![]() ![]() ![]() It paved the way to German and Soviet policy of Divide et Impera and backfired the creation of a Baltic union or a Border States league spanned between Helsinki and Bucharest. Particularly the Polish-Lithuanian confrontation with regard to the belonging of the historical capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania proved to be Achilles' heel of Border States solidarity. The Declaration of Common Aims of the Independent Mid-European nations adopted in the convention assembled at Independence Hall of Philadelphia in 1918 remained a generous statement of goodwill but a chimera in practical terms. The Polish-Romanian and the Latvian-Estonian political and military alliances, set up in 1921, were the foundations of international order in the area, and plans to merge them into a grand Border States league continued to be nurtured although with less enthusiasm than it had been done a few years earlier. The countries situated on this belt were still in search of diplomatic and political tools to back up stability and regional balance. While the dialogue between Western and Central Europe was unlocked at least temporarily following the Locarno Pact (1925), the Border States persisted to be widely seen as a locus of clash between the old bourgeoisie world and the rising communist one. It stood witness of a divided Europe, functioning at differing speeds and acting based on most urgent security needs and concerns. It referred to the belt of countries from Finland to the north and down to Romania to the south, neighbouring the most ideologically charged border of Europe. By the mid of the 1920s the concept of Border States had already been established in the political and diplomatic vocabulary of European chancelleries. ![]()
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