Lithuania is showing the world a way to resist China’s growing pressure by diversifying supply chains and uniting with fellow democracies, Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Wednesday.
One of the smallest EU nations, Lithuania has been punching above its weight diplomatically by letting Taiwan open an office in its own name and, separately, supporting opposition leaders in Belarus.
On a visit to Washington, Landsbergis said he spoke to senior US officials on Lithuania’s efforts to reduce reliance on China for supplies and called for longer-term efforts to help other nations facing pressure.
Photo: AFP
“I think that the biggest lesson out of Lithuania is that economic coercion does not necessarily mean that the country needs to step away from independent foreign-policy decisions,” Landsbergis told reporters. “Probably you’ll be threatened, you’ll be shouted at in the headlines in Chinese media, but nonetheless, you can withstand that.”
While authoritarian nations speak of the failure of democracy, “I have to say that the only weakness of democracies is not being able to help each other,” he said.
Going one step further even than the US, Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open an office in Vilnius in its own name, leading China to downgrade diplomatic and trade ties with the Baltic state.
The retaliation reinforces the image that China’s chief tool “is not diplomacy,” but “coming from the position of power and coercing countries,” Landsbergis said.
“Countries feel that there’s this invisible sword of Damocles hanging above their heads” if they displease Beijing, he said.
Landsbergis said that other nations were reaching out to Lithuania about its experience and they “100 percent wish to have more space to make independent decisions about their foreign policy.”
Lithuania exports a modest 250 million euros (US$280 million) per year to China, but the minister said that the larger issue was Chinese-made parts in the supply chain, with the small nation making a concerted effort to switch to democratic partners.
While some European nations have bemoaned the growing US focus on Asia, Landsbergis said that Lithuania wanted to be a “responsible NATO partner” and show an interest in the Pacific.
Despite the vast geographic and cultural distance, Landsbergis said that Lithuanians, formerly under Soviet communist rule, felt a “sense of kinship” with Taiwan.
The relationship is more immediate when it comes to Belarus, where Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko last year was declared the winner of a sixth term and quickly moved to suppress protests alleging fraud.
Lithuania — which has welcomed Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who says she won the election — called for a united Western stance to stop entirely Lukashenko’s “weaponization” of migration.
Western officials say Belarus has tried to encourage thousands of migrants flown in from the Middle East to cross into the EU.
In the past, Lukashenko would detain and release political prisoners in return for an easing of sanctions, Landsbergis said.
“That was a never-ending story. So we are seeing that he might want to create something like that with the migrants,” he said.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate