Thanks Mark MacKinnon for an informative, well written article.  This is the kind of analysis one expects from the Globe & Mail - rational and open.

It is particularly worrying to learn how poorly the Russian minority is treated in the country...  "Russian-speakers in both countries (as well as in Estonia) have spent much of the past 25 years fighting to have Russian made an official language, while their governments have resisted out of concern about Moscow’s lingering influence. A quarter century after independence, 250,000 of Latvia’s resident Russian-speakers – 10 per cent of the entire population – remain non-citizens of the country, denied passports because they’re either unwilling or unable to pass Latvian language and history tests."  

What are we Canadians doing justifying that kind of ethnic discrimination?  Have we not learned in Canada that failure to recognize your citizen's basic rights is a recipe for disaster?  

This provocative mission is bound for failure or worse