The current crisis around the Baltics comes at a particular moment, when escalations around the war in Ukraine, without much reason, have begun to feel impossible. The chronology of the war created that feeling. The Russians threatened often, too often said that NATO was "already an active participant in the war", and in reality never did anything about it. That created an awkward habit among Ukraine’s partners: the assumption that Russia is not reacting and will not react, at least not in any concrete way, nothing beyond the framework of supposed "asymmetric actions" — cyberattacks, claims of sabotage, and the like. In other words, almost no one can truly imagine a strike on Vilnius, Tallinn, or Riga.
But what if that is a major illusion? Because this Baltic story strongly resembles another territory that was also presented as completely safe. In fact, that performance of safety was so convincing that it became a magnet for investments which now, after reality shattered the illusion, are desperately looking for an exit. The western side of the Persian Gulf, which built glass towers while having American bases in their shadow, has experienced what it thought was impossible. Isnt the Baltic, with its posture, economic progress, and military integration, in some sense the European version of the same story?
The Gulf monarchies were always within reach of Iranian drones and missiles, but they believed that hosting the American military was more than enough to guarantee safety. In fact, that American military presence was also an argument used to bring investors rushing into Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh and elsewhere. Even small players bought apartments in Dubai believing it was an excellent investment. Today they understand how wrong they were, and this crisis is not even over. If certain sources are correct, America is preparing another massive strike on Iran, which means an even greater retaliation against the Gulf monarchies may follow, perhaps even against their desalination plants, which would amount to the existential erasure of the entire areas.
Is the Baltic drawing no lesson from this?
Because on the Middle Eastern side, confidence escalated over the years to the point that some Gulf monarchies began to feel indestructible. Take Saudi Arabia as an example. For years, it directly waged war in neighboring Yemen against the Iran-aligned Houthi forces, feeling at every moment that there was no chance Iran would become directly involved, beyond perhaps sending weapons to the attacked side. That feeling was correct as long as reality supported it, as long as American protection was relentless.
Today? It no longer looks that way. Trump is still looking for an exit — either toward victory, or toward the least visible defeat he can manage — but realistically, we may be watching the end of American dominance in the Middle East. And what happens when the American military pulls back? The Middle East will remain, but the balance of power will change dramatically. Saudi Arabia will no longer be able to bomb Yemen with the same sense of impunity, while Israel, still behaving as if there are no limits to what it can do in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond, will have to adjust to a different reality. Of course, even if Trump pulls back from the Gulf, he will not abandon Israel. It is not hard to imagine him withdrawing forces from the wider region only to redeploy them closer to Israel, or even inside it, as a final defensive shield.
Let us now return to the Baltic and its similarities with the Persian Gulf.
The three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — are former Soviet republics that joined NATO in 2004. Russia, obviously, disliked this intensely, but Russia at the time did not protest too much, nor, let us put it this way, did it fully grasp what it meant. Still, 2004 was a kind of turning point. It was the moment when Russia began to understand that the story of its inclusion in the "family" was not sincere, however much it adapted in the process. Its resource-rich bulk had always been an obstacle, and long ago it had been decided that Russia, although territorially somewhat smaller than the USSR, remained too large. From the Western perspective — especially from the perspective of its immediate western neighbors, Poland and the Baltics — the ideal scenario would be its disintegration into at least three or four pieces. At the same time, Russia realized that NATO had no intention of disappearing, and that it was inventing new arguments for its own existence, from Iran to North Korea, while in reality, then as now, it was aiming precisely at Russia.
The small Baltic republics facing Russia do, in some ways, resemble the small oil monarchies facing Iran. Set aside Saudi Arabia for a moment — large, wealthy, but territorially vast and sparsely populated — and what remains are states that came to believe they could openly align against Iran without ever having to face Iran directly, as long as the American shield remained above them. The UAE may have taken that logic the furthest, especially through its growing closeness to Israel.
The Baltic trio lives with a similar sense of protection. NATO is there. The American military is there. European forces are there. Taken together, this seems enough to sustain the belief that Russia would not dare touch them. And yes, Baltic history is real; their need for protection is both political and psychological. Even Russia, for a long time, appeared to accept that reality. But that should have been the line. Beyond it, the remaining energy should have gone into diplomacy and, as far as possible, some workable form of coexistence with Moscow.
Yes — this version flows more naturally in English:
But the Baltic states did not stop at neutrality. When Russia attacked Ukraine, they behaved as if they themselves had been attacked. Condemning Russian aggression is one thing — although consistency would require that everyone who condemned Russia also condemn the American attack on Iran, which, of course, we will not see — but openly backing Ukraine and directly assisting its war effort requires an almost extreme faith in one assumption: America will protect us.
Will it? No. For America, allies are often treated like the Kurds: useful when they are needed, disposable when they become inconvenient. Washington has done this to the Kurds across all four "Kurdistans" — in Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran.
The Baltic authorities came to treat the Russian language almost exclusively as an extension of Moscow.The Baltic states have also, in many cases, treated the Russian population left behind after the collapse of the USSR as unwanted stepchildren, while feeling safe enough behind American armor to laugh in Moscow’s face.
This is not merely a matter of emotion, historical bitterness or fear of Russia. It is a concrete policy. In Latvia and Estonia, hundreds of thousands of people lived for years in the special category of "non-citizens": people who were neither foreigners nor full citizens, even though they were born there, worked there, paid taxes there and helped build the societies in which they remained after the Soviet collapse. Their guilt was collective and political: they spoke Russian and belonged to a world the new national state wanted to erase from its own biography.
For decades, Russian was also the everyday language of a large part of the population in these countries — the language of family, school, work, culture, newspapers and ordinary life. The Baltic authorities came to treat that language almost exclusively as an extension of Moscow. Russian is being pushed out of schools, Russian-language education is gradually being abolished or marginalized, Russian media are being banned, and the public space is being cleansed of anything that recalls the Soviet period. Of course, every state has the right to build its own identity, especially after a traumatic history. But when that identity is built by telling a large part of one’s own population that its language is a security threat, this is no longer just national emancipation. It becomes an internal front.
Moscow has spent years building exactly this narrative: that Russians outside Russia have been left at the mercy of states determined to assimilate them, humiliate them, or push them out of public life. That narrative may be inflated for propaganda purposes, selective and politically weaponized. But danger begins when propaganda has enough real material to work with that it no longer needs to invent very much.
The Baltic elites, it seems, never took this seriously enough. They behaved as if NATO’s Article 5 protected them not only from Russian tanks, but also from the consequences of their own policies. As if a country can pursue a hard internal line against its Russian minority, militarize its relationship with Moscow to the maximum, actively assist Ukraine in the war, and then expect Russia to treat all of it as nothing more than a diplomatic irritation.
Here the similarity with the Gulf becomes even clearer. Small states under a large umbrella begin to mistake that umbrella for their own strength. But it is not their strength. The umbrella closes the moment the power holding it decides that standing in the rain has become too expensive.
The shock that hit Dubai’s glass-tower illusion stripped the region of its fantasy of safety. Many believed we would never see such images.
No one should wish the same fate on the Baltics. But the Baltics themselves should guard against it, because illusions collapse quickly once they begin to fall — and the comparison here is not accidental.
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