By Robertas Sapronas, the Head of the Multilateral Projects Section in the International Relations Department of the Lithuanian Ministry of Defence
Introduction
The aim of this article is not to once again repeat the history of the Baltic Battalion (BALTBAT). The project should be rather well known for those who have an interest in the Baltic security affairs.
BALTBAT is often mentioned when dis-cussion takes place on successful examples of regional defence co-operation in the post-Cold War Europe and also whenever the major developments in the defence forces of the three Baltic States are presented.
In the simple www.altavista.com query
BALTBAT received 324 hits. This is a
clear illustration to the international prominence that the BALTBAT project has received since its official start in Sep-tember 1994, when the Governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania concluded a tri-national Agreement on the establish-ment of a joint peacekeeping unit. Soon after that a number of Western countries led by Denmark have offered support to the undertaking, thereby turning it into a multilateral project.
This article will have a special focus on the role that the Baltic Battalion has played or, in some aspects, was expected to play, in the development of the armed forces of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In par-ticular, I would like to discuss some of
the rather unique features of BALTBAT both as a military unit and as a multina-tional project and the ways in which BALTBAT has contributed to the estab-lishment of defence structures in the three Baltic States. Also, I will briefly describe the status of the Baltic battalion project (Autumn 1999) and the dilemmas that the Baltic and the Supporting states are fac-ing when tryfac-ing to define the future di-rection for the battalion.
This article is based on the personal experience of the author gained during the last several years through the partici-pation in BALTBAT Steering Group meetings and being responsible for the co-ordination of development of Baltic
defence co-operation projects at the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessar-ily reflect the position of the Lithuanian MND.
Context
The Baltic Battalion is a unique project in several important aspects. The format in which it was developed and the objec-tives that were pursued by the Baltic and the Supporting countries can be fully understood only within the broader in-ternational context of late 1993 and early 1994. During this period BALTBAT project was developed from a vague con-cept into a viable project of great visibil-ity and political significance for the three Baltic countries.
In the Baltic States, this was the time when the Soviet troops had completed their withdrawal from Lithuania and were about to complete it from Latvia and Es-tonia. The armed forces in the three states were at the initial stage of creation. This
process was led on the one hand by vol-unteers, who had little expertise to offer but had plenty of good will and determi-nation, and, on the other, by the former Soviet Army officers who decided to sup-port the establishment of armed forces in their newly independent countries. Even if the latter group were in many cases distrusted by the political leadership, they were the only military experts in the coun-tries. The defence budgets were minuscule in each of the three states, while signifi-cant defence assistance could hardly be expected from the Western countries. In their judgement, this could undermine the difficult process of involving Russia into closer defence co-operation with the West. In general, before January 1994, the Baltic States had only very limited and ad hoc external defence co-operation.
For NATO this was a period of final-ising its strategies towards its former adversaries in the East, first and foremost -Russia. With respect to the Baltic States, NATO has well understood Russias mes-sage that they had certain sensitivities
as well as special interests in the Baltic
re-gion. Therefore, in their rhetoric towards the Baltic States, representatives of NATO and its member countries would always choose careful wording and support only those practical co-operation activities that would be non-provocative to Moscow .
Significant and comprehensive change came with the Brussels Ministerial meet-ing in January 1994 when NATO has launched the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme - a set of co-operation activi-ties for the new Europe. Training for multinational peacekeeping operations under UN mandates became an objective that all PfP countries, including Russia, found possible to agree. Multinational peacekeeping exercises became the major part of PfP field training activities and were generously sponsored by NATO and the United States.
Challenges
The architects of the BALTBAT project fully took into account the context of the PfP world of its early days. The Baltic battalion was a multinational unit trained
for UN peacekeeping purposes and estab-lished in the former Eastern Bloc. The com-bination of these features was making the BALTBAT project more than a politically correct undertaking. BALTBAT has em-braced the main concepts of the Partner-ship for Peace ideology and therefore was a kind of test case for the PfP itself.
