(kremlin.ru)
Ever since Belarus emerged as a sovereign state from the chaotic period of the early 1990s, it has seldom caught the eye of western – and, lamentably, eastern – analysts. The “outpost of tyranny”, led by its longtime president Aleksandr Lukashenko – the last dictator in Europe – as George Bush once referred to him amounted to little more than a subject of vaguely entertaining jokes, and a grateful subject for moral indignation and sanctions of the international community. Belarussian authorities themselves have done a lot to further this view; the country remained a pariah in the international arena, while Lukashenko, paying tribute to Belarussian national identity (construed in opposition to Lithuania and Poland, and drawing from the peasant roots of the Belarussian people), was – and still is – happy to organize photo-ops of him tending to crops, plowing fields and so forth.
Consequently, little interest has been given to Belarus’ internal politics, and little was done to understand the geopolitical salience of Belarussian territory. For most of the Western world then, the country was a boring riddle, wrapped in an uneventful enigma – and for what it’s worth, Belarus didn’t seem to mind. Now however things may well be changing and Belarus, like other borderlands separating Russia from the rest of the European Peninsula, may come to play a central role in the evolution of the power balance in the Northern European Plain.
In December 2019, the presidents of Belarus and Russia met twice to negotiate a tightening of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. Both meetings failed to produce an agreement. Then, on January 1st, following another failed round of negotiations over prices of oil, Russia ceased shipping oil to Russian refineries in Novopolotsk and Mozyr. In response, Belarussian authorities issued a number of statements indicating, that Belarus will seek to purchase oil elsewhere. In mid-January Lukashenko actually came through on this threat, by buying a symbolic amount of oil from Norway. Last but not least, in late December it was announced that the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would visit Minsk on January 4th(Pompeo’s visit has since been rescheduled for February 1st).
Now, taken separately, neither of these events are novel; quarrels over the price of oil have been commonplace between the two, as has been Russia’s mounting pressure on Lukashenko to greenlight tighter integration between the two states, and allow for the creation of (or the ceding of more power to) supranational institutions within the Union State. Likewise, Lukashenko’s efforts to have his cake and eat it, i.e. secure lower prices of hydrocarbons, and retain his position of control over Belarus, are nothing out of the ordinary.
However, there are some caveats that things might not just be more of the same this time around. First and foremost, Russia has made some sweeping changes to its government and constitution in the midst of this dispute. These changes, announced by Putin during his address on January 15, introduce a number of alterations to the political process in Russia, with some believing they were introduced in order to streamline the decision-making process in case of a potential military intervention. The result of these changes will be, inter alia, to decrease constitutional checks and balances by allowing removal of Constitutional Court and Supreme Court justices by presidential order. Putin has also announced a marked increase in the mandate held by the State Council, up until now a largely advisory body, which some view as a move designed to make decision-making procedures – presumably also those concerning military action – faster and more agile.
What’s also notable is that in the address, the Russian president has repeated his belief that the international situation is now characterized by instability (tactfully failing to note, that Russia is at least partly responsible for said instability) – and the time is ripe for a discussion “about the basic principles of a stable world order”. Putin also stated that Russia is neither threatening nor seeking to impose its will on anyone, but will do what it must to ensure its safety.
Putin is, of course, correct in his diagnosis of the stability – or lack thereof – of international order. The question is, what is he going to do about it? One possibility is that seeing a swaying US leadership, he might choose to act in places that he considers to be of paramount importance for the long-term outlook of Russia. Being the land empire that it is, Russia believes that the only way to ensure its long term security is to expand. This expansionist drive is a time-invariant characteristic of Russian foreign policy; whoever ruled the Kremlin – be it the Soviets or the Tsars – always sought to expand, absorbing old buffer areas and creating new ones, thereby putting more and more distance between the country’s core and its external threats – and thus ensuring its safety. Consequently, in a paradoxical, syncretistic way reminiscent of “1984”, the only way for Moscow to secure peace is to pursue endless imperial expansion – and since Russia has invariably been relatively poor, and lacked soft power (like land empires tend to), this expansion was achieved by conquest. War is peace after all.
Second, there is the recent signaling courtesy of Lukashenko. Following the failed negotiations concerning deeper integration, the Belarussian president delivered a number of very strong statements concerning the future of Belarus, and the relationship between it and Russia. In his Christmas Eve interview with the Russian radio station Echo of Moscow, Lukashenko underscored that while he and Putin agreed on many things, and many aspects of the 31 point road map that is to guide further integration of two states, they had decided “not to discuss” the creation of any supranational bodies any further. He also noted that Russia is not paying for stationing its troops on Belarussian soil, and issued a not-so-veiled threat to the Kremlin, stating that he believes that NATO would intervene, should Russia attempt a forceful takeover of Belarus. Also worth noting is Lukashenko’s statement, that he is well aware that Belarus is more important to Moscow than some parts of Russia proper.
