Abstract
On March 29, 2004, NATO experienced the fifth wave of enlargement. It was one of the largest steps in the history of the alliance, and it not only demonstrated the quantitative growth of this military-political organization but also confirmed its qualitative shifts. During the cold war, the Baltic Sea was an inner sea of the Warsaw Pact, with a heavily concentrated military presence on its southern shore. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, there had been two waves of NATO enlargement, and the Baltic was now becoming an inner sea for NATO. At the Prague summit, NATO decided to validate the accession of seven new members. Among them were three former Soviet republics: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. This enlargement round was viewed as coming directly into Russia’s “backyard.”
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