Welcome to #NATO 101. Lesson 1
"The mere lack of #military#power is, in itself, not enough to cause a nation to lose its position vis-à-vis other states. That only happens when the people lose their individual integrity and the country gradually loses its national #integrity...
#NATO 101, Lesson 2
"No-one wants to cooperate with a country that has lost its integrity. [Even when] other countries have dealt unreasonably... who would want to damage the amity extant between [us, just by] sticking up for a state that has no national #integrity to begin with?
#NATO 101, Lesson 3.
"Many countries haven’t lost their international #prestige merely because of #poverty and #weakness... natural #disaster and poor #geography are enough to make a country weak and poor, and that can move others to sympathy. But lack of #integrity?
1/#WTOStc/@stuffofwar
The medieval formation & modern history of the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania) is a very intricate, difficult topic.
Sadly, key artefacts were deliberately blown up (Boris Stones) stolen (Euphrasia’s Cross) or erased (by propaganda or genocide)
2/#WTOStc
after the 1939 Soviet-Nazi pact such that the 1 artefact unifying the area in #medieval times - the COG ship used by Catholic Crusaders then adopted by Orthodox colonizers & Slavic tribes along the Neman, Daugava, Emmajõgi, Velikaya, & Volkhov Rivers - is terribly rare.
3/#WTOStc
Yet of the COG remains its MOSS - polytrichum commune - flourishing all over the region.
Since Soviet studies had to ignore dendochronology (tree-ring dating) & Chernobyl’s radiation (=false chemical dating) & skirt the limits of KGB monitoring,& since 1992 each free