Belarus rarely makes it into Western news reports, and hardly ever in a positive way. Governed since 1994 by Aleksandr Lukashenka, a Soviet-era throwback strongman—in a perfect touch, he once ran a Communist collective farm—Belarus for decades has been bemoaned as Europe’s last dictatorship thanks to its poor human rights record and less than democratic ways.
Lukashenka has shown little interest in currying Western favor until quite recently. His regime, guided by the strong hand of the secret police—still termed the KGB in fully Soviet fashion—has imprisoned and occasionally disappeared journalists and politicians who get on Lukashenka’s bad side. As full-time Soviet nostalgists, the regime and its leader have pined for days of lost Communist glory, and efforts at liberalization of the economy and society have made little progress in Minsk.
The ramshackle Belarusian economy remains mired in statist inefficiencies, and the only thing that has kept Lukashenka afloat all these years has been Kremlin help. Vladimir Putin long courted Minsk with loans and low prices on imported Russian energy, in exchange receiving Belarus as a vital buffer state against NATO and the West.
Its geographic location, bordering on three members of the Atlantic Alliance—Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia—gives Belarus an undeniable importance to Russia, one which has only increased since 2014, when Moscow’s ties to NATO soured after Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine. Given perennial Russian fears of invasion from the west, Belarus looms large in Moscow’s military imagination—and war plans.
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Relations between Moscow and Minsk are now on the verge of full-blown crisis. Last week, Lukashenka said that the new airbase which Putin plans to put in his country to serve the Russian air force wasn’t going to happen, lashing out at Moscow in an epic press conference that lasted more than seven hours and brimmed with anti-Kremlin sentiments. In response to deteriorating relations, Moscow has reinstated border controls on its western frontier. The previously unguarded frontier with Belarus will now be patrolled by the Federal Security Service, Putin’s powerful FSB.
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Therefore, it’s no surprise that Lukashenka is flexing his muscles right now, trying to send a message of strength while assessing who in Belarus is loyal to whom. There’s a major military exercise underway right now that includes building obstacles on the main highway that runs from Minsk to the Russian border. Reservists have been called up for these exercises, including retired military officers returned to service, to practice stemming a possible Russian invasion.
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Then there’s the knotty issue of what exactly the White House would do. Belarus isn’t in NATO and it cannot expect overt Western help against Putin. But would President Trump do anything at all in the event of Russian aggression against yet another neighbor? The new administration’s repeated public fawning over the Kremlin, plus its exceptionally tepid support for Ukraine as fighting increases there between the Russian military and Kyiv’s forces, provide ample room to wonder which side Trump is really on here.
Not to mention the weird question which the White House recently asked the Intelligence Community about Belarus. According to a new AP report, “national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus.” It should be noted that Poland, a stalwart NATO member, has conducted zero incursions into Belarus, and the notion is frankly bizarre outside the paranoid halls of the Kremlin and pro-Russian websites that seek to stir up anti-NATO sentiments with fake news.
However, Polish military incursions into Belarus have featured prominently in recent Russian military exercises, namely ZAPAD (West) 2009 and 2013, where a Drang nach Osten by Warsaw was the exercise scenario—twice. Therefore, the White House is either parroting ridiculous Russian fake news or it is consciously pushing Kremlin disinformation on our Intelligence Community.
Neither option bodes well for security and stability in Europe right now. Belarus is on NATO’s doorstep, unlike Crimea or eastern Ukraine, and the possibility for any military crisis there spiraling dangerously out of control is real. It would be best for all sides if any such crisis is averted before it unfolds.
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"WH is either parroting ridiculous Russian fake news or it is consciously pushing Kremlin disinformation on our IC"https://t.co/YjRYzuMemi
— John Schindler (@20committee) February 7, 2017
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