The president has just finished a mini press conference with the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The affection and good humor between the four leaders were palpable. Two of Bush’s statements were particularly telling.

In answer to a question speculating on whether the US and Russia would cut a deal in which Russia would ensure that Belarussian President Lukashenko would not be reelected in exchange for American endorsement of the next government, Bush answered that cutting deals on someone else’s future was unacceptable. He noted that hat’s the same kind of deal that sealed the fate of these countries and consigned them to Stalin’s brutal dictatorship. But he did say that the people of Belarus “should be allowed to express themselves in free and open and fair elections,”

To another question asking about Putin’s charge that the US is fomenting revolution on Russia’s borders, the president didn’t actually deny any American involvement, saying instead that the amition to be free was universal and that “the idea of countries helping others become free, I hope that would be viewed as not revolutionary, but rational foreign policy, as decent foreign policy, as humane foreign policy.”

The example of the three Baltic countries in shaking off the yoke of communist tyranny and building democratic societies is an important one. Emerging democracies look today to Ukraine and Georgia for examples. But those two countries had to look some place for inspiration. The Baltic states provide some of that inspiration.