Nausėda Targets Nuclear Ban

Article 137 of Lithuania's constitution is short, but it carries the weight of the country’s post-Soviet settlement. It keeps weapons of mass destruction off Lithuanian soil and bars foreign military bases. President Gitanas Nausėda now wants the whole clause deleted. After meeting parliamentary faction leaders on 2 July, he said almost all accepted that the wording belonged to another era. His route is repeal, not a tidier amendment.

That is easier to state than to deliver. Changing the Lithuanian constitution requires two votes in the Seimas, Lithuania's parliament, each backed by at least 94 of its 141 MPs, with at least three months between them. The governing coalition has 75 seats. Agreement around a meeting table is one thing. Producing a constitutional majority twice, under pressure, is another.

The Clause Nobody Talks About

The nuclear element draws the attention, for obvious reasons. But Article 137 also bans foreign military bases, and Lithuania is already host to a sizeable allied presence. Germany plans to station a brigade of about 5,000 troops there by the end of 2027. Recent NATO exercises brought thousands more onto Lithuanian territory.

The clause was written in 1992 with a very different purpose: to make sure Soviet forces left and stayed gone. The text has remained still while Lithuania’s security reality has moved on. What has not been publicly explained is whether rotating allied deployments are legally treated as different from permanent "foreign military bases", or whether political practice has simply run ahead of the constitutional language. Repeal would remove that uncertainty. Lithuanian leaders, however, have not yet made the case that the current wording is creating an operational problem.

Legal Room, Not Nuclear Weapons

Acting defence minister Robertas Kaunas presented the repeal as a way of ensuring Lithuania can draw on the full range of NATO capabilities. Nausėda said there are no immediate plans to store nuclear weapons, and that Lithuania would remain within the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the global pact that limits recognised nuclear-weapons possession to five states (Internazionale/Reuters).

Removing a constitutional lock does not open the whole door. NATO nuclear sharing depends on US custody of weapons, dual-capable aircraft, trained crews and alliance-level planning. Only a small number of western European states currently host such arrangements. Moving weapons east would require hardened storage vaults, upgraded bases, US certification of aircrews to handle nuclear munitions, and a command chain for release authority. That takes years, not months. No verified US or NATO decision to station nuclear weapons in Lithuania has emerged (CNBC).

Lithuania Is Not the Only One Asking

Lithuania is not acting in isolation. Finland lifted its own nuclear-weapons ban on 17 June after a parliamentary vote of 125 to 61. Finnish officials said no peacetime basing was planned, but the debate exposed real disagreement over whether removing legal restraints strengthens deterrence or simply invites countermeasures before any usable capability exists.

Poland is pushing in the same direction. The head of its National Security Bureau has said entry into nuclear sharing is a real possibility, with talks with Washington planned. Rzeczpospolita has placed Lithuania’s move inside a wider eastern-flank demand for equal deterrence status. But nuclear sharing is not created by national law alone. It would need decisions by NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, the alliance body where nuclear posture is discussed.

The Lithuanian argument is not hard to understand, particularly from an Irish vantage point where neutrality debates often turn on legal wording before they reach military reality. A frontline NATO state does not want to rule out alliance options in its constitution before a crisis arrives. The harder question is what that freedom is worth. Without infrastructure, aircraft, trained crews and a US decision to deploy, legal eligibility is political signalling rather than military capability. Whether repeal changes NATO’s posture, or only Lithuania’s constitutional vocabulary, depends first on votes in Vilnius and then on decisions no allied capital has yet made public.