I just returned to New York after a two-week visit to Riga, the bustling capital of Latvia. My son and his Latvian wife both work in IT and have made a home there, at least for now, their two kids by now fluent in English, Latvian, and plenty of Russian.
Russian makes a difference because Latvia, a Baltic state formerly “owned” by the Soviet Union, borders Russia and Vladimir Putin’s now two-year-old war with Ukraine is increasingly the talk of the town.
And that talk is fraught with anxiety.
What a difference several years make. When I first visited my son, his wife, Ludi, and my two grandchildren some six years ago, the mood here was upbeat and forward-thinking. Latvia felt like a vital piece of Eastern Europe, a feeling also given off by its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania, and Poland of course, a nation rebuilt thanks in large part to European Union funding.
Latvia too had a bright future, and Riga’s development made those hopes seem real.
No one here believes the U.S. would actually join in the fray if Russia decided to push farther west.
True, things changed a bit when when Vladimir Putin brazenly annexed Crimea, but no one seemed to panic. The idea that Putin would actually press ahead with his Greater Russia scheme still seemed remote. That is certainly no longer the case.
In the last year, as Russian drones skirted closer and closer to the Latvian border, the mood has changed dramatically in all the Baltics. Riga is bolstering its defenses and reintroducing forms of conscription. No one here much believes in NATO, not any longer. Nor are they inclined to think the United States will do much to protect them.
At the few get-togethers with Eric’s friends — my son goes by Erik here — the joke is that the U.S. is really part of the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces.
Ludi, who once worked briefly in Moscow, doesn’t have a politically correct bone in her body. For her, Jews are America’s foremost priority, “while the rest of us can rot.”
No one here believes the U.S. would actually join in the fray if Russia decided to push farther west. That would mean starting World War III, and the increasingly isolationist US would never agree to troops on the ground.
Nor would newly armed NATO be able to do much, since key countries such as France and Germany would want no part of a head-to-head fracas with Russia.
I did a lot of listening but little talking. Eric did most of my talking for me, and he muted my views.
Long ago, I served in Desert Storm, so I know the military and have seen my fair share of war. I also read lots of military history. I honestly don’t get the sense that the arrogant Mr. Putin really wants to bite off more than Ukraine, which his badly managed forces have not been able to subdue despite years of thrusts. Sure, he’s dropped an anchor in eastern Ukraine, but that part of the country has always had a love-hate relationship with Russia and combat there is closer to a blood feud. Before Putin’s all-out attack, some in the east were at home as part of Russia.
So, this Russian army bears no resemblance to that of the Great Patriotic War, World War II, when Stalin’s Red Army lost millions not only expelling Hitler’s troops from the outskirts of Moscow but trailing after them until the Soviet flag flew over Berlin.
Things are different this time around, and I simply can’t see a Tom Clancy “Red Storm Rising” scenario in which Russian forces overrun the West.
That said, you can’t argue with the anxiety here, fueled by all manner of red-coded, real-time alerts rushing like phone-vibrating cockroaches. Hot pockets keep everyone on edge. With Russian and Ukrainian drones on the near-horizon, there is no respite from the storm.
For those who see Putin as the new Hitler — and he’s played that card by calling his attack on Ukraine an effort to defeat neo-Nazis — historical tidbits, some accurate, some hyperbolic, hold sway. Podcasts make mention of Munich and Neville Chamberlain, who in 1938, after meeting Hitler, said he believed the Nazi leader’s promise to stop his aggressive moves at a piece of Czechoslovakia. And what about the Polish ambassador who, also in 1938, met Hitler in Berlin and came away assured that Poland was safe from attack?
Lies, of course, but anyone with a brain could see the Nazi military buildup wasn’t just for show. He had an agenda. Putin may have one as well, but does he have the troops to back it up. Hardly.
But let’s set all that aside for a minute and talk about the Latvians, specifically the twenty-somethings who work for or with Eric. They check their phones constantly for war alerts, their wives and girlfriends even more riveted.
But do any of these kids want to enlist? Do any of them want to take up arms and occupy sentry points on the Russian border?
No way. A few would love to get their hands on drones, but the dozen or so members of the younger contingent have one thing on their minds — getting out of Latvia before the hostilities. In a nutshell, no one wants to fight. A war for many of this group is the kind gamers live for, war on a screen with made-up villains — a war in which no one dies.
The trouble with drones is that they posit such a war. The problem also is, drones have targets, and inside those targets are very real humans, including plenty of twenty-something troops and civilians.
No wonder some here want out. One Polish friend of Eric’s said his entire family had detailed plans in the event Russia got too close for comfort, which, for oft-invaded Poland, it already is. Those plans are centered around a flight to Dublin.
The mood in the Baltics and Poland isn’t matched by that in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has taken pains not to alienate Putin. Their semi-cozy relationship keeps Hungary out of harm’s way, since Putin is desperate for fans.
The Russia-bordering Baltics, however, are another story entirely. Our man Putin has said time and again he doesn’t really recognize the Baltics as sovereign states, same with Georgia, which he marched on more than 15 years ago.
And that’s the rub with Putin: He wasn’t supposed to invade Ukraine, just intimidate it, at least that was the view of analysts. But, lo and behold, the analysts were wrong.
And everyone here knows about bad intelligence, the kind that led CIA and NSA America to invade Iraq, telling the world Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction.” He didn’t. “Bad intelligence,” said the agencies. So why trust assessments of Putin’s intentions now?
And Washington isn’t sending dozens of new fighter jets to NATO. They’re headed, of course, to Bibi Netanyahu.
If I wanted to compress my sense of Riga over my two weeks, I’d call it a city high on tension, convinced it stands pretty much alone. Again, the Western embrace of Israel, now tempered by a pseudo-concern about Palestinian civilian casualties, suggests the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now a bore no one has much interest in following. CNN sticks around, mostly waiting on the next drone strike. The bigger picture, which includes Latvia, is lost. And Washington isn’t sending dozens of new fighter jets to NATO. They’re headed, of course, to Bibi Netanyahu.
Ludi jokes that Israel’s next war should be against Russia. Beating the Russians would give Israel a lot more settler territory than the Gaza Strip. But her gallows humor isn’t shared. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t told Eric his family is welcome in my home, my wife ready to make pancakes for the grandkids until Eric and Ludi find new work in the U.S. of A.
So there you have it, a few modest reflections after a trip to visit a faraway son. Though I still don’t believe Putin plans to invade the Baltics or Poland, I wouldn’t put money on it. Finland, a minted NATO member (it joined last year, just ahead of Sweden), is already on near-war footing. It has very bad memories of Russian troops on its soil early into World War II. No one trusts Putin’s Russia now, just as too many seemed to trust Hitler’s Germany then.
No doubt about one thing: Latvia is very much in harm’s way and it takes just two days, and not two weeks, to feel it.
