By Tom Fowdy
I remember how half a decade ago, the Baltic State of Lithuania decided to openly antagonise China through opening a "Taiwanese Representative Office" in its capital Vilnius. While it is normal for countries to de-facto engage Taiwan under the diplomatically safe label of a "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office", Lithuania decided to break convention by allowing it, as per the wishes of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as "Taiwanese."
In the context of the time, the Biden Administration was openly pursuing a policy of "Salami Slicing" and subversive antagonism towards China by rowing back the "One China Policy" through active historical revisionism and incremental steps, a move which exploded into growing tensions following US Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the island. Lithuania, a country that at a foreign policy level is openly pro-US, Washington's support being interpreted as existential, had consequentially made the decision to openly antagonise Beijing, believing it could gain by undermining European engagement with China.
Likewise, the DPP at that time was also emboldened to push countries to undermine the "One China Policy," creating diplomatic rifts, and many states in Central and Eastern Europe had become a bonanza for them to assert "influence." Lithuania took the bait, and thus opened the "Taiwan Representative Office." China responded predictably by de-facto cutting diplomatic ties with Lithuania, expelling their ambassador, and withdrawing their own. Worse still, it then proceeded with a series of unilateral sanctions which blocked direct exports to Lithuania, blocked imports from it as well, and then even strongarmed European companies reliant on China from using Lithuanian components in their supply chains.
Of course, the media narrative surrounding this crisis at the time was fully supportive of Vilnius's actions. They dragged out that old chestnut that China's moves constituted "economic coercion", a buzzword they only and selectively apply to Beijing (and no other country that uses economic leverage to achieve its will). These measures naturally created a broader diplomatic dispute with the European Union, as it was designed to do, and undermined engagement. However, the world was about to change: Russia invaded Ukraine, and with the outbreak of that war, it was not politically expedient to discuss such a topic at all, hence the crisis enhanced European engagement with the United States, and for the meanwhile, Lithuania was vindicated, even if bruised from the severing of its relations with China.
But the world has changed. Although the war is still continuing, the key geopolitical shift that has emerged from the Trump 2.0 administration is that it has reopened engagement with Russia, something which has been unthinkable in American politics since 2016. Moreover, Trump has also toned down Biden's all-out military antagonism of China, which has included strategic revisionism on the Taiwan issue. The DPP has been put back in its box, and the area of revising the One China Policy or "salami slicing" the red line has ended. Likewise, Trump has antagonised Europe over trade, placing tariffs on them, and even threatened to annex Greenland. For a small country like Lithuania that sought to maintain diplomatic clout by leaning as a US voice in Europe, this constitutes a collapse of their entire foreign policy strategy. Vilnius used American Anti-Russian sentiment and Anti-Chinese sentiment to gain clout in Washington and thus leverage within the European Union, this avenue has shut.
Therefore, Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene has now admitted that her country made a catastrophic mistake in its decision to antagonise China in the way it did, comparing it to having "jumped in front of a train and lost." Lithuania has discovered it now needs a new great power to balance its interests with, and it has burnt its bridges with Beijing completely. Engagement with China again is not going to be an easy task, because it will demand huge concessions on the Taiwan issue before it can even consider talking again, which will no doubt press for the closure of that "Taiwanese office."
What does this tell us? It tells us that a warmer relationship with Taiwan, while marginally economically useful in some areas such as semiconductors and chips, otherwise amounts to nothing more than pure political posturing. Taiwan is an island, China is a gigantic country of 1.4 billion people, the World's Second Largest economy, and a great power. Maturity is recognising that even if you oppose China in some areas, there are clear costs in others for refusing to engage.
Lithuania wanted to be a pro-US voice in Europe to amplify its position of strategic and geographical vulnerability, never did it foresee the day where the US might again become an unreliable partner to the continent, if not an outright liability, and thus realise the China option is "essential." India, Canada, the United Kingdom, and others have all learned this the hard way in the past year, but they all had cards of their own to play, which enticed Xi to the table even when relations were toxic (yet none of them crossed that one red line), but Lithuania? Beijing has demonstrated aptly it could just ignore it as a small and disruptive actor, and they did. "The dog barked, and the caravan moved on."
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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