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What did Lithuania's Javelin deal signal?
Summary
A look back at a US arms sale to a NATO ally, approved as tensions with Russia rose in December 2021.
What did it mean when Washington approved a missile sale to Lithuania in the run-up to the holidays? On 25 December 2021, the decision was a few days old, and it sat within a wider mood of heightened tension with Russia.
On 21 December 2021, the U.S. State Department approved the sale to Lithuania, a NATO ally, of 341 FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank guided missiles and 30 command launch units. The approval came amid rising tensions with Russia.
The package was specific: missiles paired with the launch units needed to fire them. It was framed by the surrounding tension rather than by any single incident named in the approval.
A label for the moment
Commentators and scholars have used terms such as Second Cold War, Cold War II and New Cold War to describe heightened geopolitical tensions between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia or China on the other. Some have used the comparison with the original Cold War, while others have discouraged it for ongoing tensions.
The Lithuanian sale was one datapoint in that debate: a concrete transfer of anti-tank weapons to a NATO member as relations with Moscow worsened.
