Latvia and the USA: from Captive Nation to Strategic Partner
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257303824 Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner Book · January 2008 CITATIONS READS 0 301 1 author: Daunis Auers University of Latvia 35 PUBLICATIONS 100 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Daunis Auers on 06 July 2017. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner Editor Daunis Auers Academic Press of the University of Latvia UDK 327(474.3+73)(082) La 800 Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner. Editor: Daunis Auers This volume has been financed by a grant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia. Cover illustration: Latvian Freedom Monument and US Statue of Liberty. Layout and cover design: Ieva Tiltiņa © University of Latvia, 2008 ISBN 978-9984-45-017-9 Table of Contents Daunis Auers and Nils Muižnieks Introduction 5 Ambassador Andrejs Pildegovičs Rīga and Washington, DC: An Alliance of Common Values, Principles and Aspirations 9 Ambassador Charles W. Larson, Jr. The Price of Freedom 13 Latvia and America in the Twentieth Century 17 1. Aldis Purs ‘Weak and Half-Starved Peoples’ meet ‘Vodka, Champagne, Gypsies and Drozhki’: relations between the Republic of Latvia and the USA from 1918 to 1940 19 2. Pauls Raudseps The Long Vigil: US-Latvian Relations, 1940-1991 33 3. Daunis Auers Salmon, Rissoles and Smoked Eel: The Latvian Legation in the Cold War 51 4. Ojārs Celle The Latvian Exile Community and US-Latvia Relations 61 Pictures 68 Contemporary Relations 73 5. Žaneta Ozoliņa The United States and Latvia: Standing Shoulder to Shoulder in International Organizations 75 6. Atis Lejiņš US Policy Toward the Baltic States During Three Presidencies: An Essay 87 7. Ieva Morica The Latvian-American Partnership in Building Civil Society in Latvia 97 4 Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner 8. George J. Vīksniņš The Georgetown University Syndrome and Latvian Economic Reforms 109 9. Nils Muižnieks and Pēteris Viņķelis Anti-Americanism in Latvia: An Exploratory Essay 119 Personal Reflections 127 10. Dan Fried Lessons of Latvia 129 11. Ron Asmus and Māris Riekstiņš The Baltic Model 131 12. Strobe Talbott The Jūrmala Opening 133 13. Ojārs Kalniņš Latvians and Americans 137 14. Ints Siliņš Rīga Journal 147 Documents and Speeches 163 The Announcement of the Government of the United States Concerning Recognition of the Latvian Government, 28 July 1922 165 The Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Republic of Latvia and the Government of the USA Concerning Diplomatic Relations, 5 September 1991 167 Address by Bill Clinton, President of the United States of America, at The Freedom Monument, Rīga, Latvia, 6 July 1994 169 A Charter of Partnership Among the United States of America and the Republic of Estonia, Republic of Latvia, and Republic of Lithuania, 16 January 1998 171 Address by George W. Bush, President of the United States of America, at The Small Guild Hall, Rīga, Latvia, 7 May 2005 179 Address by H.E. Dr. Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, President of the Republic of Latvia at a joint session of the United States Congress, Washington, DC, 7 June 2006 187 110th CONGRESS – 2nd Session S. CON. RES. 87 Congratulating the Republic of Latvia on the 90th anniversary of its declaration of independence , 17 September 2008 197 Brief Chronology of US-Latvia Relations 201 Notes on Contributors 205 Introduction Daunis Auers and Nils Muižnieks America and Latvia have an asymmetric relationship. The USA stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and its 300 million inhabitants drive the world’s biggest economic and political power. In contrast, Latvia is a small country of 2.3 million people on the eastern littoral of the Baltic Sea. While Latvia hardly intrudes on the American consciousness, the US looms large in the contemporary Latvian narrative. It has been Latvia’s primary political patron and bulwark since 1940, first through its principled non-recognition of Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, and then through its consistent and continuing support for Latvia’s accession to NATO. In Latvian foreign policy discourse, America is Latvia’s only ‘strategic partner’. However, things were not ever thus. In the first part of this volume Aldis Purs depicts the tentative initial contacts between the US and Latvia after the First World War. At this time, the US was represented in Latvia primarily at the non-governmental level. These non-governmental representatives worked at easing the dire humanitarian situation that Latvia found itself in at the end of the war, as battling bands of Reds, Whites, and German irregular forces swept back and forth across Latvia’s territory. In those pre-global communication days, the US was as much an ideal as a reality to Latvians, symbolising freedom and prosperity, the twin aspirations of the new Latvian state. By the 1930s, relations had normalized to the