The problem for the West is the hundreds of thousands of Russians who found themselves, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, trapped in countries that couldn’t stand them.
Nadia the green-eyed Russian waitress whispered conspiratorially, ‘‘They don’t like us, you know. The Estonians, they think we are occupiers.’’ She glanced over at the other bar staff and continued, ‘‘but we are not. We were born here, this is our land, can’t you see the great Orthodox cathedral - if we came here with Stalin, who do they think built that?”
In Georgia the issue is Ossetia and Abkhazia, but here in the Baltic the issue is the 40 per cent of the Estonian population who consider themselves Russian.
There is a similar but not quite so large minority in Latvia, Lithuania and, of course, the big one - Ukraine. There are also significant numbers of Russians in the Muslim republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
These are all potential powder kegs, if Moscow chooses to light the flame.
Whether the Kremlin wants to do this is anyone’s guess. However, here in Tallinn it is easy to see how a more expansive Kremlin might go about its business. Among the Estonians there is a tremendous amount of insecurity at the moment.
The prospect of any aggressive Russian action is remote because at the moment our interests and Russia’s coincide in trade and a mutual financial conundrum in the face of Asian global competition.
Furthermore, the people in power in Moscow, despite the naive caricatures peddled by the western press, are not idiots.
It does not mean the Red Army will not roll again, but it implies that from now on, Europe and America have to deal with Russia as an equal. In the past 18 years, we have dismissed the Russians. This was not healthy. Today, after Georgia, the situation has changed.
The Russians have spoken; the West has listened. The status quo is strengthened and Nadia can feel confident again without being threatening.
www.davidmcwilliams.ie
Russia has sent out a signal to everyone -
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