Good fences make good neighbors

On population-level evacuations, bad neighbors, and the events that should wake America from its slumber

A warning from the Lithuanian interior minister: "The entire region is facing similar threats coordinated by Russia and Belarus -- instrumentalization of migration, cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage of critical infrastructure and other hybrid threats." In many ways, the United States still enjoys the protection of two very large oceans. But we should be alert not to let complacency creep in. What the Lithuanian minister adds is really quite heart-stopping: "First of all, we have to think about the evacuation of the population on a regional scale".

■ That concept is hard to comprehend, but it could easily be true: Lithuania is only about 25,000 square miles in all, or about the size of West Virginia. That's not very large, and that fact certainly animates concerns about the need for a population-scale evacuation (for a country of 2.6 million people).

■ Russia has already occupied about that amount of territory in Ukraine, and has lately shown willingness to bomb civilians shopping at hardware stores. The alarm in the Baltics is entirely warranted.

■ Contingency planning for a possible invasion is a lamentable thing to have to make a budgetary and policy priority, though it's a good thing the threat is being taken seriously. Demonstrations that America's allies are taking the threat to their own sovereignty seriously ought to have an impact on American leaders and voters alike. Our intrinsic geographic security shouldn't keep us from recognizing that others are far less removed from peril.