Publications

The “Defending Baltics: War Lessons from Ukraine” International Security Conference held in Vilnius on 8–9 October offered a valuable platform for discussing and reflecting on the lessons from the Russia–Ukraine war. What made the conference particularly unique was its diverse mix of participants, including politicians, military personnel, academics, NGOs, and representatives from the defence industry, all gathering to assess the ongoing war in Ukraine from multiple perspectives.

The Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review is an analytical journal focusing on global issues and analyzing their impact on Lithuania. It is published annually in cooperation with the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2018, the partners have included Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the US Embassy in Lithuania. The journal was established in 1998. Gradually, it moved towards covering the security and foreign policy issues of the countries in Central Eastern Europe and the geopolitical and security problems of the whole region. Since 2018 the concept of the journal has changed from a peer-reviewed journal to an analytical publication. ISSN: 1392-5504

The Russia’s war against Ukraine has rocked the bedrock of security on the European continent.

Leaders and guests of the 75-year-old NATO alliance met in Washington DC on 10-11 July. The NATO Washington Summit Declaration released by the leaders highlights reinforces collective defence, new instruments to coordinate assistance and training to Ukraine and pledges significant but unspecified long-term support related to Ukraine’s irreversible path towards NATO membership. The NATO summit outcome assessments are discussed by experts Henrik Larsen and Prof. Tomas Janeliūnas from the Eastern Europe Studies Centre.

Russian attacks and advances in Ukraine make it increasingly uncomfortable for NATO to stand passively on the sideline. NATO remains unlikely to take steps toward Ukraine’s accession but is now considering taking over the coordination of weapons supplies and training and creating a dedicated fund to sustain them long-term.

On its 75th anniversary, NATO has seized the opportunity to update its policy on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), a commitment that was made during the Vilnius Summit in 2023. A greater focus on deterrence and collective defence is a necessary update as the last iteration of the policy, released in 2018, did not fully articulate how WPS principles would be integrated into this core NATO task.

Threats to the southern flank do not represent such a direct, military, and imminent threat to NATO as Russia does on the Eastern flank, but they do endanger the security of NATO member states and regional partners as recognized in NATO’s Strategic Concept adopted in Madrid in 2022. Despite that recognition and the Alliance’s desire to pay equal attention to every threat in its 360° strategy, the eastern flank deserves much more attention in NATO’s planning than the southern flank.

NATO allies need to pay close attention to and learn from the war if they are serious about building up their own EDT capabilities. Specifically, NATO allies should draw three distinct lessons from the war so far. These are not about specific weapon systems, such as which drone has been the most promising, or how to integrate autonomy in the fighting process. Rather, they are more fundamental lessons and changes that the increasing use of new technologies have caused or enabled.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a defining moment for European security. It has been an attempt to introduce a new paradigm in European security with brutal military force in line with Moscow’s interests. Russia, together with China, aims to undermine the European and international order that was created and led by the US after the end of the Cold World War. Russian goals were presented in form of two draft treaties that included three major demands in December 2021.

The policy debate about NATO’s burden sharing tends to focus on European members’ reluctance or failure to meet the two-percent-of-GDP minimum defense spending target. Redressing the transatlantic budgetary misbalance is indeed warranted because of the possibility of a re-election next year of Donald Trump or a like-minded Republican candidate, who would use Europe’s under-spending as an argument for reducing or withdrawing U.S. support for NATO and Ukraine.

At the moment, NATO’s operational readiness centres around the “Single fuel policy”, which is based on fossil kerosene. At the Madrid NATO summit in 2020 the Alliance announced its goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2050. The resulting transition to renewable energy will bring new challenges to the armed forces of the Alliance. The energy systems will become more diverse and complex and thus will create more vulnerabilities. All these changes require an increased focus on all aspects of energy security and critical energy infrastructure protection.

The NATO summit undeniably constituted the focal point of Lithuania's political agenda in 2023. It can be argued that the big part of the nation became actively engaged in fervent deliberations, which revolved around inquiries into the Alliance's role within the framework of regional security, strategies for fortifying NATO's Eastern flank, and above all, the prospect of extending a promise of NATO membership to Ukraine in Vilnius.