In the months since the invasion of Ukraine, Estonians, who share a border with Russia, are increasingly concerned about potential Kremlin aggression.
Despite the threat being currently low, more than 1,000 ordinary women have volunteered to join Estonia’s Women's Defence Organisation since the conflict began. Car mechanic Mari Klandorf is one. She now spends her weekends training in first aid, guerrilla warfare and firearms and says: “Russia might not be coming tomorrow, or the next day, but I want to be prepared.”
In pure strength comparisons all three Baltics would face severe pressure under a full-scale Russian attack but, still, with the help of the Western coalition, they hope to hold the fort successfully albeit at what would be excessive cost.
Estonia, like the rest of the Baltics, has a checkered WWII past. The Baltics welcomed Hitler’s domination, volunteered to fight in German army ranks, and bloodily contributed to the Holocaust.
Postwar the Baltics came under Soviet rule, something they did not take kindly for obvious reasons. When the USSR collapsed, Estonia and her Baltic neighbors rushed to join the Western coalition and quickly built healthy economies and a strong sense of “never again” coming under Russian influence.
Ukraine has upended this post-1990 “stability” by triggering Putin’s paleo-communist instincts and the fact justifiably alarms the Baltics.
The Estonian example is a good model for Greece whose military readiness can be enhanced with the adoption of “people’s mobilization.” The idea was first introduced during the socialist Andreas Papandreou 1981-89 Pasok debilitating era, but never gained real traction beyond allowing reservists in border areas to keep their rifles and ammo at home.
This “Home Guard” received no permanent training, and/or army-directed periodic mobilization exercises, since Pasok cadres, most of them communist sympathizers, solely saw the Home Guard as the People rising with their guns against a military coup—which had already occurred, in April 1967, catching the politicians, on both the left and right, with their pants down, thus creating a permanent nagging concern for Pasok lefties.
Now that Turkic Mussulmanism threatens Greece with both a land and sea surprise attack of conquest, getting the Eastern Thrace civilian population ready is a (theoretically) good idea.
On the practical level, however, any such initiative could (and, most likely, would) founder given the methodical post-junta Greek Left “peacenik” propaganda, which affects the self-professed “European-oriented” conservatives as well and has cemented civilian dislike for anything resembling last-ditch defense.
Modern Greeks have become too “Europeanized” for barbarities like defending their own home to the last (and could pay dearly for their woke ‘Europeanization’).