VILNIUS - On Sept. 24, the Lithuanian Constitutional Court announced its ruling stating that abolishment of conscription into the army does not contradict the Lithuanian constitution. This decision forces the Lithuanian government to look for some new solutions for the defense system.
Last year, the then center-left dominated parliament decided that it is expedient to switch to a Lithuanian armed forces organized on the grounds of professional and volunteer military service. The obligatory military service was retained only in case of mobilization. The Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats, then being in opposition, fiercely criticized this decision. Current Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene was among the most vocal critics of abolition of military conscription.
However, after the decision of the Constitutional Court, the mood of the now ruling Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats was rather relaxed. "We need to look for other solutions. I don't know the details of Switzerland's practice, but I think each man there has some three month-long military training and then he gets a gun, which he keeps in his home. We should think about it," said Stasys Sedbaras, Homeland Union-Lithuania Christian Democrats MP, who was initiator of the petition to the Constitutional Court questioning the abolition of military conscription.
"You can't step into the same river twice," Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene said about the Constitutional Court's ruling. "I like the practice of Denmark. There are such a number of those who have a desire to serve in the Danish army that the Danes even settle this issue by lot. Young men are getting state financial support for studying in the universitiesafter army service in Denmark. We need to think about such an incentive."
She also speculated that in the future all men could be asked to have some five-to-seven-week-long training if the parliament would pass the necessary legislation. Juozas Olekas, Social Democrat MP and former defense minister, in advocating a professional army, was skeptical about such plans stating that the modern army's technology is developing rapidly and knowledge obtained during such kind of several weeks-long training would be outdated in just a short period.
There are a lot of those who wish to join the Lithuanian army. "Now we have applications of 1,000 young men who wish to serve in the army. We can't satisfy their wish at the moment because of lack of money," Jukneviciene said.
The greatest financial burden for the Lithuanian army is Afghanistan. A Lithuanian Special Forces unit fights in Kandahar, a southern province of Afghanistan. However, the most costly is the Lithuanian mission in the town of Chaghcharan, the capital of Afghanistan's Ghor province. Lithuania leads the multinational Provincial Reconstruction Team in this central Afghanistan province. It is a relatively peaceful province though on May 22, 2008, Sgt. Arunas Jarmalavicius, 34, was killed there. He was the first Lithuanian soldier killed in the conflict.
"Despite the current economic limitations, my country is determined to stick to its obligations by contributing to peace-keeping missions and operations, ensuring global security and stability by continued participation in the EU missions in Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Afghanistan," President Dalia Grybauskaite said in her speech at the United Nations General Assembly Session in New York on Sept. 24. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry later explained that she also had in mind the NATO mission in Afghanistan, not EU missions only.
More thoughts about the future of the Lithuanian armed forces inspire joint Belarusian-Russian military maneuvers, which were held simultaneously in Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The joint Russian-Belarusian exercise Zapad 2009 ("The West 2009" in Russian) began in Belarus on Sept. 18. It was the largest military exercise held in the territory of Belarus in the entire 20-year history of existence as an independent Belarusian state. On Sept. 28-29,Lithuanian military representatives were invited to watch these war-games' final phase. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko also were present at the site of the Zapad 2009 war-games in Belarus.
More than 12,000 military personnel and equipment, including tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, helicopters and fighter-jets, were involved in the event. The official scenario of these war-games stated that Belarus was invaded "from Lithuania." This sounds extremely odd, according to Jukneviciene, because usually during such war-games, a scenario speaks about some imaginary and non-existent countries. To make things even more curious, nobody comes to help those invaders "from Lithuania," according to the Zapad 2009 scenario.