extent that the US had opened a substantial diplomatic mission in Rīga, albeit primarily as a ‘listening post’ to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union. At the same time, Latvia had re-opened its legation in Washington, DC in the mid-1930s, and under the enthusiastic tutelage of its head of mission, Minister Alfreds Bīlmanis, set about publicizing and lobbying the interests of the Latvian state. Nevertheless, despite these efforts, Latvia had barely entered the American perception at the outbreak of the Second World War. As a result, it is remarkable that the US, as a point of principle, adopted the Sumner Welles declaration of non-recognition of the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, and maintained this policy right up to 1991. Pauls Raudseps describes the many different pressures that the non-recognition policy came under during changing presidencies and international conditions during the Second 6 Latvia and the USA: From Captive Nation to Strategic Partner World War and the Cold war era. However, despite detente, George H.W. Bush’s hesitance in immediately recognizing Latvia’s renewed independence in 1991, and other bumps along the road, the US’s principled stance against the Soviet occupation eased the road to Latvia’s international recognition in 1991. Daunis Auers and Ojārs Celle focus on two particular Latvian actors in the US during the Cold War – the Latvian Legation in Washington, DC, and the Latvian-American exile community. Auers tells the story of the Latvian diplomats left in diplomatic limbo after the Soviet invasion of Latvia. The Latvian Legation had an unusual existence during the near half-century of the Cold War. On the one hand, it was recognized as a diplomatic mission by the State Department’s consular list, but on the other it was marginalized by Washington, DC’s wider diplomatic community. However, the legation, and particularly Anatols Dinbergs, who served in Latvia’s diplomatic corps for sixty years, was a living link to the government of independent, inter- war Latvia, and was thus of huge symbolic importance. Celle focuses on the Latvian exile community’s development as a political actor. As the tens of thousands of Latvians that had fled the Soviet army at the end of World War Two settled in communities across the USA, they grew in wealth and confidence and became increasingly organized. Indeed, Latvian culture thrived in the US, with hundreds of choirs and folk-dance groups, as well as Latvian-language newspapers engaging exiled intellectuals in spirited debate, and producing many thousands of novels and non-fiction volumes. By the 1980s American-Latvians had established a network of cultural, social and political organizations across the length and breadth of the USA, and had grown increasingly activist. Moreover, Latvian exile groups co-operated with their Estonian and Lithuanian counterparts to create an effective and activist Washington, DC lobbying machine that continues to serve the interests of the Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian governments in the US to this very day. The second part of this volume addresses issues of contemporary importance. Žaneta Ozoliņa and Atis Lejiņš, two of Latvia’s leading foreign affairs analysts, look at the international dimension of Latvian-American cooperation. Ozoliņa considers the critical role of the American government in consistently supporting Baltic aspirations to rejoin the international community, particularly the European Union and NATO. Lejiņš compares the Baltic policies of the three post-1991 American Presidents, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, arguing that all three have consistently supported Latvia at both the domestic and international levels. The US has also played a role in shaping Latvia’s domestic policy. Ieva Morica analyses American-Latvian cooperation in the civil society arena. The unhappy forced voluntarism of the Soviet era, as well as the economic crisis D. Auers, N. Muižnieks. Introduction 7 of the first half of the 1990s, contributed to low levels of civic participation in Latvia. Both the US government, through the USAID program, and independent donors, such as the Soros Foundation – Latvia, partially filled the financing gap, and provided much-needed NGO management and organizational training. Many of the most active civil society actors in contemporary Latvia have benefited from US-funded grants and programs. George J. Vīksniņš provides an insider’s account of the development of the Latvian economy in the early 1990s, spotlighting the role and influence of the ‘Georgetown University Gang’ in the transition from the Soviet command economy to the market. Vīksniņš, a Latvian-American Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, was instrumental in bringing talented young Latvian economists to the US, and also provided advice to the nascent Bank of Latvia. His chapter addresses both the successes and failures of the early economic reform era.