Lithuania's EU dilemma: fear of Russia led Lithuania to be the first to approve the new European constitution. But there is a rising tide of opposition throughout Europe to further EU merger.

The year 2004 has been a very eventful and exciting one for Europeans. In addition to the expansion of the European Union (EU) by 10 new members from so-called Central Europe, NATO expanded and accepted seven new members. Included in both those expansions were three formerly Soviet-occupied Baltic States--Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

When the Baltic States joined NATO, all three countries erupted in celebration, with rallies, concerts, and fireworks, because the inclusion relieved those tiny nations from the fear of open aggression from Russia.

The Baltic States have had very real reason to fear imminent Russian hostilities because Russia has been talking belligerently about restoring the Soviet empire. Even the Russian defense minister joined some militant parliamentarians and strategists in discussing such plans. During the 1940s, the Soviets deported nearly 500,000 Balts to the gulag archipelago, the Communist prison system in Siberia. Few survived that brutal experience. During the same period, Stalin transplanted hundreds of thousands of Russians into the Baltic States. Even today, the population of Latvia and Estonia is 25-30 percent Russian. It is somewhat better in Lithuania, where Russians comprise about 9 percent of the population. A large and noisy portion of these Russian populations inside the Baltic States identify with Russia and consider themselves Russians, not Balts. Many of them are not just Russians, but Russian Communists, who favor not only a return to Russian rule, but Soviet rule.

As evidence of the serious intent of the Russians in these plans, earlier this year Russian commuters ambushed a woman officer of the Lithuanian border patrol, who was accompanying the train through Lithuania's territory. They savagely beat her unconscious, then used her blood to write on a wall of the car: "Lithuania to Russians." Russian authorities dropped the investigation, of course.

How did this come about? Few Westerners realize that Lithuania shares main borders with the Kaliningrad region, a former Soviet (and now Russian) enclave. Known formerly as Konigsberg (in German) and Karaliaucius (in Lithuanian), it was given to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin at the end of the World War II by the victorious allies. It takes its current name from Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, a top member of the Soviet Politburo and one of Stalin's key henchmen. Lithuanians would like to see it return to its rightful name, but the Russian-speaking militants insist on keeping the Communist name.

While they can use the Baltic Sea for transport, the Russians also demand an open corridor, even for military transport, through Lithuania, under Moscow's control. Lithuania's refusal they call "an unfriendly act." The EU leaders have partially acquiesced to the Russian-Kaliningrad demands, rather than to the justifiable security and sovereignty concerns of Lithuania.

Lithuanians rightly fear the Russians because in the past the Russians have been bloody and brutal in their occupations. During one former occupation, many Lithuanians died at the hands of the conquering Red Army in an apparently planned slaughter similar to the more recent bloody "cleansing" in Cambodia.

From Fire to Frying Pan

Because Lithuanians faced the very real and tangible danger of being reoccupied, they embraced a not-so-tangible danger and joined the EU. This action may have removed the threat of a Communist takeover by Moscow, but it replaced the Communist threat with the threat of a takeover by the EU socialist apparat in Brussels --what former Kremlin boss Mikhail Gorbachev approvingly referred to as the "European Soviet." Even though the EU's ruling commission has been steadily eroding the national sovereignty of the countries under its umbrella and has been making rules which supersede each country's national laws, Lithuania joined the EU eagerly as an added measure of protection against the Russian threat.

Many Americans may wonder, why all these paradoxes in Europe after the collapse of the "evil empire"? How can it be that the Communist threat is still so real, and how can it be that socialism is so popular? Part of the answer may be found in the November/December 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. It published an article by Anne Applebaum, deputy editor of The Spectator, one of Britain's leading newspapers. The title of the article, "The Fall and Rise of the Communists," and the subtitle, "Guess Who's Running Central Europe?" underscore our "how."

In her article, Applebaum asserts that Central Europe is being run mainly by the same people who were running it under the Soviet rule. And--why?

"Western, particularly American, diplomats in Central Europe went out of their way to encourage politicians whom they perceived as antinationalist and to discourage 'decommunization' programs...." The Western diplomats were against those politicians whom they perceived to be nationalistic. "This was the case across the former Soviet bloc...."

And again--why? She says that those actions were taken because, "in both West and East, observers had assumed that the former communist parties were thoroughly demoralized.... [T]he potential for trouble in Central Europe lay elsewhere --in the resurgence of 1930s-style nationalist parties." Was it really so?

