Analytics, Baltic States – CIS, Direct Speech, EU – Baltic States, Interview, Lithuania

Since the beginning of her term in office, President Dalia Grybauskaite has not stopped to surprise us with radical decisions: a vocal reaction to the CIA prisons, invitation to Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko, somewhat strange communication with Dmitriy Medvedev regarding Lithuanian auto carriers and regarding anniversary commemorations, failure to invite Mikhail Saakashvili to the March 11 commemoration, and, finally, rejection to meet with Barack Obama in Prague. No one had promised such a drama: who could have believed that the foreign policy guidelines of the grey and abstract president would gain such colours and such a speed? – the commentator refers in her article.

Back then no one was able to get an answer from the president's team how Lithuania's interests would be defended (the election platform said it would be done "firmly and consistently") and what "better ties with the neighbours" would look like.

Before the elections, Grybauskaite also implied she would give up the utopian ambition of regional leadership.

The Georgian president's ostentatious shunning during the March 11 celebration was an excellent illustration of this direction. Of course, there were many disagreements over this conception and it is definitely not unequivocal. Europe, too, views Saakashvili as a somewhat strange authoritarian leader, the article says.

An even bigger diplomatic blooper occurred with the newly baked pro-Russian president of Ukraine – Viktor Yanukovich. After being greeted very enthusiastically by Grybauskaite after the elections, to the March 11 celebration, Yanukovich sent a minister who was no longer minister…

For now this is not clear, because the president's office and the prime minister's press service are ostentatious in avoiding commentaries on the invitation replacements related to the Prague visit.

However, the nation should be explained why we were the only nation out of four to decline. Perhaps some sort of a consistent and wise strategy, which is not intended for wider public discussion, indeed leads the President's Office. In such a case, however, its explanations to the country’s public should also be well thought-through.

The President's Office should not be content with just a few words thrown together haphazardly, because such actions (politicians' words are viewed as actions) generate the image of the president as a capricious, unpredictable, and petty person, as Garbaciauskaite notes.

Thus, no matter what sort of dirty games the so-called statesmen were playing while they were in power, it looks like they were right in saying that the President's Office destroyed the previous consistent foreign policy and did not offer anything new. Because for now, the President's Office is making pretty strange and destructive decisions, and who could say what Lithuania's foreign policy conception is today anyway? – the author of the article points out.

One wants to ask whether Lithuania has an independent foreign policy at all.

Lithuania's good relations with Nordic countries are worthy thing, but we are having no luck in fixing the issues with the biggest political players. The results of the unexpectedly frequent meetings with Vladimir Putin are vague, and we [Lithuania] are ostentatiously trying to turn our behinds towards the US. It is hard to say whether we are really trying to become a truly European state, or whether we are finally confirming our status as a regional province that has only one ambition – to survive.

Finally, if the president was consistent in her foreign policy guidelines, perhaps she should think about going to Moscow on 9 May together with the presidents of Latvia and Estonia? This would be a completely-logical continuation of the current policy, and, let us assume, would fix that mystical foreign policy pendulum… Here, however, all of a sudden we started worrying about principles. Or perhaps the uncertainty how the Lithuanian voters would react to this?

Let us assume that Lithuania is a small country and is no player in the international arena, something that certain political analysts are constantly telling us. This, however, does not mean that we cannot have our own policy or that we should damage it by unpredictable diplomatic extravaganza.