The Next Geopolitical Frontier of the U.S.-Russian Relationship is Vilnius: My Internship at the GSSC
About the author: Dylan Vergara’26 is a Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Global Policy Intern at the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center. Dylan completed an M.A. in Sociology and B.A. in Political Science at Stanford University.
The United States needs Russia. During an event at the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center (GSSC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, Michael Kimmage, Director of the Kennan Institute, declared that the U.S.-Russia relationship is a dependent one. Throughout my Political Science and Sociology education at Stanford, I have thought about Russia as the adversary that the U.S. must defeat, that dealing with Great Power Competition hinges on the continuation of unipolar, American hegemony. What I took from this event was a harder question: whether American power should be spent defending liberal democracy as a principle, or whether its real test is narrower. Specifically, whether stability holds in Europe, and particularly in the Baltics. How the United States approaches Russia and its effects on the Baltics is the exact focus of the GSSC. The distance between what gets argued in Vilnius and what gets heard in Washington is not a matter of the actual quality of the research, but whether Vilnius has the standing to be listened to.
Working in the GSSC taught me how the rippling effects of American diplomacy not only trickle down to small nation-states like Lithuania, but that the consequences of American foreign policy determine whether or not a nation-state itself should continue to exist. Lithuania sits in a precarious position, being the only Baltic nation where potential invasion plans can attack from both sides. Lithuania’s Suwalki Gap is the only strip of territory that connects the Baltics to the mainland. Russia’s Kaliningrad province sandwiches Lithuania, with its western border being Russian territory and its eastern border being Belarus.
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At the GSSC, these concerns are consistently debated amongst the center’s leaders and policy experts. While the center itself is a small think tank within a small NATO-nation, the center and its country punches above its weight. Director Linas Kojala hosted discussions at NATO’s Ankara summit to discuss the threat of Russian hybrid warfare. Lithuania itself contributes the highest percentage of its GDP to the NATO alliance, thus gaining leverage in the alliance with American and German troops coming to aid the region.
While working at the center shed light on the impact of Lithuanian foreign policy and the GSSC’s impact in policy discussions, the GSSC and its country still have a lot of work to do to be relevant in American policy discussions. Given the war in Ukraine as well as the potential for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the GSSC is trying to leverage its impact in DC by targeting specific political initiatives within Congress and potentially increasing Lithuania’s defense manufacturing into U.S. procurement.
During my internship, I had the opportunity to draft a piece on how the United States-Lithuania relationship is not one-sided but that both countries benefit mutually economically and politically. However, working at a think tank that operationally is not as large as the dominant American and other EU think tanks makes it difficult to translate policy research into impact.
With growing multipolarity and the potential of a Russian invasion in the region to test Article 5 commitments, the Baltics will become the most consequential geopolitical region for the sake of Western democracy. However, the question remains whether the GSSC works hard enough for Washington to hear its cries for support.
