Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

The international community has focused too much on addressing cybercrime and cyber hacktivist questions. The list of usual suspects responsible for cyber incidents associated with attacks involving the theft of intellectual property, sensitive private data, money and disruption of web services unfortunately has grown beyond the attention seeking student hacker, cybercriminal or social hacktivist. The public appearance of the Stuxnet family of malware designed to destroy specifically targeted critical infrastructure components in June of 2010 gave perhaps the first indication that States have entered cyberspace as one of the perpetrators of malicious cyber activity. The problem of States actively preparing and executing cyber-attacks against the critical infrastructures of other States has been largely ignored by the international community. These attacks raise national security issues concerning threats to the economic and social well-being of States. However the pervasive presence of cyber space as the common environment where all modern industrial processes take place and the interrelations developed among the critical infrastructure of other States raise cross-border security issues as well. The international community must act in order to insure that the use of this new weapon by States will not get out of hand and be the cause of new and more serious international conflicts. Three solutions and a possible model are proposed to manage this disruptive activity of States in cyberspace at the international level.

This article focuses on recent developments and discussions in the field of security studies and aims to suggest new guidelines for the research of Lithuanian security policy. First it covers the main subjects of contemporary security discourse; next it provides evaluation and review of the critical tradition in security studies that frames presuppositions and is the means for analyzing specific security issues as well as that which fosters reflexive thinking about security. The third part deals with three topics of security research (analysis of security through the concepts of risk, exceptionality and media) which have become talking–points in recent years and which have provided innovative insights in security studies.

At present, the accommodative and technocratic policy of Europe, dominant in Lithuania (as well as in the European Union), is pushing Lithuania (and the European Union) to the margins of global politics, and it reflects the inability to fight for Lithuania’s meta-political interests in the European Union and the region. With a decade of its membership in the European Union at hand, Lithuania has not yet formulated a strategic vision of its presence in the European Union; all the previous attempts to develop such a strategy have been exhausted or failed; meanwhile the strategic capabilities of Lithuania are consistently weakening. The main objective of this article is to enrich the current technocratic policy with a meta-political, values-based, strategic dimension. Seeking the best feasible alternatives for the horizontal and fragmented level of Lithuania’s studies on Europe, the researcher has consciously chosen the European policy of the Holy See which stands out as to its verticality, capability to maintain the continuity of its principles and essential goals and its impact on the formation of Europe itself. It is an attempt to find the most general attitude to the European Union perspective which is lacking in the current discussions on European policy in Lithuania and in the policy itself. Christian meta-politics provides Lithuania with a possibility to consciously choose a positive rather than negative freedom in Europe. A positive freedom in the European Union would enable Lithuania to maintain its political and cultural identity, and would grant it a weighty role in the region, the European Union and the world. In its own turn, in the social and economic areas a Christian metapolitics would strengthen societal integrity, solidarity, personal and communal responsibility, and would enhance humanity—an action in short supply in Lithuanian policy.

This article discusses the institutional evolution of the European Union (EU) in reacting to the euro zone crisis and the new forms of differentiation in the EU. It presents and elaborates several arguments. First, despite calls to complete the creation of the “genuine Economic and Monetary Union“ and to make a step towards federal structure of the Union with single currency and single central budget used to react to asymmetric shocks, most decisions actually agreed upon by member states since the start of the crisis can be seen as attempts to avoid exactly such a scenario. Second, although the divide between the “Northern“ and “Southern“ groups of the EU member states seems attractive in its simplicity, it is a gross simplification of the current situation and hides important differences of member state preferences within each of the groupings. Third, it is also too simplistic to see the membership in the euro zone as the main characteristic defining the state of differentiation in the EU. As it is discussed in the text, both euro zone member states and EU countries outside the euro zone participate in different initiatives of integration and show different national preferences. Finally, the text concludes with a formulation of the main policy dilemmas for Lithuania in terms of ongoing process of complex differentiation and taking into account the prospect of joining the euro zone in 2015.

Seeking international authority Turkey uses a self-designed democracy model; therefore, this Muslim state has more possibilities to address societies of the Middle East region and propose to them a new paradigm concerning the future of these countries, thus guaranteeing their aspirations for justice and equality. Turkey is the only Muslim state with a functioning democracy, oriented towards the world of the West. The position of the political elite of Turkey concerning a vision for the country’s modernization and its traditional Muslim society world outlook, reflects the compatibility of the internal development of the country. While analyzing the principles of Turkish foreign policy, the doctrine of the “Strategic Depth”, the guidelines, tendencies, strategies, directions and visions of Turkish foreign policy, one may discern the possibilities of the use of doctrine principles, taking into consideration essential geopolitical changes of the 20th and 21st centuries. The issue of Turkey’s accession to the European Union is a complicated and controversial aspect of the foreign policy of the EU. Therefore, an understanding of the decision-taking model of the Turkish political elite will enable European Union politicians (as well as those of Lithuania) to make clear substantiated decisions regarding this country.

