Democratic Control of the Armed Forces in Lithuania

Abstract

With the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself at the beginning of the 1990s, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) states, including the Baltic states, faced the difficult challenge of the transition to democracy. CEE countries (particularly the Baltic states) had to reform their political, economic, and social order by eradicating the remnants of the Soviet legacy that was deeply rooted in many spheres of social life and in the very mentality of the people. Given this context, one of the major problems posed by the period of transition was the post-Soviet legacy of and within the armed forces. Paradoxically, the Baltic states, which were former Soviet republics, had fewer problems in establishing civil control over their military than did the former Warsaw Pact states that were, for the most part, sovereign nations. The Baltic states simply did not have any national armed forces prior to 1990. They had to build their respective national defense establishments from scratch, thus avoiding the contentious problems associated with reforming the defense sector that other CEE states had to deal with. On the other hand, the Baltic states barely had any historical experience with democracy, and this lack was an aggravating factor in the democratic transformation process of the 1990s. This essay will provide a case study of the evolution of the democratic control of armed forces in Lithuania.