Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija logo


  • List of journals
  • About Publisher
Login Register

  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. lasr
  4. Issues
  5. Volume 14, Issue 1 (2016)
  6. The West’s Debt to Lithuania/Lithuania’s ...

Lithuanian Annual Strategic Review

Information Submit your article Become a peer-reviewer
  • Article info
  • Cited by
  • More
    Article info Cited by

The West’s Debt to Lithuania/Lithuania’s Challenge to the West
Volume 14, Issue 1 (2016), pp. 85–99
George Weigel  

Authors

 
Placeholder
https://doi.org/10.1515/lasr-2016-0003
Pub. online: 9 December 2016      Type: Article      Open accessOpen Access

Published
9 December 2016

Abstract

The present strategic disarray of the western democracies is both a by-product of the West’s failure to grasp the moral-cultural dimension of the end-game of the Cold War and a reflection of the crisis of civilizational morale that has beset western Europe in recent decades. Thus it is important to revisit the distinctive character of the Revolution of 1989/1991 in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. That dramatic transition in European politics was born from many factors, including the re-armament of the West under the leadership of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. But the political Revolution of 1989/1991 was also the result of a revolution of conscience in central and eastern Europe, in which the reclamation of national identity and culture eventually gave rise to “soft power” tools of resistance that the hard power typically deployed by communist regimes in the face of dissent could not match. Lithuania, which embodied the oft-ignored truth that a tenacious national culture can, over time, produce democratic political change, is thus in a position to remind the West that freedom is never free; that the dignity of the human person, human rights, and the rule of law must be affirmed culturally by a robust civil society if they are to be defended politically and militarily; and that moral relativism is an insecure foundation on which to build, sustain, or defend the institutions of democratic self-governance.

Cited by PDF XML
Cited by PDF XML

Copyright
No copyright data available.

Metrics
since October 2020
862

Article info
views

0

Full article
views

310

PDF
downloads

248

XML
downloads

Export citation

Copy and paste formatted citation
Placeholder

Download citation in file


Share


RSS

Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija Šilo g. 5A., LT-10322 Vilnius, el.p: lka@mil.lt

General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania  Šilo Str. 5A, LT-10322 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: lka@mil.lt

Powered by PubliMill  •  Privacy policy