The paper aims at identifying relations between the events which influence Lithuanian-Polish strategic cooperation, defining principal aspects of cooperation dynamics, and analysing recent challenges in relations between Lithuania and Poland. For the purpose of analysis the following objectives have been set: 1) to analyse the development of strategic partnership and political dialogue in bilateral relations; 2) to evaluate the importance of security, defence policy, and economic projects in cooperation between the states; 3) to assess the aspect of ethnic minorities in the context of bilateral relations. The authors of the paper seek to review the principal internal and external factors which affect bilateral cooperation between Lithuania and Poland. The following methods of analysis are used in the paper: public statements made by officials, document analysis and discourse formed by the media. The key areas of analysis are the development of political dialogue, strategic cooperation, security and defence policy, economic and energy cooperation, and questions of ethnic minorities in bilateral relations. Presently in the field there is a lack of thorough investigation of similarities and differences of strategic cooperation between Lithuania and Poland.

The article addresses a number of questions related to Nordic and to an extent also Nordic-Baltic defence cooperation. First of all, how far has Nordic and Nordic-Baltic defence cooperation come today? Secondly, what are the differences in the approaches of Sweden and Finland when it comes to defence cooperation, especially regarding NATO, in the Nordic-Baltic area? As a first analytical result, it is apparent that the rhetorical standing of the Nordic and Nordic-Baltic defence cooperation process is greater than its real achievements, especially in terms of defence integration. Secondly, it seems also to be clear that the defence and security policy debates of Sweden and Finland are quite different. Some problems identified in the debates within the two countries, respectively, are very similar although the suggested solutions vary very remarkably. Regarding the key issue of NATO membership, the developments of the last few years suggest that the Swedish political establishment, as well as the general public, might be closer to a substantial discussion of NATO membership than their Finnish equivalents.

The aim of this paper is to analyze fundamental factors which form and profoundly shape security and defense policy of the Republic of Latvia. One can argue that historical background, geographical location, common institutional history within the former Soviet Union, the Russia factor, the relative smallness of the territory of state and the population, the ethnic composition of the population, the low density of the population and rather limited financial and manpower resources available for the defense of the Republic of Latvia are the key factors of influence on the state security and defense policy. The core principles of the security and defense policy of Latvia are the membership in powerful global military alliance of NATO and bilateral strategic partnership with the United States. However, security and defense cooperation among the three Baltic States as well as enhanced cooperation within the Baltic-Nordic framework is seen as an important supplementary factor for the increased security of the Republic of Latvia. Latvia has developed a sustainable legal and institutional framework in order to contribute to state security and defense; however, security challenges and significant changes within the global security environment of the twenty-first century will further challenge the ability of the Republic of Latvia to sustain its current legal framework, and more importantly, current institutional structure of Latvian security and defense architecture. Significant internal and external challenges will impact the fundamental pillars of Latvian security and defense policy, such as American strategic shift to the Pacific, and lack of political will to increase defense budgets in European part of NATO. It has to be clear that very independence, security and defense of the Republic of Latvia depend on the ability of NATO to remain an effective organization with timely and efficient decision-making, and the ability of the United States to remain militarily effective and committed to the security and defense of Europe.

The article analyzes how the army and other Belarusian institutions constituting the architecture of security can make an impact on the stability of the regime. Two problematic issues are raised. The first issue deals with how the force structure system and its formal and informal control, management and definition of short-and medium-term functions determine the stability of the Belarusian regime. The second issue poses the question whether the centralization of internal and army management, definition of control and functions is the decisive factor or militarization. Attention is paid to institutional analysis. Attempts are made to reveal how and why functions of the army and security institutions are defined, which of them are formal and which are informal, and what informal institutions or organizations contribute to the efforts of formal institutions to ensure the stability of the regime.

The paper assesses theories explaining the states’ burden-sharing decisions in an alliance and uses them to evaluate the Lithuanian decision to establish a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Afghanistan. In the literature, several influences on such decision-making are identified. These fall into two broad categories of systemic and domestic factors. From the former, threat perception, alliance dependence, systemic pressures of alliance politics are analysed; and from the latter three clusters of aspects such as: state autonomy, elite consensus, space of manoeuver of the executive; bureaucratic politics and organizational interests, and third, some additional elements of strategic culture/state identity. While most factors have some explanatory value, the analysis invites the conclusion that in case of the decision to lead a PRT, the two most important elements were alliance dependence from the first cluster and strategic culture and bureaucratic politics from the second.