Narystė NATO - postūmis reformoms

NATO membership will inevitably affect Lithuania’s relations with other members of NATO as well as with the states of the EU and CIS. At the same time, it will ensure stability and trust in a changing world. The major attention, at this point, is turned to new threats such as terrorism, dissemination of weapons of mass destruction, uncontrolled migration, etc. These new threats require new approach to them as well as new measures in combating them. With its tasks and new models of cooperation, NATO is changing and becoming a different organization than it used to be. The long-range strategy of the state development contains an ambitious goal – to become the leader of the region. This means more active participation in enhancing Europe’s safety and stability. In summary, one may assert that Lithuania does have a resource-based, real plan which would assist the country in creating some reliable military force that, with the allies’ help, would be capable of securing state and collective defence. The invitation to NATO membership is the beginning of even more complex and effort- requiring process. Therefore, we are already preparing for new challenges. Our desire is to become good allies, and we hope that with the help of its new members, NATO will become even more effective and important organization than it has been until now

Lithuania's participation in the reconstruction process of Afghanistan: a case of a small state's engagement in the international arena

Because the international arena is too focused on the interests of big states as structuring international interactions, small states continue to appear merely as objects (versus subjects) in the eyes of a large number of researchers, sometimes unconsciously following the (neo)realist tradition of International Relations (IR). Consequently, small states appear to be devoid of any analytical interest. In fact, such a trend in the field of IR neglects the significance of ever increasing interactions between states. Moreover, these interactions need not reflect incompatible interests of different states. The article argues that the case of the reconstruction process of Afghanistan, implemented by the international community, presents a positive-sum logic. In other words, the efforts of the coalition in the Afghan territory allow the engaged states, be they big or small, to pursue their own interests. The degree of their contributions corresponds to the benefits their engagement might provide. As the analysis of the Lithuanian case demonstrates, a small state need not be a passive object trapped in the interactions of powerful states and can arrange itself in order to proceed with actively pursuing its own foreign policy