Pawn to G7

“We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces; nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.” – Daisaku Ikeda

The best professional players from the National Basketball Association (NBA) became eligible to compete in the Olympic Games in 1992. In that inaugural year, the USA Men's Basketball National Team featured legendary players Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Charles Barkley, and is widely considered to be the greatest athletic team ever assembled in any sport.  The Dream Team was truly a global cultural phenomenon, destroying all opponents on its way to clinching the gold medal and reestablishing the US as the dominant superpower in basketball. Asked at a press conference about their hapless opponent prior to their debut game at the Barcelona Olympics, Barkley famously responded “I don’t know much about Angola, but Angola’s in trouble.”

The 2004 incarnation of the US team that competed in Athens, Greece, was a little less dreamy. Despite featuring NBA superstars Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and Tim Duncan, the team struggled to perform at a level commensurate with its talent. In its fourth game at the event, already reeling from an opening round loss to Puerto Rico, the US took to the court to face Lithuania, a country with barely three million residents. Amazingly, the Lithuanians outhustled the US, played better defense, and hit pivotal shots down the stretch on their way to shocking the basketball world and upsetting their opponents with a score of 94-90. Fireworks erupted in Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, as citizens throughout the basketball-crazed country took to the streets to celebrate this most unlikely accomplishment.

Photo credit: Salt Lake Tribune

There’s much to admire about Lithuania, beginning with the fact that it is has managed to cement itself as an independent nation at all. Given its strategic geographic position linking the Baltic littoral with Central Europe, the people of Lithuania have suffered for centuries at the hands of the conflicting superpowers that surround them. Take World War II, during which Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviets, then overrun by the Nazis, only to be re-occupied by the Soviets again. Lithuanian patriots have fought unrelenting rebellions against whoever claimed military control over their homeland and were the first of the former Soviet republics to declare independence on March 11, 1990. Outhustling and outlasting superpowers – whether in sports or in geopolitics – appears to be in the country’s DNA.

In a move that caught geopolitical analysts by surprise, Lithuania recently picked a fight with another global superpower by inserting itself into the tensions over Taiwan. In November of 2021, Lithuania allowed the disputed territory to setup the Taiwanese Representative Office within its borders. This might not seem like such a big deal at first blush, but for the Communist Party of China (CCP) it crossed a deadly serious red line. In most other countries, such office names refer to the city of Taipei, not the country of Taiwan, and are called Taipei Cultural and Economic Centers. In the eyes of the CCP, Lithuania – a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – has allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy, a huge no-no. Tweets like the ones shown below probably didn’t help matters.

The Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania @TW_in_LT

Hello world! Sveiki and 歡迎! Welcome to the official Twitter account of The Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania! Follow us for updates on #Taiwan and its relations with #Lithuania! 🇱🇹❤️🇹🇼

Punishment from the CCP was swift (emphasis added throughout this piece):

“In response, Beijing has applied methods that Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Lithuanian foreign minister, compares to the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ …

China is not just blocking all trade with Lithuania. It is also blocking all products containing components made in Lithuania, causing a huge headache for foreign investors in the country.

Beijing has chosen a clever tactic. German investors in Lithuania are believed to be urging the government to back down, while polls suggest that Lithuanian public opinion has turned against the Taiwan gambit.”

The CCP’s reaction to this affair might seem highly disproportionate to the alleged offense, but it is important to consider that only 13 countries plus the Vatican officially recognize Taiwan as a country, and the CCP has been systematically working to bring this number to zero through all manner of coercive actions. Just last month, Nicaragua flipped to the no camp. The CCP views any move against the momentum they are building to squash Taiwan’s hopes of independence as the deepest of insults that must be met with the harshest of responses. Here’s how the New York Times describes the situation:

“Now, only 13 nations and the Vatican still recognize Taiwan, down from 21 in all at the beginning of 2017. Since then, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and now Nicaragua have switched their recognition to the People’s Republic of China. China has sought to keep Taiwan isolated, even barring it from participating in international forums like the World Health Assembly, in hopes of forcing it to accept unification with the mainland as an inevitability.”

For the EU, the CCP’s bullying of one of its member states presents a significant threat to their credibility as a unified and effective global power. It also puts them in an awkward position, as the continent has more than a half trillion Euros worth of bilateral trade with China, whereas Lithuania is indirectly exposed, accounting for barely 2% of the EU’s total exports to the country. If the EU tolerates specific and negative trade action against a member state without responding collectively, what is the point of the EU at all? The credibility behind such pledges of unity is now being put to a serious test.

The tactics used by the CCP are not without risk of backfire. In its high-profile trade war with Australia, China has accomplished little. Australia has since managed to diversify away from China, finding alternative outlets for its valuable natural resources. When China cut Australia off, it merely redirected supply chain flows and made them more robust for Australia, as suppliers that took over Australia’s China volume left their prior customers short, and Australia merely developed the ability to serve them. The result can only be seen as an embarrassing loss for China and a win for the Aussies, who emerged from the tussle stronger, more unified as a country on the topic of trade with China, and no worse off economically for all of China’s bluster.

Early signs of a similar result for the CCP are beginning to develop in Europe, potentially backing them into a corner from which it would be difficult to emerge without losing face. Just this week, Slovenia also allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital under the name “Taiwan,” triggering a predictably frothy response:

“China on Wednesday condemned plans by Slovenia to upgrade relations with self-governing Taiwan, a move likely to spark diplomatic and economic retaliation against the tiny Central European country.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China was ‘shocked by this and strongly opposed to it,’ but gave no immediate details on how Beijing would respond.

‘It is a dangerous statement made by the Slovenian leader that overtly challenges the one-China principle and supports Taiwan independence,’ Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing, referring to comments Monday by Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa.”

In a famous presentation by Derek Sivers at TED 2010 titled “How to start a movement,” he tells the story of how an entire crowd in a park could be made to collectively dance with joy by the actions of just two people. The video playing behind Sivers as he speaks begins with a shirtless man unilaterally deciding to begin dancing by himself – a person Sivers labels as the “lone nut.” Onlookers have their curiosity piqued by the strange scene, but then something critical happens. A second man joins the lone nut and begins to dance, which simultaneously normalizes the lone nut’s behavior and signals to others that it is acceptable to join in the party. Sivers call him the “first follower.” He continues:

“Now, notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. Now it's not about the leader anymore; it's about them, plural. Now, there he is calling to his friends. Now, if you notice that the first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. And here comes a second follower. Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts -- three is a crowd, and a crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It's important to show not just the leader, but the followers, because you find that new followers emulate the followers, not the leader. Now, here come two more people, and immediately after, three more people. Now we've got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we've got a movement.”

It is too soon to tell whether Lithuania is the lone nut and Slovenia the first follower that triggers a foot-stomping dance party on the CCP’s credibility, but the coming days and weeks will be telling.

We close this article by contemplating the origin story of this entire affair. Why did Lithuania, a relative pawn on the geopolitical chess board, make such a bold move in the first place? For clues, we turn to a fantastic report by the Foreign Policy Research Institute titled “Reconceptualizing Lithuania’s Importance for U.S. Foreign Policy.” In it, author Nikolas Gvosdev walks readers through the complex history of the relationship between the US and Lithuania, how the robustness of Lithuania’s security as an independent state relies heavily on support from the US, and how the nature of that support has ebbed and flowed with how the US views the strategic importance of the region in which Lithuania is situated. When containing Russia is the top priority of the US, Lithuania increases in importance, which strengthens the bilateral relationship between the countries. When the attention of the US turns to containing China, Lithuania risks being left to fend for itself.

You can probably fill in the rest.

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