13 years ago. While other Soviet bloc nations had their own armies when communism crumbled, the Baltics' early military units carried hunting guns.
But the Baltics have built up their combined strength to some 20,000 military personnel, and the shotguns have been traded in for American-made M-4s and Israeli Galil rifles. With NATO's help, they constructed a regional radar network that went into operation in 2000.
NATO has sought to soothe Baltic anxieties that it might back away from establishing any physical military presence in the region out of deference to nuclear-armed Russia.
During a recent two-day visit, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer pledged the region will enjoy the same safety as any other alliance member.
"NATO doesn't know A-grade and B-grade allies," he said. "NATO only knows allies."
He pledged NATO would quickly fill the air-defense gap in the Baltic states, which have no fighter planes of their own and just a handful of anti-aircraft weapons.
The chairman of the foreign affairs committee in Estonia's parliament, Marko Mihkelson, contends the Kremlin is angry because it wanted to keep the region a Russian sphere of influence.
But, he said, the Baltic states' membership in NATO, as well as their entry into the EU on May 1, will drive home the new reality to Russia.
"Estonia is no longer caught between anyone," he said. "But it'll take a long time for Russia to realize this ... that Estonia is firmly entrenched in the West."
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