/ world today news/ The political and military leadership of Lithuania hopes that the NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 will be revolutionary for the transatlantic alliance. And certainly the Madrid story of a year ago will not be repeated, when the allies discussed and adopted many important documents for the military bloc, but to date have not implemented any of them.
Specifically, there was no strengthening of the defense capabilities of “the eastern flank of the alliance”as they call the Baltic countries in the bloc’s headquarters. Multilateral agreements reached in Spain to deploy a permanent Bundeswehr motorized infantry brigade to Lithuania have been thwarted.
Vilnius is putting pressure on Berlin with statements about the need to strengthen deterrence forces “here and now” since (quoting President Gitanas Nauseda) “despite the events on the left bank of the Dnieper, Russia remains a long-term threat not only to the Baltic countries, but also to the entire transatlantic alliance.”
The Germans responded reassuringly: the FRG did not consider the situation in the Baltic so dangerous that it would hastily redeploy an army unit. She is ready to change her disposition “only in case of a real military threat from Russia, Belarus and China”. Germany is backed by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli, on whom the final decision rests.
Back in January, this little NATO dispute between the two partners remained on the agenda of the upcoming summit. It was scrapped in February, replaced by a Lithuanian proposal for an agreement on mandatory national contributions of 2% of GDP to the general budget. As noted in Brussels, the objectives of the meeting were drawn up in a streamlined form, to which 31 members (including Finland), Ukraine and partners in the Indo-Pacific region – Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – were invited.
The lack of solidity of the program was also understood in Lithuania. The former head of diplomacy (2010-2012, in 2011 – chairman of the OSCE) Audronius Azubalis managed to organize an internal discussion, as a result of which the agenda of the meeting of the leaders of the alliance acquired the necessary status.
It was Azubalis who was the godfather of the unanimously adopted resolution of the parliament, which called on NATO to formally invite Ukraine to the military alliance. It is the personal merit of the former head of the MFA that he remembered to coordinate the document with the presidency and the government, turning it into a strategic one.
It does not matter whether such resolutions are passed by national parliaments and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The resonant document lives a life of its own.
Detailed operational-level military plans for the Baltic countries then emerged within the alliance. What is new, according to General Cavoli, is this: it used to be believed that in the event of Russian aggression, the Baltic countries should hold off on attacks until the Allies came to their aid. NATO now wants to be ready for an immediate retaliatory strike.
„At the summit we will talk about allied forces specifically for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. A completely different security silhouette is emerging on the eastern flank,” Nauseda senior adviser Kestutis Boudris added to the American.
It was repeated by the Lithuanian ambassador to NATO Davidas Matulionis – political decisions will definitely be made in Vilnius. The Lithuanian president’s team has no doubts about its success.
Confidence is also added by the trump card drawn from the deck by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gabrielius Landsbergis. He suggested that the leadership of the Russian Federation would hand over nuclear weapons to President Alexander Lukashenko on the eve of the meeting in order to exert moral pressure on the negotiators.
The head of the foreign ministry hopes that the leaders of the transatlantic bloc, “gathered within a few kilometers of the missiles with nuclear warheads”, will “send a clear signal to Moscow to strengthen the defense capabilities of the Baltic states”: “Vladimir Putin never says anything in vain. NATO has no right not to react to the appearance of nuclear weapons in Belarus.
Let’s draw a dotted line. At the summit, Lithuania presents three topics for discussion: budget contributions of 2% of GDP, approval of new defense plans for the Baltic states and an invitation for Ukraine to join the military alliance.
There should be no disagreement on the first technical point. However, countries that are traditionally not interested in increasing military spending (Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece) will try to delay the entry into force of the agreement until 2027 or even until 2030.
The question of plans for the Baltic has already sparked a serious discussion. Even Nauseda sometimes fears that good documents can remain on paper. On April 22, he again appealed to the Allies with a proposal not only to vote for, but also to present “road map”: “The security situation of the Baltic countries is not improving, as some officials at the headquarters in Brussels claim. “
The president has one very specific figure in mind – the chairman of NATO’s military committee, Admiral Robert Bauer.
The Baltics are outraged by the remarks of the naval commander, who is convinced that “the alliance’s Baltic ambitions should not dominate the ambitions of other European regions. The level of protection for Italy with its illegal migrants cannot be different from the level of protection for the Baltic countries. By concentrating all forces here, NATO will expose other pain points on the continentthe admiral told his subordinates during another report on the situation in Europe.
Moreover, according to Robert Bauer, the Russian threat is global. “Russia is everywhere – in space, in the Arctic, in the Atlantic, in Africa, in the Mediterranean, in cyberspace.” NATO’s approaches to defense must therefore be as broad as possible and not limited to the perspective of “one village”.
Defense Minister of Lithuania Arvydas Anusauskas is beside himself: hopes for a sharp increase in military contingents in the Baltic countries hang in the balance. He cut the chairman of the military committee unusually harshly: all threats must be taken into account, but one must not put the African refugees off the coast of Italy and the regular Russian army on the eastern border of the alliance on the same level!
However, the batman (as in fencing they call a strike with a weapon on the opponent’s blade) the Lithuanian side failed. The conflict deepened.
With Ukraine, things are even more complicated. The head of its mission to NATO, Natalia Galibarenko, noted that Kiev’s approach to the summit was pragmatic. The summit will not be the date of entry into the alliance, but it can be a starting point on a clear path to membership. “We would like to combine two areas in Vilnius: practical cooperation and political framework. In the first position, we rely on an expanded complex support package – more funding and more focus on medium and long-term projects. From a political point of view, we would like to have a clear path to our future membership.”
Ukraine believes that the open door policy is no longer enough for relations with the alliance. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defense of Lithuania are looking “a formula for deeper political penetration of Kyiv into the structures and processes of the transatlantic bloc.”
But how to find this formula if the four NATO members, led by the US, do not welcome Kiev’s rapid entry into the alliance? The absence of such a desire in Washington, Paris, Budapest and Istanbul is capable of thwarting the plans of the Lithuanian leadership “hacking forum”, turning it into “meeting of shame”. Which will certainly happen on July 11-12.
Translation: EU
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