New Year’s Eve brought an unusual self-induced bit of boredom. I had nowhere to go, and no desire, either. But instead of moping, I used the quiet around the house to uncover the simple fun of the WAP feature on my mobile phone—and the ability to connect with Latvia while away from a computer.

For those who don’t know, WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. It’s a telecommunications standard that allows properly equipped mobile phones to connect to the Internet. Just like Web sites, WAP sites provide news, information, entertainment and e-commerce. But unlike Web sites, what the user usually sees on the small screen of the mobile phone is short bursts of text and few, if any, graphics.

For some readers, particularly those in Europe, the use of WAP is nothing new. In fact, some mobile telecommunications providers have already moved beyond the simple text-based information provided by basic WAP. Eurotel Bratislava, a mobile communications provider in the Slovak Republic, recently unveiled what it says is the first live video feed to a cell phone, using Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to send a television news show to its customers.

But that’s way ahead of my phone’s capabilities.

I’d known that my Ericsson R520m could utilize WAP, but I had never tried. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that I could. However, my provider (T-Mobile) clarified that my calling plan includes up to 1 megabyte of data transmissions per month. In the world of WAP, that’s plenty for infrequent use.

After spending half an hour on the Web tracking down information about how to configure my phone to use my provider’s WAP “gateway,” I was set. Within minutes, I was surfing T-Mobile’s site, retrieving generally useless information such as my horoscope and the winning lottery numbers.

Not satisfied with things I can’t control anyway, I began to wonder whether there are any WAP sites in Latvia and whether I might be able to view them on my phone. And, yes, there are some sites in Latvia, and yes, some I could get to through my phone.

My first visit was to Diena, the largest daily newspaper in Latvia. I was pleased to see that my phone readily gained access to the site, even displaying the newspaper’s logotype. The home page of the site allowed two basic choices: today’s and yesterday’s top stories and sports results. Scrolling and “clicking” (by pressing the “Yes” button), I was able to read headlines and the stories behind them.

Cool! This means I can be away from my computer and still read Latvian news on the Internet.

But why stop there? My next visit was to Latvijas Mobīlais telefons (LMT), the larger of the two wireless providers in Latvia. LMT’s WAP portal offers a number of links, but many of them are not Latvian and several didn’t work. However, a fun feature allows a mobile phone user to find out what movies are playing in cinemas around Riga and the rest of the country. The database also provides summaries of the cast and plot. Doubly cool!

My wireless provider when I’m in Latvia, Tele2, also has a WAP site, but its offerings are not as broad as LMT’s—although they are provided in Latvian, English and Russian.

Another stop on my WAP trip to Latvia was at 118, the information service provided by Lattelekom. The horoscope section didn’t work, but at least I could find out the phone numbers for special services in cities around Latvia—in case I need to call the fire department in Saldus, for example. The site also provides a name’s day service for today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and the day after the day after tomorrow (why isn’t there a good word in English like aizparīt?).

These aren’t the only WAP sites in Latvia, but I was surprised that more aren’t available, especially useful ones. The Estonian business newspaper Aripaev, a cousin of Rīga’s Dienas bizness, has a WAP site, but Db doesn’t. Plus I found an interesting English-Estonian WAP dictionary, but nothing like that for Latvian.

The future of WAP is unclear. Two years ago, it was deemed a technology that would slowly catch on, but it seems that it still hasn’t. Surfing the Internet on a screen barely larger than your thumb is one barrier.

But at least it gave me something to do New Year’s Eve.

The euphoria of being invited to join the NATO defense alliance has barely abated, and now an equally significant moment for Latvia has been reached at the European Union summit in Copenhagen, during which the three Baltic states were among 10 countries invited to join the EU.

As with the NATO decision, the final days before the Dec. 12-13 summit saw various rumours of delay, possible treachery and unresolved differences. Denmark currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union and engaged in a furious shuttle diplomacy to bed down arrangements and ensure a smooth outcome.

And what are the bones of contention?

Milk, meat, fruit, grains, nuts—not to forget potatoes… and tomatoes. Europe, which considers itself the most sophisticated of unions, the paragon of peaceful coexistence and no doubt the pinnacle of western civilisation, is constantly embroiled in disputes over its most ancient area of production—agriculture. And the potential expansion only exacerbates already bitter conflicts.

