What China’s bullying of Lithuania reveals about Europe

WHEN EASTERN EUROPEANEUEUEU’SEU countries about to join the in 2003 spoke up in favour of America’s invasion of Iraq, France’s president at the time, Jacques Chirac, haughtily declared they had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”. Their furious response suggested they thought the same of him. Europe likes to stress its collective power, born of an ever-closer union that includes joint foreign-policy ambitions and dreams of an army. Yet each country also wants a licence to pursue pet diplomatic forays. While sometimes these policies are sound (like opposing ill-fated invasions in the Middle East, it turned out), occasionally they end up dragging the entire bloc into fights it would rather avoid. If Europe wants geopolitical relevance, it cannot allow every member to foment its own crises.The foreign-policy grandees are currently upset and divided about Ukraine. Russia and America, in their stand-off over the country, seem to think of Europe more as a convenient place to meet than as a partner to be included, prompting France’s President Emmanuel Macron to this week renew his calls for greater European autonomy. Germany is at odds with its partners over how to respond to Russia. Fortunately for underemployed wonks another, less-noticed, superpower spat is brewing. China is trying to throttle the Lithuanian economy. The clash pits the world’s most populous country against the ’s 21st-biggest member. Lithuania is being punished mainly for having allowed Taiwan (which China considers part of its own territory) to use the word “Taiwan” to describe its unofficial embassy, rather than “Taipei Representative Office”, as it does elsewhere at China’s insistence.