The complicated Obama -
Grybauskaitė relationship

In 2010, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė openly disagreed with
Obama on a new arms reduction plan, claiming it harmed Lithuanian
security, and in a rather shocking move refused to take part in
a dinner with Obama in Prague. Grybauskaitė was the only
invited president who refused to meet with Obama.

In April 2010, Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed a new arms reduction treaty in Prague, primarily with regards to the Eastern European missile defense system that had been planned by the George W. Bush administration.

After the signing, President Obama invited the presidents of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania, as well as the prime ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia to attend a dinner with him in Prague.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė openly disagreed with Obama on the new reduction plan, claiming it harmed Lithuanian security, and in a rather shocking move refused to take part in the dinner in Prague. Grybauskaitė was the only invited president who refused to meet with Obama.

After becoming Lithuania's president in 2009, Grybauskaitė wasted no time defining her leadership. "Yes, you have to be a strict and loud partner if you want to be heard in the conversation," she told the Associated Press in a 2011 interview.

"Lithuania is not used to a straightforward, terse, forceful way of making statements. I admit using this style in pushing NATO defense plans for the Baltic States," she said, referring to U.S. cables released by WikiLeaks earlier this year, showing that NATO in January 2010 privately decided to expand a NATO defense plan for Poland to also cover Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

"I am afraid that if I had chosen a different tone, Lithuania and its neighbours would be still waiting another six years for these," she said to the Associated Press, giving herself credit for USA’s and NATO’s new strategy as revealed by WikiLeaks.

In 2011 President Obama invited the same East European state leaders for a dinner in Poland, and this time President Grybauskaite accepted the invitation, a move presumably leading to a warmer relationship between the two presidents.

At the working dinner the Lithuanian president underlined that NATO anti-missile defense must cover all the NATO allies. According to the president, NATO-Russian relations are particularly important for Lithuania owing to its strategically special location on the boundary of the Alliance’s territory. She said the agreement reached in the NATO Lisbon Summit must not be changed and must not become the object of negotiations with Russia.

It still is little known about how President Grybauskaite’s ‘reflections’ vs. the Obama administration in 2010 and NATO in 2011 were perceived by the said parties. We can only hope they were not given too much weight and that the relationships with Lithuania have not been harmed. Her acceptance of last year's invitation from 
Obama, and the absence of new provocative statements, suggest that she has adopted a more conciliatory 
and diplomatic style and line.

The right to disagree and discuss any topic should always remain free and open, but I think our president would be better off by following more recognized protocol procedures when such delicate issues are to be discussed at high international level.

To have a best possible relationship with the U.S. and the new Obama administration will be important for Lithuania, and one can only hope that his reelection will come to represent another positive step towards improved dialogue and cooperation also between Lithuania and the United States.

Aage Myhre, Editor-In-Chief