What a surprise it was to glance at the editorial page of one of the nation’s most conservative newspapers, which only a few years ago would not pass up an opportunity to rail against the godless Commies, and to find it awash with forgiveness and pragmatism.
Then again, this drastic turnaround was made on the behalf of others. How nice of the Tribune to counsel the Baltics that it is time for them to mend fences with their Russian neighbor without mentioning who needs those fences more: Three small countries with a combined population of, at most, 10 million, that have never been the aggressors in the region . . . or their huge neighbor, which, until this very day has never appologized or even admitted culpability for the horrors of the past 50 years?
Perhaps it was a Freudian slip that you wrote in “Tread lightly in the Baltics” (Edit-orial, Jan. 13) that Russia “. . . has drawn a firm line against encroachment into countries that were apart of the Soviet Union.” I think you meant to write a part, but apart is definitely the correct term. The Baltics were a part of the Soviet Union in name only and on the pages of Soviet history books. The rest of the world knew them as occupied territories annexed by force, against the will of their people, with much bloodshed and oppression.
Advising the Baltics “. . . to improve their understandably strained relationships with Russia” is like counseling Fred Goldman to improve his “understandably” strained relationship with O.J. Simpson. It’s not the logic that bothers me but the hypocrisy.
While I completely agree that the Baltics would be best reintegrated into the West through economic and social means and not NATO, I can’t help feeling that the editorial staff’s opinion would be quite different if the subject of the editorial was Kuwait and its aggressive neighbor Iraq. Then again, Kuwait has something the West wants–oil. The Baltics do not.
Welcome to the New World Order. Cash on the barrelhead. No waiting.
