A Newfound Hub of Global Democracy Promotion: Lithuania Playing to its Strengths

Abstract

After gaining membership in the European Union and NATO, models portraying Lithuania as a bridge between the East and the West, or a networked state uniting in-country nationals and global diaspora were put forth, while others even forecasted inevitable collapse in the face of a lack of a unified geopolitical program. In the light of this plethora of geopolitical visions, in 2000s Lithuania’s approach to its Eastern neighbors could have been described as “multivectoral.” While Lithuanian leaders outspokenly supported pro-democratic protests and European aspirations of the colored revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, attempts to “restart” relations with Eastern European autocrats also ensued. However, the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea really struck a chord, and the new chapter in the Russian war against Ukraine in February 2022 contributed to consolidation of a clear-cut Lithuanian geopolitical positionality. In the face of Russian aggression, squeezed between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Russian partner-in-crime Belarus, Lithuania rebranded itself as an outpost of a global democratizing agenda and embraced a discourse of care vis-à-vis repressed Russian and Belarusian civil societies and Ukrainians fighting back for national survival. Echoing historical solidarity narratives of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, new-found Lithuanian agency also aims to reframe Russian aggression as a neo-colonial performance. This piece (1) explores how the unfolding war has constituted a “democratic outpost” identity espoused by the Lithuanian political elite and (2) links these shifts with increased Lithuanian agency in Euro-Atlantic structures and the unexpected attempts to rework itself as a hub of democracy promotion globally. Finally, (3) the contribution problematizes the “outpost Europe” idea by scrutinizing the telling silence on the creeping autocratization in Poland, and the implicit paternalism of the pro-democratic care targeting Russian, Belarusian civil societies, and the Ukrainian state.