ABSTRACT
To understand the lingering concern of the Baltic nations with respect to ensuring their security one should have a look at their turbulent history. The historic destiny of the Baltics was to a large extent determined by their unfortunate geographic location in between two belligerent nations to the West and to the East – the Germans and the Russians respectively. Since the early 1300s there has hardly been a century in which the three Baltic nations were not caught up in a war with either or both of these neighbours. Only Lithuania experienced a long period of statehood before being swallowed up by the Russian empire at the end of the eighteenth century.
