Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping, and then-Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the Shanghai Cooperation Summit on June 14, 2019 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
While much attention in global capitals is being paid to Russian troops amassing on Ukraine’s border, Lithuania is the ‘canary in the coal mine’ of global order, argue Hudson Senior Fellows Tod Lindberg and Peter Rough in The Wall Street Journal. NATO member Lithuania faces a united front of Sino-Russian pressure designed to test U.S. and European commitment to their democratic partners. If the U.S. and NATO allies fail to support Lithuania, the impact of Sino-Russian cooperation will be felt far beyond Vilnius. See below for further analysis, and join us next week for a discussion on China’s economic slowdown and the implications for its political stability.
Key Takeaways
From Peter Rough and Tod Lindberg’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Lithuania is the ‘Canary’ of World Order“
1. Lithuania’s Importance to NATO
Lithuania, a Baltic state of 2.8 million with an outsize role in promoting human rights and democracy, is in the crosshairs of Russia and China. Neither Putin nor Xi have been shy about going after Lithuania. But their recent moves have broader significance, namely testing American and European commitments to allies. Mr. Putin is raising the temperature on Lithuania by absorbing neighboring Belarus into his security sphere and militarizing Kaliningrad, Russia’s territorial exclave on the Baltic Sea. Mr. Xi is waging a campaign of political and economic retaliation.
2. China’s Economic Pressure Campaign Against Lithuania
Lithuania drew China’s fury this year for its decision to leave the 17+1 format—the Beijing-designed framework for dealing with Europe—and by allowing the government of Taiwan to open an office for its representation in Vilnius. Beijing declared an import ban on products with goods made in Lithuania—a move damaging to European companies with factories or supply-chain sources in Lithuania.
3. Lithuania Needs US Support Against Gray-Zone Aggression
If Xi and Putin successfully detach Vilnius from NATO and the EU, there would be immediate ramifications in Asia, where China wants to push the U.S. out and establish regional hegemony. Most military strategists identify Taiwan as China’s best first target for confrontation—and thus the essential test of U.S. resolve. But an indirect opening move in the “gray zone” of conflict aimed at Lithuania might have advantages.
If the U.S. and Europe fail to back Lithuania fully, America’s allies and partners in Asia will doubt U.S. commitment. Rather than working closely with Washington, they might become more friendly with China.
Quotes may be edited for clarity and length.
Go Deeper<
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The Two-Headed Fight for Ukraine and Taiwan The concurrent threats facing Taiwan and Ukraine cannot be viewed in isolation, writes Hudson Senior Fellow Seth Cropsey in The Wall Street Journal. Sino-Russian military provocations reflect the larger political competition for Eurasia, and it is vital that U.S. policymakers incorporate this into their decision making. |
| Read |
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Countering Emerging Russian and Chinese Hypersonic Threats Beijing and Moscow’s development of nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles may soon provide the kind of global strike capacity currently only available to the U.S., and mark a new era of Russian and Chinese military coercion. In a report for the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Hudson Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis Richard Weitz examines the potential for Sino-Russian collaboration on hypersonic weaponry. |
| Watch |
@Sebastien Zorn
I only used your own term.
Why do you think it is surreal when I use it but it is not surreal when you use it?
When Turks were slaughtering Armenians, the US government said that Turkey is a sovereign country and they can’t interfere.
All of a sudden they are defending Taiwan from China when Taiwan’s population is mostly Chinese.
I am confu-u-u-sed!
@Reader Surreal. What do you imagine the US devouring Taiwan would mean for everyday life there. What does that even mean? We’ve seen what China devouring Hong Kong means and the loss of freedoms and life. You sound like an unreconstructed Stalinist from another era spouting this hyperbole and making false equivalences. Or a Klingon from Star Trek the Original series. Ha Ha. As a former one, myself, I find your anachronistic and hallucinatory rant highly amusing. I have many acquaitances who talk the same way. This is New York, after all. But, alas, you have been supplanted by the woke. You are a museum piece.
@Sebastien
Exactly
@Reader Actually, I agree with most of that but Germany is not a colony and the animus towards Russia is just irrational not imperialistic. Not China, however. China is an imperialistic threat. That’s why the Dems and a few rinos whip up an imaginary Russian threat as a smokescreen for their having been bought off by China. They also only invaded Libya after Quadaffi was no longer a threat and was cooperating against terrorism. Kerry shills for Iran, etc
@Sebastian Zorn
No one in Europe needs to be defended from Russia.
The defense thing is an excuse to surround Russia with a buffer full of missiles and nuclear arms.
The Russian ”problem” is that it occupies almost the whole continent of Eurasia which the West would love to conquer and take for itself.
