BALTICS - NEW HANSEATIC LEAGUE?
As we prepare to enter a new millennium, a 21st-century version of the Hanseatic League -- that confederation of city-states 600 years ago that made the Baltic Sea area the most prosperous part of Europe -- could be in the making. Among those working to make it happen are Sweden, which hosted an international conference on Baltic security last month, and Lithuania's unlikely president, a tall, likable, 73-year-old named Valdas Adamkus.
The former Lithuanian freedom fighter fled his country in 1944 in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion. Eventually making his way to Chicago, the destination of many Baltic immigrants this century, Adamkus became a civil engineer. He later served in the Midwest office of the Environmental Protection Agency for more than 25 years (16 of them as regional administrator), battling industrial Goliaths and polluters. Persuaded to return to Lithuania in 1997 and run for president of his now independent homeland, Adamkus surprised everyone, including himself, by squeaking to victory by 7/10 of a percentage point in January 1998. Not bad for an affable Chicago Bulls fan whose only prior experience as a political candidate was a 1968 race for trustee of sanitation in Cook County, Il. He lost.
Now working to strengthen his country's environmental laws, Adamkus also hopes to attract more outside investment to help modernize and liberalize the Lithuanian economy. ``Lithuania is open for business from East and West,'' Adamkus says. There is, of course, a ``prosperity gap'' in all formerly Communist-controlled countries of Eastern Europe, including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- collectively know as the Baltic states. It was not always so. Centuries ago, travel and trade in the Baltic thrived, thanks to the Hanseatic League, a commercial association of free towns in northern Germany and neighboring areas formally organized in 1358 and dissolved in the 17th century. But when the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin annexed the Baltic states and other areas of Eastern Europe in the 1940s, this prosperous part of Europe went into a backslide. The tearing down of the Iron Curtain during this final decade of the 20th century is changing all this. Swedish exports to Lithuania increased more than 900 percent from 1992-1998, while the United States invested more than a quarter of a billion dollars there. Economists reckon that regional trade in the Baltic area is rising by about a third every year. According to The Economist newspaper, Europe's two fastest-growing economies (except those rebuilding from war) are on the shores of the Baltic: Estonia's, which expanded by 8 percent in 1997, and Poland's, which grew by 6.9 percent. In short, the Baltic is booming.
Also booming, unfortunately, is organized crime, an obvious deterrent to increased business and trade. A Task Force on Organized Crime in the Baltic Sea Region, formed in 1996 and based in Stockholm (just a short ferry ride from the Baltic states), is taking aim at 28 known organized-crime groups in the area. The Baltic mafioso are engaged in the usual illegal activities: money laundering, drugs, murder-for-hire, prostitution and smuggling, says Mark Jimerson, assistant legal attaché with the FBI stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia. The spread of computers and the Internet, Jimerson adds, is helping the Baltic crime bosses become even more powerful. Since controlling corruption and crime is vital to securing real economic progress and democracy, the Baltic countries must do better in these areas if they expect Western businesses to enter their markets in significant numbers. Leaders such as President Adamkus say they are working on it. Why should the United States care about the Baltic region? Because it is the gateway to Russia and our best shot at linking Russia solidly to Europe. In addition, Eastern European immigrants began making large U.S. cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Cleveland their home in the late 19th century. Now prominent in American politics, religion and business, their second- and third-generation descendants want to see a prosperous Baltic in the 21st century. President Adamkus, with his Eastern roots and Western know-how, is in the forefront of the new Baltic revolution, this time from a seat of power instead of the editor's desk at an underground resistance newspaper, where he labored in the 1940s. It's a career switch Americans should watch with interest.
Jan K. Collins, Commentator
Collins is a free-lance writer and editor based in Columbia, S.C.
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