The four Nordic countries, led by Denmark, were with the BALTBAT project from its early days. Without their sincere interest and commitment to support the project, the Baltic States would not have been able to start it. The Nordic coun-tries have also done very much in order to promote the BALTBAT project inter-nationally and soon the US, Great Brit-ain, Germany, France and a number of other Western nations decided to join the group of supporters of BALTBAT. This was certainly a very encouraging beginning.The wide multinational frame-work in which BALTBAT found itself was helpful not only for wider distribution of the financial burden related to the es-tablishment of the Baltic Battalion. It has turned BALTBAT into internationally
known and highly visible project. The Battalion has become a symbolic expres-sion of the determination of the Baltic States to anchor their security in the democratic Europe. At the same time, the political engagement and practical support rendered by the Western countries to BALTBAT was perceived in the Baltics as a clear indication of their earnest com-mitment to support the Baltic nations in this endeavour.
Stakes were also high on the side of the supporting states. Many of them have invested a significant amount of resources into the BALTBAT project. Some appar-ently had to go through an intense inter-nal debate before concluding that secu-rity of the Baltic States in general and the BALTBAT project in particular was worth spending money on. Furthermore, hav-ing become the most visible part of West-ern security engagement in the Baltic re-gion, the progress in the development of the BALTBAT project became important indicator as to the success of the Western countries in their security co-operation with the Baltic States in general.
There-fore, both successes and failures of the BALTBAT project were perceived to have much wider implications.
There was, however, another side to BALTBAT than that widely exposed by the mass media. In reality, the establish-ment of a modern Western-type multina-tional battalion from scratch in the coun-tries that basically had no regular armed forces, was a truly Herculean task. Look-ing back to the early days of the project, one tends to conclude that even those who understood the complexities and difficul-ties involved in the project tended to un-derestimate them. Otherwise they prob-ably would not have started the project at all.Difficulties that were arising in the process of project implementation were multiple and some of the problems have remained there for years. Their analysis is beyond the scope of this article but a few observations should help the reader to understand the nature of the problems faced by those who were responsible for the implementation of the BALTBAT project.
First of all, the militaries in the three Baltic States initially regarded the BALTBAT project as a purely political creature with exclusively political objec-tives. For them participation in UN peace-keeping operations could hardly be seen a priority task, given the threats, challenges and financial limitations they were facing in the establishment of defence forces in their respective countries. Therefore the BALTBAT project for the military leader-ship in the Baltic countries primarily as-sociated with a drain of their very scarce financial and human resources. They tended to underestimate the potential of the BALTBAT project to contribute to the development of the national defences.
In Lithuania, a separate division of the defence staff was responsible for the co-ordination of the BALTBAT project, thereby further contributing to the iso-lation of BALTBAT from the rest of the defence forces.
Secondly, with all political will and determination to ensure success of the BALTBAT project, the Baltic nations could not render adequate support to
BALTBAT until national base for such support was established. In other words, the support which the Baltic States were providing to BALTBAT, be it in terms of personnel training or logistic supplies, could not be much better than the gen-eral level in the national forces and in most cases was below the level required in BALTBAT. Therefore the development of the project was depending on external assistance in almost every aspect starting with English language training and pro-vision with personal munitions, to de-ployment and supplies in the mission area.
Thirdly, activities of BALTBAT were exposed to the lack or inadequacy of the legal base and administrative procedures in the three Baltic countries. It was the first multinational unit in the Baltic States.
It included outside support with arms transfers as well as frequent border cross-ings of military vehicles and soldiers with weapons. Many things in the implemen-tation of the BALTBAT project were hap-pening in the Baltic States for the first time and therefore often there were no established procedures, regulations and
routines. Those often had to be created and adopted on a very short notice.
These are only the more general sources of the problems faced by both the Baltic and Supporting countries in the process of establishment of the Baltic battalion.
The nature of these problems suggests that the start of the project could be some-what premature and that many of the practical problems could be made less complicated if the Baltic States had more experience of international defence co-operation and international peacekeeping at the start of the project. On the other hand, BALTBAT could also be regarded as a shock therapy, which has suddenly exposed the three Baltic defence establish-ments to all the complexities involved in international defence co-operation, forc-ing them to address a whole set of prob-lems in a very short period of time.
Looking retrospectively, the question that arises is was it worth going through all this in order to establish a UN peace-keeping unit, which could hardly be con-sidered as a real priority for the security of the Baltic States?