19401776 Club
Welles refuses to recognize Moscow's grab of the Baltic states
The declaration rests on an eight-year-old doctrine and outlasts the Soviet Union itself by nothing at all.
By July 1940, Soviet troops had occupied Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, staged rigged elections, and installed assemblies that promptly voted to join the USSR. France had just fallen to Germany, and Washington watched the Baltic occupation as part of a continent being redrawn by force. On July 23, Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles issued a declaration refusing to recognize the annexation, invoking the Stimson Doctrine against territorial gains won by aggression. Welles said the Soviets had tried to give "an odor of legality to acts of aggression for purposes of the record." The nonrecognition policy held for the next 51 years…