Besides the three Baltic states, the candidate countries are Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. For all of them the prospect of joining the EU has essentially two quite contradictory faces.

On the positive front, there is the lure of Europe’s wealth: access to a huge market to which candidate countries have had only limited access up to now. For hard-pressed farmers there is the promise of subsidies. For politicians and bureaucrats, not insignificantly, there is the prospect of gaining glittering (or at least highly paid) careers in Brussels, in the European Parliament or the many other branches of the EU bureaucratic Babylon—a significant reason why so many prominent politicians are enthusiastically in favour of joining Europe. And beyond all this, for the Eastern European countries as well, there is something more symbolic but equally tangible: the feeling of having “rejoined Europe,” of being recognised as a part of Europe’s own cultural heritage after half a century or more of isolation from it.

But that is only one side of the story. The notion of joining the EU has always been controversial, for membership also implies abiding by its rules and norms on a whole plethora of issues. The EU’s farm subsidies are famous (or infamous), but they come together with a determined effort to reduce the agricultural sector in terms of employment and even in some cases production, rationalising industries and forcing many farmers to quit the land. Industries as prominent as the Danish dairy industry now only have a fraction of the farmers they had a few decades ago, and this tinier fraction can now through efficiencies produce just as much as in the past. Internal quotas limit the amount each country is allowed to produce. And the battles with French and Italian wine and vegetable growers are regularly on the front page as opposition to rationalisation grows, resembling more skirmishes from the Thirty Years’ War than orderly and civilised decision-making.

There is little chance these scenes will not be repeated in, say, the huge Polish agricultural sector. Latvia has had to fight hard to get acceptable quotas for its own milk, meat and vegetable production, and many small producers fear they will have no chance to make a living when asked to compete with huge Euro agribusinesses.

As all candidate countries will hold referenda on the desirability of joining the EU, the mix of positives and negatives make predicting referenda outcomes difficult. The latest polls in Latvia suggest a knife-edge of around 50 percent in favour of joining.

And there is more. Joining the EU means abiding by all sorts of other rules—on budgetary deficits, on borrowing and lending, on privatisation and restructuring on freedom of movement of people, as well as steady pressure for all countries to adopt the Euro currency. In all this, there are pluses and minuses for Latvia. One aspect that the EU negotiations have picked on is the need to rid Latvian institutions of corruption and introduce a more transparent and modern judicial system. Latvia will need to work hard on these aspects to have appropriate institutional design by May 2004, when the candidate countries are expected to become full-fledged members of the EU.

For Latvia and Estonia particularly there was another, more poignant issue in the process of getting invitations from NATO and the EU. For nearly a decade now, the two countries have had to endure sustained European pressure to change various aspects of their citizenship or language laws. In a bizarre process, mainly Russian objections to these laws have been taken up by European institutions, which in turn have pressed Estonia and Latvia. The series of negotiations, conflicts, retreats and compromises has been a lesson in the pressures that can be exerted on countries even by supposedly “friendly” powers.

This complicated set of positive and negative aspects of the EU means that after Copenhagen, the next two years will see an increasing level of exhaustion and not a little bitterness as countries struggle to meet an evolving set of demands on their institutions and economies to be deemed worthy of membership. And final accession may also be viewed from quite varied perspectives. For some, it will be welcome back to Europe. For others, it will be farewell to a brief sovereignty. For many, it will be welcome to the daily potato politics of the EU.

Last week’s decision by NATO to invite Latvia and six other former Soviet bloc countries to join the organisation is certainly a momentous occasion. The striking photograph of red-clad President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga having her hand ceremoniously kissed by Jacques Chirac as she stood amid the other dark-suited leaders of the western world provides an unforgettable memento of the Prague summit.

But behind the euphoria, questions remain about the meaning of joining NATO, the guarantees and obligations that will come with this, and the hard road that Latvia still has to travel to realise its membership. The Prague summit formally issued an invitation, but membership would com after fulfilling a number of conditions ranging from the amount of military spending to administrative reform to social policy issues. Anachronistically, even the U.S. Senate has to give ultimate approval as well. The final act of joining should come in 2004 for the candidates, which besides Latvia are Estonia, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. An earlier post-Cold War expansion of NATO in 1999 brought the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland into the pact.

