An elderly man in Vilnius was recently looking at the military vehicles parked on the city’s main street as a part of the Independence Day celebrations. Some of the vehicles were of the Lithuanian military. Others came from the U.S.
He was approached by a journalist who asked whether foreign military on Lithuanian soil was causing anxiety. “Why would it?” responded the man, who appeared to be in his 80s. “I have been waiting for them to come for 70 years of my life.”
The allied troops were not deployed to the Baltics during the guerrilla struggle against the Soviets immediately after World War II. Yet they are present now because the Baltics are members of NATO.
