At that time, a severe economic blockade had just been overcome. The situation in the East was unclear. Not very clear in the West either. A large military contingent of the Soviet Union (or its successor state Russia) was still deployed in Lithuania.
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Various directions were being explored, but in 1992, thinking about NATO membership would have required special strategic imagination. It was not a primary national security issue. Unlike the worrying withdrawal of a large Russian military contingent.
Later, a decade after the adoption of the Constitution, after negotiating and smoothly carrying out the withdrawal of the Russian army, preparing to join the NATO Alliance, there were many concerns in Lithuania that perhaps we would join the North Atlantic as second-class members.
Questions were asked: will allied forces be able to be deployed in Lithuania? Will we be able to establish allied bases in Lithuania? And now we rejoice daily, and worry at least a little whether we ourselves do everything on time, whether the Germans are ready for their brigade to operate in Lithuania at full scale and capacity as planned next year. The same applies to other allied deployments and exercises.
It is strange that we have already managed to forget the pressing issue raised back then – about Article 137 of the 1992 Constitution, which states that Lithuania cannot have weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases.
What do NATO bases in Lithuania mean?
At least some of the issues needed to be resolved from the first day of membership in the Alliance.
How will we interpret, for example, the NATO Baltic Air Policing mission?
The Baltic Air Policing started from the very first minute of our membership in the Alliance – on March 29, 2004. For a long time, this was the only visible NATO footprint in Lithuania.
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At the same time, it was also the deployment of allied forces.
The question was raised how to interpret this mission and the allied military contingent carrying it out on a rotational basis. Is it a NATO base? Or something else?
If we are a member state of the Alliance, should we consider our own Alliance infrastructure as foreign or our own?
The questions were answered.
The Constitutional Court spoke on the issue of bases. It clarified that the prohibition in Article 137 of the Constitution applies to such military bases that are controlled and managed by foreign states. NATO infrastructure or the presence of allied forces in Lithuania under collective defense commitments cannot be considered “foreign” military bases.
In other words, NATO bases cannot be treated as something foreign.
After all, we ourselves are NATO.
2026: a new reality
In 2026, when we have a permanent German brigade, rotating forces of other allies, but most importantly – the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine for the fifth year, we must ask whether we must be prepared to use all necessary reliable deterrence and defense measures for the defense of Lithuania and our allies?
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