Security over Stigma: Norm Contestation and Lithuania’s Withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention

Drawing on interviews with Lithuanian policymakers, military officials and security experts, the paper shows how Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine fundamentally reshaped defence thinking on NATO’s Eastern Flank. In Lithuania’s case, anti-personnel landmines came to be seen less as a humanitarian taboo and more as a practical defensive tool capable of slowing an advancing enemy, protecting limited manpower and buying crucial time in the earliest stages of conflict. The analysis offers a insight into how frontline states are rethinking deterrence, territorial defence and military necessity under acute security pressure. 

The paper argues that Lithuania’s withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention was not simply a unilateral rejection of humanitarian norms, but a coordinated regional response shared with Poland, Latvia, Estonia and later Finland. By acting collectively, these states turned what could have been viewed as a stigmatised treaty breach into a politically legitimate security adaptation. The paper ultimately raises a broader question: when survival is at stake, humanitarian norms may not disappear, but they can be reinterpreted, reprioritised and reshaped by the strategic realities of war.