Latvia’s desire to join NATO, like that of the other candidates, stems from a fundamental concern: to gain protection from western countries against any potential threat. The most likely threat is rarely mentioned by name but is overwhelmingly understood as Russia. This is a particular concern for the Baltic states that were formerly incorporated in the U.S.S.R. and for which memories of the Soviet years are still particularly sharp.

But curiously, this seemingly straightforward desire is now riddled with paradox. Is the NATO of today still the same creature as the Cold War warrior explicitly formed to counterbalance the Soviet Union? In the early 1990s when Latvia’s desire to “return to Europe” was first expressed and membership of NATO mooted, there was an overwhelmingly hostile reception from Russia. It would be unacceptable for especially the Baltic States to join NATO, Russia warned, and such membership would bring about an irreconcilable breach between Moscow and NATO. Now, hardly a murmur has been heard from Russia, whose foreign minister also attended the Prague summit as an interested but not antagonistic party.

What has changed?

The Washington Post in a perceptive editorial argued that NATO has long since lost its chief role as a military warrior and is now more a club of like-minded governments. Moreover, the expansion of NATO membership is coming at the same time as NATO included Russia itself more centrally into the functioning of the alliance (through the “Partnership for Peace” arrangement where consultation with Russia takes place on important issues). Rather than NATO now confronting Russia, NATO provides a window to the West for Russia.

Other actions have also been important, for example NATO’s complete agreement that the Chechen conflict is an internal matter for Russia alone and Russia’s own subsequent jumping onto the anti-terrorist bandwagon. In sum, the objections to the Baltic states joining NATO have withered away largely because Russia itself is very comfortable with NATO as it presently functions.

Despite this, the importance for the Baltics of being able to join NATO should not be underestimated. This is the first time in history that the Baltics in particular have had anything like a security guarantee from powerful western forces. America’s relentless push to expand NATO (the Europeans were always less unanimous on this) has yielded results.

Yet this in turn only leads to a deeper paradox.

It would be foolish to believe there were no longer threats to Latvia’s security as result of NATO membership. However, a crucial point is that of all the kinds of threats that might be envisaged from Russia, that of direct old-fashioned military invasion (against which ostensibly NATO would react to defend Latvia) is also by far the least likely. Threats to security can come in much less military ways: by diplomatic pressure, economic blackmail, using international organisations to push agendas on matters such as human rights, or manufacturing incidents and creating political instability. Watch this space.

Finally, there is the other question of just how well prepared Latvia is to fully contribute to NATO. NATO makes heavy demands, including having its members committed to spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defence (Latvia spends a little more than 1 percent at the moment but plans to rapidly raise this). Upgrading of defence capability, committing troops to NATO missions and re-equipping are also a must.

Beyond this, however, there are perhaps more difficult concerns over the ability of the candidate countries to avoid corruption, protect against espionage and accomplishing bureaucratic reforms. For the Baltic states there were even more demands: the position of the Russian minority and even Baltic participation in the Holocaust were all points of discussion with NATO.

A telling point here was that in the week before the NATO summit in Prague, the press reported (from undisclosed or shadowy sources) that the U.S. defence establishment was not happy with the security risks that countries such as Latvia presented for secret NATO information. In their view, corruption, the lack of checking of officials’ past credentials and generally lax security meant these countries could not be trusted with NATO information. Despite already several years of discussion and painstakingly detailed visits and inspections, this deliberate leak seems to have been timed precisely to keep candidate countries such as Latvia off-balance in the lead-up to the summit.

Latvia’s outgoing Foreign Minister Indulis Bērziņš fumed that these accusations were malicious and had never been raised formally with the Latvian government. This is an almost predictable sequence of events now in Eastern European politics: whenever progress seems to be made towards a particular outcome, last-minute doubts are raised (often from oblique sources) that particularly point to possible corruption or weakness to undermine the efforts. As it turned out, this behind the scenes criticism of certain countries was finally put to rest by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who urged all candidate countries to institute the necessary reforms in their infrastructure that would enable them to be trusted with all NATO secrets.

Joining NATO is certainly one step forward for Latvia, but the road to security is still full of traps and dangers.