Some surprising actors want the Yankees in their backyard

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

The Estonians want the Americans to stand guard in the Baltics.

So too, it seems, do the Pakistanis.

The clamour for Yankee attention, if not always the person of the Yankee soldier (in his trademark Oakleys) is striking. It seems to be shared on the fringes of Europe just as much as in South Asia.

There is no mystery, nor any surprise about Estonia’s position. Prime Minister Kaja Kallas spoke to the Financial Times (paywall) against the backdrop of rising tensions on Nato’s eastern flank — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Having stationed more than 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, Moscow has been making outrageous demands about Nato returning to its pre-1997 borders, when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were not members of the military alliance.

Accordingly, Ms Kallas’s comment that Estonia would like to see “the big allies present in our region” makes perfect sense. It is an oblique call for American soldiers to be stationed in the Baltics. Estonia …