Choosing the Flag in the Name of Peace: Why Have the Baltic States (Re)turned to the United Nations?

The twenty-first century peacekeeping landscape is defined by the multiplicity of institutional frameworks under which international operations are deployed. Small states with limited resources cannot meet every demand for troop contributions and face the inevitable dilemma of choosing whose 'flag' to carry. For the first decade after joining NATO and the EU, the Baltic States gave a clear priority to NATO and U.S.-led military operations, but since the 2014 Ukrainian crisis gradually shifted their focus to the UN framework. Drawing on interviews with policy-makers in the three Baltic countries this article aims to explain this recent shift. It reviews the main theoretical assumptions about troop contributions to the UN peacekeeping operations and burden-sharing behaviour among NATO allies, and suggests that the recent troop deployment decisions of the Baltic States are best explained by a realist focus on national security concerns. The seemingly 'internationalist' context of UN peacekeeping operations simply happened to be most suitable for a bilateral exchange with their European allies, namely Germany and France, that in turn contributed troops to NATO's Baltic flank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]