The Baltic Issue in Cold War International Relations

David Smith and John Hiden were invited to collaborate on this project, headed by Dr Vahur Made of the Estonian School of Diplomacy, Tallinn and supported by the Estonian Science Foundation (ESF grant no. 4962). The project will result in a jointly-edited collection of articles, provisionally scheduled for publication in 2005.

The project focuses primarily on the development of the Baltic policies of Western states after the Second World War. Preliminary research questions:

  1. How was the Baltic issue influenced by changes in US foreign polict doctrine during the Cold War period (different forms of containment and détente)?
  2. How did the attitude of European countries, especially that of the Nordic countries and the UK, develop towards the Baltic issue and how was it influenced by US policy?
  3. What was the role of international organisations in bringing the Baltic issue to the supranational level?
  4. How effectively was the Soviet Union countering the West’s Baltic policies?

The project also analyses the Baltic issue from the theoretical perspective, in order to locate it within the wider international context of the Cold War. International relations, security and conflict theory will be used. An attempt will be made to target the Baltic issue not only through the traditional realist and geopolitical perspective but also by using alternative approaches such as liberalism, functionalism, institutionalism, structuralism, constructivism, comparative analysis of the Cold War regional conflicts etc.