On top of that, Belarus has actually come through on its threat to start purchasing oil elsewhere. On January 21st, Belarussian authorities announced that Minsk had purchased 80,000 tons of oil from Norway, which are to be delivered to the Novopolotsk refinery in Northern Belarus via the Lithuanian rail network over the course of the next two weeks, with the first batch arriving in Novopolotsk on Monday 27th. Adding insult to injury, Lukashenko also announced that he will seek a permanent diversification of his country’s oil and gas suppliers, with only 40% of oil coming from Russia – while the rest could be bought from the US or Saudi Arabia and transported to Belarus using the port in Gdansk, at least in the declarative sphere threatening Russia with inviting its global and regional rivals to do business with their indispensable buffer. The possibility of buying oil elsewhere would mean that one crucial leverage Russia has over Belarus would be gone, providing Minsk with much more freedom for maneuver than it had before.
Again, none of those things are entirely new; the kabuki theater between Minsk and Moscow has been going on almost since the beginning of the Union State in 1997. Conflicts usually erupted over preferential treatment of Belarussian exports (dairy wars and so forth), or over the other staple in Russia’s coercive measures toolset – the prices of energy carriers. Lukashenko is well aware of the salience of Belarussian territory, and in the past, he did not shy away from playing hardball with the Kremlin. This meant that over the years, the Belarussian strongman has scored some victories vis a vis the Russians, forcing Moscow to continue to provide Minsk with gas and oil at a rebate, effectively subsidizing the Belarussian economy – after all, as Lukashenko noticed in his recent interview, Belarus is giving Russia many favors, which cannot be expressed in financial terms. There is little doubt that what he meant by that is providing its territory and remaining firmly in the pro-Russian camp.
But what if this recent disagreement on the future of the Union State, the resulting spat over oil prices and Lukashenko’s actions that followed is not merely another iteration of the decades-long act between the two states? And what if Russia’s reshuffling means it really is preparing to make a move against Belarus?
The consequence of such a move could well prove to be catastrophic – yet not really surprising. As already mentioned, Russia, being the true land empire that it is, considers the existence of buffer zones as an indispensable strategic necessity. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting loss of 15 SSRs meant that its western border had been reduced back to their 17thcentury extent. That, in turn, meant that what were once vast swathes of the Northern European plain that insulated it from foreign invasion, and on which the armies of Napoleon and Hitler had been bled out, was reduced to the mere 500 kilometers that separated Moscow from the Belarussian border.
Therefore even in its darkest days, Russia has never ceased to try and secure its buffers and prevent centrifugal forces from tearing new provinces away from its core. Starting in the mid-1990s, it has waged a succession of wars in the Caucasus, subduing Chechnya and preventing irredentism in the Caucasus and elsewhere. In 2008, it waged war against Georgia – another buffer state in the Caucasus. In 2014 and onwards, it sought to contain the pro-Western aspirations of Ukraine. And so fears that it will soon make its move again, this time against Belarus – perhaps the most important buffer of all – are not without merit.
This is because, on top of putting distance between itself and the potential enemy, the easternmost part of Belarus is home to the Smolensk gate, arguably the most salient feature of the military geography on the Baltic-Black Sea bridge. The Smolensk gate, outlined by the upper course of the Daugava and the lower course of the Dnieper, is a narrow patch of land between those two rivers, that naturally channels any military movement between Moscow and the rest of the European Peninsula. While Smolensk itself is located in Russia, the western part of the Smolensk gate is largely located in Belarus, before the courses of the Daugava and the Dnieper diverge just west of Vitebsk and Orsha. Whoever controls this narrow passage gains a strategic initiative along the Baltic-Black Sea land bridge, and puts the opposing side on the defensive – in a largely indefensible terrain that is the Northern European Plain. If a Western power was in control of the Smolensk Gate, Moscow would be under immediate and dire threat of invasion. If however, it was the Russians who controlled the Smolensk Gate, then the route West, devoid of any significant geographic features to stop the invasion, would be laid bare. Russia has learned this the hard way; since the Napoleonic campaigns, the Russians have fought a war on the Northern European plain every 33 years on average – and in most cases, they were either advancing through, or defending the enemy advance approaching via the Smolensk Gate.
