BALTICS….

Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel, speaking last week at a conference on NATO, defined the West as “the territory across which NATO can and should extend, from Alaska to Tallinn,” the capital of Estonia. Havel wants to see Slovakia and the three Baltic states move decisively toward membership in the alliance at the NATO Summit he will host in Prague next year. To hesitate, said Havel, out of concern for Russia’s “geopolitical or strategic interests or even its prestige, would amount to confirming the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact,” the 1939 agreement that endorsed the Soviet Union’s claim to a buffer zone of subjugated nations on its western borders. Havel, an author and playwright as well as a statesman, knows how to use words. “Strategic ambiguity” is not is his vocabulary.