It is HUGE temptation.
I just hope that it doesn’t cause the Third World War – the last one.
@Ted Belman
You are right.
There s no point in viewing other countries as enemies and competitors.
The countries could and should cooperate and specialize in things they do best “and then there will be peace”.
However, the PTB, i.e., the super-super-super rich wish to stop history and do a kind of a “Tower of Babel” project which doesn’t work by definition.
Thing will eventually end up the way they are supposed to be but how much everyone will have to suffer for it and for how long – no one knows.
@Sebastien Zorn
I think that the US should stop creating conflicts all over the world.
Anyway, would you prefer that the US devour Taiwan?
Just to teach democracy to the aborigines?
Germany doesn’t fear Russia. Wh6y should the US?
i think the hatred or fear of Russia is a hold over from the Cold War.. The US should be courting Russia, not sanctioning it.
@reader
Do you think The US should let China devour Taiwan?
@ Reader The US is supposedly defending Germany from Russia but Germany decided to get its natural gas from Russia instead of the US and never paid the measly 2 percent of the upkeep of all those troops it was contractually obligated to except under Trump. That’s your idea of a colony that does as it’s told? Germany is a central power in the EU whose entire reason for existing is to be an economic rival to the US.
@Reader
Let’s not be silly here. Like all sovereign nations, the Germans have interests that need to be satisfied. Some align with their allies and some do not. They have to weigh satisfying such divergent national interests with carrying favor with their allies or deal with the consequences. They have every right to do so and every need to do so carefully, just like every other sovereign nation.
@peloni1986
And precisely because Germany is such a free country the US will not let it or the EU sign off on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline since the US would much prefer for Germany to buy the American liquefied gas which is much more expensive, of course, this is to protect Europe from the vicious Putin.
I also saw it on the Internet that Germany has to have each of its chancellors approved by the US but this, of course, is a “conspiracy theory”.
Sorry, I left off @Reader
Wrong. Germany has their own govt, elected by their own public and they make their own choices accordingly, precisely because they are a free country. These choices include weighing the input of a close geopolitical, military ally who is also a significant trading partner who provides thousands of deployed members of their(US) military who increase the German economy directly. In spite of this, the Germans expressed their independence of the will of the US quite readily in the past few years as they refused to acquiesce to even fulfill the terms of their NATO requirements. Your assertion that they are a vassal of the US or that the US military intimidates them is patently false. Nor is this even the implied purpose of the US military presence in Germany.
Sure it doesn’t.
The US has a couple of hundred military installations in Germany.
If Germany had a couple of hundred military installations in the US, AND told the US what to do, would the US be considered a free country?
Or a colony of Germany?
also the US having bases in a country doesn’t mean the US rules that country. Those bases are leased. And our enemies have bases all over the world, too. We’d be at their mercy if our forces were only based at home. Before WWII, the armed forces demobilized after every war and only a skeleton force was maintained. BIG mistake. We learned that the hard way.
Dated. No longer relevant. And was never about world conquest.
Doesn’t represent the US. He was a rabid antisemite, by the way. Advised President Carter, another rabid antisemite/Israelophobe and an unpopular and ineffective one term president who lost Iran and Nicaragua.
Only where US interests or security are concerned and in many cases, the US is defending THEM without recompense.
You can only say something is policy stated by the US if Congress passes it and The president signs it and even then it’s not carved in stone.
The US is not an imperialist country because it is not an empire. The Soviet Union and China was and China still is an empire.
@adamdalgliesh
Don’t worry about it. I hope you problems will get solved ASAP.
Look at my response to Sebastien and review the American history, especially starting from WWII.
The Darwinian philosophy is uniquely English – no one else has ever come up with something like this, unless I am ignorant of some theories like this from the ancient world.
What causes the US to freak out about Russia and China to the point of risking another world war?
Also, think about the money worship, and the fact that the richer someone is, the more freedom they have, and the more power to rule the rest of us (everyone just assumes this is how things work)?
No one articulated it for a couple of reasons (at least):
1) people rationalize their bad or questionable behavior to make themselves feel good about it;
2) these features entered the national character so much and so deeply that most people don’t even think about these things anymore, and they act the way their subconscious tells them and they don’t notice or question them;
3) people also tend to assume that others will think and act the same way as they do.
@Sebastien Zorn
@ Reader.Thanks for your advice and comments,Reader.
Obviously I goofed pretty badly by failing to carefully read my own sources about Valdas Adamkus. I somehow failed to notice the statement at the beginning of the article I posted that said that his parents were Roman Catholics. I had read the article through, which was “borrowed” directly from Wikipedia, but somehow overlooked its first few sentences.
