Before 1914 Scandinavia had felt the repercussions of confrontation between the great powers without being the principal focus of their attention. The Nordic states were affected in a similarly indirect way by the changing international climate of the post-war period: first the transition from war to peace under the auspices of the treaty of Versailles; then, in the Locarno era after 1925, the emergence of a more equitable international order; finally, the onset of the great depression. But although the European powers rarely took a direct interest in Scandinavian affairs, their attention was drawn to northern Europe, especially in the early 1920s, by the persistent instability of the eastern Baltic.

After a period of active involvement with the newly independent states of Finland, Estonia and Latvia, Great Britain withdrew its naval presence from the eastern Baltic in 1921 but retained an interest in reducing friction among the states of the region – for example, between Poland and Lithuania over the disputed Vilnius territory – in the interests of European peace in general and as a bulwark against Bolshevik Russia. France was concerned much more overtly with the construction of a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevism centred on Poland and the countries of the ‘Little Entente’, which also had Baltic ramifications. Russia and Germany, at whose expense the new order in eastern Europe had been constructed, had a shared interest in the demise of Poland, the largest of the new states, but were able to find a basis for co-existence with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Nevertheless, the long-term existence of these three small states was precarious and it was widely assumed that they must ultimately be reabsorbed by Russia.