Belarus’s existence as a buffer state meant that the borders of Russia and Poland (with the exclusion of the Kaliningrad exclave) are nearly 500 kilometers away. If Russia, however, manages to take Belarus, then its armies would be a mere 150 kilometers from the Polish capital of Warsaw, and the Vistula river line, which for all intents and purposes constitutes the “spine” of Polish statehood. Those 150 kilometers are over flat terrain, devoid of significant natural barriers to enemy offensive. Under those circumstances, there is simply not enough depth for the Poles to mount a successful defence.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and a number of states were formed out of former SSRs, the Baltic-Black Sea bridge saw a constellation of states it has never witnessed in its long history; Warsaw and Moscow – two core regions of the CEE, perpetually locked in a constant, centuries-long rivalry with one another have now found themselves separated by a belt of independent states ranging from the Baltic countries in the North, Belarus and Ukraine – a bona fide cordon sanitaire. With this, a long term objective laid out in the ULB (Ukraine-Lithuania-Belarus) doctrine has materialized. The co-author of the doctrine Jerzy Giedroyc stipulated that Poland needs to be insulated from the expansive Russia by independent, and preferably pro-Polish and anti-Russian states of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, hence the name. Things are never permanently stable anywhere however, and certainly not on the Baltic-Black Sea bridge. The problem was that once the goal of ULB materialized, Poland failed to follow it up, buying into the vision of the ‘End of History’, and failing to realize that the creation of the ULB states does not imply that they will exist in perpetuity.
Herein lies the original sin of Polish foreign policy in its Eastern dimension. Poland, understandably infatuated with the idea of the end of history and the belief that the liberal order will reign victorious indefinitely, has ceased to think of the territories east of its border in terms of geopolitics. This refusal to acknowledge the importance of space and geopolitical thinking meant that Poland’s efforts towards its Eastern buffer focused on promoting the cause of democracy and human rights. By trying to position itself as the champion of democracy in CEE, Poland has decided that what best serves its interests is trying to put an emphasis on democratizing Belarus, and by doing so, has antagonized Lukashenko, leading him to believe that Poland is inherently hostile to his rule and will seek to dislodge him if given the opportunity. That consequently meant that Poland has failed to develop a toolset that could help it influence affairs in Belarus – Warsaw failed to develop economic and political ties with Belarus, and in the process, sacrificed its biggest bargaining chip – the Polish minority in Belarus, numbering over 500 thousand individuals – on the altar of promoting democracy. Belarus did not democratize, and the Polish minority role as a political force was effectively neutralized by Lukashenko’s regime. This, in turn, alienated Lukashenko, limiting Poland’s economic and political footprint on Belarus to an absolute bare minimum. Worse still, Polish policymakers failed to note the obvious – realistically speaking, it is Lukashenko who is the sole guarantor of Belarus’ independence, and if Poland’s interests were to be defined through the prism of geopolitics, futile attempts to dislodge him would simply go against them.
As a result, Poland, a country which by default should be spearheading attempts to either draw Belarus towards the West, or at least limit Russian influence over Minsk, has stood idly by while the Kremlin has steadily expanded its influence over the buffer zones to its West. Under Lukashenko’s reign, the country has walked a tightrope line between the West – which Lukashenko thought is seeking to dislodge him in another “color revolution”, and the East – Russia, which at first contented itself on countering any western encroachment by propping up Lukashenko’s regime. The cold shoulder given by Poland and the West made Lukashenko’s tight-rope walk ever more difficult, and with Russia’s resurgence Belarus found itself increasingly squeezed by Moscow. Lukashenko’s concerns over Russian encroachment manifested themselves when he refused to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the legality of the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
Which brings us back to today. If the recent spat, Russia’s reshuffling, and Minsk’s signaling are not more of the same, and instead signal a potential turning point, it is very possible that volatility and instability will make a return to the Bloodlands in a way they haven’t since the Polish-Bolshevik war a hundred years ago. Furthermore, whether this grim scenario materializes or not, over the coming years, marked by the disintegration of the international system, Poland will be compelled to rethink its strategy towards the buffer states to it’s East. More likely than not this will involve thinking about Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states in more realistic terms, defining and pursuing its own geopolitical, economic, social and political agenda.
Should Belarus be incorporated into Russia, losing sovereignty in the process, Poland effectively would become a buffer state itself, making its survival in the long term dubious at best – not to mention the usual pleasantries that come with the status of being a borderland. Moreover, this would put Russia and Poland on a fast track towards a major conflict, one in which Poland would find itself in a very unfavorable position. Poles and Russians have been at war nineteen times; none of those wars was a small, clean affair. The twentieth war, whenever it may come – and come it will – is going to be no different.
Autor
Albert Świdziński
Director of Analysis at Strategy&Future.
Strategy&Future
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