Please accept my apologies for having snapped at you. I have been under a lot of strain recently because of personal problems, mostly connected with my health. I won’t bother you with the details.
I am aware that I need either to completely update my software, or buy a new computer that is better adapted to my needs than my obsolete Mac Air. However, this will take at least one to three days devoted entirely to accomplishing this task. Other urgent matters always seem to come up that have forced me to postpone doing the work required.
Concerning the larger issues: I am not aware that America has announced its intention to rule the world. Nor that its government is committed to a Darwinian philosophy of survival of the fittest. Quotations or sources to document these assertions?
I don’t deny that there has been an imperialist-expansionist element in American policy since the nation’s inception. But I don’t think any high-ranking American statesman ever articulated as bluntly as you suggest.
I agree with your assessment of Julius Caesar. But I don’ think any of our American presidents was quite like Caesar. Some of them have been pretty bad, but not for the same reasons as Caesar.
With respect to Stalin’s crimes, while there are undoubtedly many historians whose ant-Soviet bias might have tempted them to exaggerate Stalin’s crimes, there are several who have thoroughly documented their “death count” attributed to Stalin’s regime with quotations from the Soviet archives.
One of these historians is a retired Soviet general who was actually the official state archivist for many years, with unlimited access to the state archives and permission from a series of Soviet-Russian governments to publish extracts from them in his numerous books. I can’t remember his name right now, but I believe him to be an honest and truthful man.
His estimate of the total number of wrongful deaths perpetrated by the Stalin government, either intentionally or through a depraved indifference to human life, is between 20 to 25 million, or roughly the same number as the number of Soviet citizens killed by Hitler during the Great Patriotic War.
Several other historians wwho were granted access to the Soviet archives have made similar estimates of the number of those who died as a result of the brutal actions or policies of Stalin or his appointees.
An estimated combined total of 50 million Soviet citizens murdered by the two tyrants, either directly or indirectly, over a 25 year period.
At present, I can’t remember where I read your comment denying that there were any mass murders under Stalin. I will search for your previous comment, I think from a few weeks ago, and send you the quotation if I find it. Perhaps you might also search for it yourself.
Best wishes, Adam.
@Reader You wrote:
Care to explain that statement?
@adamdalgliesh
Your article has the same information as mine about Adamkus, maybe you just quickly scanned it and didn’t notice that he was a Lithuanian Catholic and not a Jew.
I am not trying to minimize Stalin’s crimes but the numbers quoted are usually vastly exaggerated for political reasons.
The US has publicly stated that it is destined to rule the world.
In order to do this it must conquer Eurasia.
The philosophy the US follows is Darwinian, i.e., the survival of the fittest, the ends justify the means, you must destroy a competitor or the competitor will destroy you, and it also includes the old Roman concept of a “just war”.
For example, when Julius Caesar wanted to attack Gaul (I think it was) because he ran out of money and needed someone to rob, he announced that the Gauls are cannibals and need to be saved from themselves by the Roman civilization (to be brought to them by the Roman legions).
In my opinion, this philosophy and the Cold War mentality which follows from it has outlived itself and has become self-destructive.
Anyway, please give me the link where my comment about Stalin was posted.
What kind of computer do you have that won’t even let you access Wikipedia?
This might have something to do with the operating system that is installed on it or the web browser that you are using.
Try updating those things one at a time and see what happens, or get a new computer, it doesn’t have to be the latest type.
Also, try to check it for viruses – they may be causing those “nefarious” happenings that you’ve been complaining about.
@Reader:
You are right and I was wrong. Valdas Adamkas is not Jewish, and was probably a Nazi collaborator.
However, there is a factual basis for my claim, even though it was inaccurate. I got Adamkas confused with the current President of Latvia, Egils Levits. Levits was elected President of Latvia by the Latvian parliament in 2019, and is Latvia’s currently serving President.
Levits is of Jewish descent on his father’s side. His mother was of Baltic German ancestry. Many of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. However, he has been active in Latvian politics sine 1990, and helped to write that country’s Declaration of Independence.
I was also correct that the election of Adamkus must have infuriated Putin, both because of his anti-Soviet activities and probable collaboration with the Nazis during World War II, and because he lived in the U.S. for 50 years, and was a U.S. government official.
The more recent election of Levits as President of Latvia may also have annoyed Putin, because of his long residence in (post-Nazi) NATO-Allied Germany (the FRG), and his service on the International Court of Justice, which has not been overly friendly to Russia.
From AFP via the Times of Israel
@Reader. My ‘Lemon” won’t allow me to access Wikipedia directly, but the site from which I obtained the article that I posted earlier said it was taken directly from Wikipedia.