Because Anne Applebaum wrote for a magazine published by the leading globalist club, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), there is reason to suspect that the lady was not telling "the truth and nothing but the truth." The globalist members of the CFR, who during WW II and afterwards have been influencing U.S. foreign policy, know very well "what is what" on the crossroads of world politics. They knew then and know now that, like American patriots, the patriots of other nations--often called "nationalists" --cherish their independence, their culture, their national traditions, and their way of life. And this nationalism went against the ideals of highly-placed Western diplomats who were striving toward a world government. That's why the globalists preferred the opportunistic-materialistic Red nomenklatura running Central Europe and other regions of the world over genuine anti-Communist nationalists.

Ironic Hope

Ironically, because the former Communists who now run Central Europe have come to love the power and pleasure of the personal wealth that they've acquired thanks to the favorable positions they held during the Soviet collapse, they have become somewhat capitalistic and fearful of Eastern globalism. They don't want to share their wealth and their power with Vladimir Putin. This gives added incentive to countries, like Lithuania, to turn westward --to the perceived safety of NATO and the EU.

However, that safety is a delusion. EU membership spells long-term disaster for the countries of Central Europe, the same as it does for the other EU members. Paradoxically, the new Central European members may just prove to be the saving grace of Europe. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that Lithuania and the other former captive nations that seemingly have embraced the EU recently could actually end up leading the members of the EU's ruling commission into a buzz saw of unfriendly national referendums. This could provide a major roadblock to the ambitions of the globalists who have designed and nurtured the EU as a foundational building block for their envisioned world government.

The 10 new central European countries add to the EU equation an ingrained nationalism, the value of identity known by formerly Soviet-occupied nations. This national identity helped the nations fight the Kremlin's denationalization campaign. This ingrained nationalism of the 10 new members of the EU may be infectious in the "old" member nations, where a simmering nationalism occasionally already surfaces here and there. This may cause considerable problems for the "fathers" of the EU. In Lithuania, for example, there are plenty of (disorganized) patriots, even among some former Communist Party members, determined to keep the state on a national course. These patriots are looking at EU membership as an unavoidable and temporary situation, and they are determined to fight for national rights from within. They feel they are forced to join to gain protection from Moscow.

The recent lopsided vote by Lithuania's parliament in favor of the new EU constitution treaty might seem to contradict what was just said about Lithuanian nationalism, but that's not necessarily the case. As with virtually every other step forward in the entire EU process over the past nearly 50 years, that vote was obtained through deception. The nation was ambushed and robbed by leaders under the influence of Eastern and Western globalists, who want a centralized and de-Christianized EU, as a major step toward their planned utopia of world govern ment. However, there is reason to doubt that the EU one-worlders can overcome the historic differences of European nations. American patriots would contribute to the survival of an American America, if they would support the European struggle for Christianity, national culture, and independence. On October 29, EU leaders gathered in Rome to sign the new constitution treaty, which had emerged from a sordid two-year exercise in subterfuge led by former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing. There, in Rome, as in every previous summit leading to it over the years, the EU one-worlders claimed that they were moving Europe toward greater freedom, security and prosperity, while also falsely claiming that the new constitution would not infringe on the national sovereignty of the member states.

But anyone who takes the time to read this 300-page document will agree with the statement expressed by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium this past June in the Financial Times. "The Constitution," he said, "is the capstone of a European Federal State." The prime minister said this with approval, for he is an enthusiastic supporter of European "convergence" and "integration." He and his fellow globalists are hoping to push the constitution through the ratification process before the people catch on to its true nature. Former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene, who served as vice president of the EU constitutional convention, admitted this very plainly, telling the Irish Times on June 2, after the constitution was completed: "We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes."

So much for the charade of EU "democracy." What this shows, of course, is that the EU one-worlders have total contempt for "the people" they claim to serve. If the people do not approve of their scheme, they intend to keep resubmitting it to them until they finally browbeat or bribe enough votes to pass it. Yet even much of the pro-EU media is admitting that there is broad and growing opposition to the EU constitution throughout Europe. More and more people are beginning to realize what it means, especially in terms of the destruction of their national independence and the imposition of ever increasing control over their daily lives.

Euroskepticism Ascendant

The EU's 25 member nations must approve the constitution before November 1, 2006. Lithuania, I am sorry to say, is the first nation to ratify the constitution. However, this is not as great a victory for the globalists as the EU propagandists would like us to believe. As I have tried to explain above, the Lithuanian vote must be seen in the context of powerful historical and political factors. The parliamentary vote on November 11 was, I believe, much more about a small country desperately seeking security than it was about enthusiastically embracing the EU agenda.

As I watch European history in the making from a front seat--from Vilnius, the capital of the Republic of Lithuania--I see many hopeful signs of growing Euroskepticism, along with healthy nationalist sentiments. The burning question is this: will this fledgling opposition be sufficiently organized in time to thwart the highly organized and heavily funded forces that are pushing the people of Europe into the EU trap?

Mr. Brazenas, an American citizen, now lives in Lithuania, his native country.