We seem to live in parallel universes that never meet. Your sources seem always to give you alleged facts that are completely different from what the sources I consult say are the facts.
The most glaring example of this is your assertion that “there were no mass killings by the Stalin regime.” Numerous books by respected and well-known historians, some of whom are Russian and have direct access to the Soviet archives, and quote directly from them, say the exact opposite–that 20-25 million is the bare minimum number of the people murdered by the Stalin regime, either directly or indirectly by government-induced famine.
I believe that you are out of touch with reality and live in a pro-Russian parallel universe all your own.
@adamdalgliesh
HE IS NOT A JEW.
HE WAS A GERMAN COLLABORATOR, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to leave with the Germans.
Correction to my earlier statement that the President of Lithuania is a Jew. Actually the President of Lithuania was a Jew. His name is Valdas Adamkus, and he was the sixth President of Lithuania , and he was President of Lithuania from 1998 to 2009, with a brief interruption 2003-05.
However, my earlier point that Adamkus’ election must have infuriated Alexander Putin remains valid. The terms of office of the two presidents overlapped by eight years. Putin would have been angered not only by Adamkus’ earlier role in the Soviet Unions’ human rights movement, but even more so by the fact that Admkus lived in the United States for many years, became an American citizen, and even was an official of the United States government (THe Environmental Protection Agency). From Putin’s point of view, therefore, his election as Lithuania’s sixth President was an unfriendly act of alliance with the United States and an American threat to Russia.
@adamdalgliesh
Since when Lithuania’s president is a Jew?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Lithuania
For your info 94% of Lithuania’s Jews were exterminated in WWII
with a lot of “help” from the locals.
They cannot put it past them, they are still glorifying their war criminals as “the fighters against the Soviet occupation”.
This is a dying country, they lost almost a million (younger) people since the Soviet times due to emigration (who are never coming back) and a corresponding drop in birthrate and aging of the remaining population.
Just a side point about Lithuania–Its president is a Jew. The office of president in Lithuania, as in Israel, is a largely ceremonial office, chief of state, while most power is in the hands of the prime minister as head of government and the council of ministers.
Even so, this gentlemen’s election by Lithuania’s legislature, almost unopposed, suggests that Lithuanians want to put their past history of collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II, which the participation of the Lithuanian police units under German control in the Holocaust, behind them, and to develop a good relationship with Israel.
However, his election has undoubtedly enraged the Putin government in Russia, because the new Lithuanian president, although born in Lithuania, had lived in Russia for many years, where he was very active in the human rights movement that helped to bring down the Soviet Union. During this period in his life he was an associate of Andrei Sakharov. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he returned to his native Lithuania. But his past role in the Russian-Soviet human rights movement must enrage Putin, who is no friend of human rights, and regrets the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus the Lithuanian’s choice of president for their republic must add to Putin’s fury at Lithuania–not because he is Jewish, Putin seems to have nothing against Jews per se, he does have Jewish friends etc., but because Lithuania has elected a president who was an enemy of the Soviet Union.
““We are ending the era of endless wars,” Trump said. It is not the job of American forces “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of,” he said.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-wars/trump-to-west-point-grads-we-are-ending-the-era-of-endless-wars-idUSKBN23K0PR
Wise words from one of our greatest presidents. Trump 2024.
None of our business. And if Lithuanian national aspirations are brutally crushed and permanently extinguished by the Russkies, I for one will celebrate. One side of my family fled from Lithuania to the US but they would almost certainly have been among the 95 percent – 130,000 – who were murdered by the Lithuanians allied with the Krauts. Their descendants are unrepentant.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/how-chicago-teacher-sparked-memory-war-forcing-lithuania-confront-its-n1262889
https://www.timesofisrael.com/following-polands-lead-lithuania-proposes-controversial-holocaust-law/
But then they seek to take credit for our accomplishments – proud of Lithuanian Jews before the world while denying complicity in our extermination.
http://vilnews.com/2011-01-world-famous-litvaks
Dismantle NATO. The US is a lost cause under Biden. Israel should say to Russia, “look, if you vote for us, we’ll vote for you.”
Putin has shown he can go either way on more than one occasion.
Everyone does not deserve to be free. That’s nonsense. Only our friends deserve that or anything else.
We have a problem here!
The western European powers behind NATO are the same people who have attacked America & facilitated the Vichy like
regime in Washington thru a stolen election.
They are also the same anti semites who continue to pay the Arabs to kill Jews in Israel & run the Israel attacks in the UN.
So if NATO wants to hassle with the Russians/Chinese,let them do it without the USA!
The powers in Europe which have dragged us into at least 3 Bloody wars in the last 100 years can go fight their own wars