The West Wants Belarus to Replace Supposed Russian Vassalage With Actual Polish Vassalage
The West already turned Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova into anti-Russian states while stirring trouble in its ties with Azerbaijan and eagerly eyeing Central Asian leader Kazakhstan so the loss of Belarus would practically complete Russia’s strategic encirclement.
The Guardian published a piece about the aims of the West’s incipient US-led rapprochement with Lukashenko, which amounts to an attempt to tempt him into rebalancing Belarus’ ties with Russia through closer cooperation with the West. It was assessed here over the summer that he’s unlikely to split with Putin, especially not after the West tried to coup him half a decade ago and Russia since gave Belarus tactical nukes, which Lukashenko confirmed in early August’s interview with Time Magazine.
Nevertheless, while his intentions shouldn’t be doubted after he proved his loyalty to Russia throughout the course of the special operation and the associated pressure that the West placed upon Belarus, this doesn’t mean that the West still won’t try to mislead him into drifting closer towards its camp. To be sure, the “EU Defense Line” that’s being built along the bloc’s border with Belarus (and Russia) resembles a “new Berlin Wall” as his Foreign Minister described it, which could impede cooperation.
At the same time, however, the US could leverage the sway that it wields over Poland to offer Belarus security guarantees against the future aggression that Lukashenko fears from it. He arguably considers this to be a credible enough scenario to release several waves of prisoners as goodwill gestures after meeting with some of the US’ high-level envoys in Minsk over the past year. If Belarus’ security interests are ensured, which is possible, then economic incentives for rebalancing its foreign policy could follow.
Poland briefly closed its border with Belarus last month at the cost of EU-Chinese trade, €25 billion (or 3.7%) of which is conducted across their frontier, after fearmongering about its drills with Russia. Even so, President Karol Nawrocki is likely to comply with whatever directives his ideological ally Trump might make of him, so it can’t be ruled out that Poland might lead the EU dimension of the West’s rapprochement with Belarus. It’s thus far eschewed doing so but that could change under his leadership.
He envisages Poland becoming the US’ top ally, which requires going along with its requests, in order to obtain support for its grand strategic goal of reviving its Great Power status that he plans to advance via the “Three Seas Initiative”, which could one day extend to Belarus. Poland just became a trillion-dollar economy and was invited to next year’s G20 Summit as a result so it could foreseeably allow low- or even no-tariff Belarusian imports as an economic incentive for closer cooperation if tensions decrease.
This outcome would align with Western interests but lead to Belarus replacing what they present as “Russian vassalage” with actual Polish vassalage. The military-strategic objective that they’re aiming to achieve is that Lukashenko comes to trust them enough to request that Putin take back Russia’s tactical nukes and Oreshniks. On the political front, they want his chosen successor (whoever it’ll be since he said he won’t run again in 2030) to continue this Western course, thus worsening Russia’s security.
The West already turned Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova into anti-Russian states while stirring trouble in its ties with Azerbaijan and eagerly eyeing Central Asian leader Kazakhstan so the loss of Belarus would practically complete Russia’s strategic encirclement. Russia is responsible for Belarus’ continued socio-economic stability through decades of generous energy subsidies and access to its enormous market, and it helped quell summer 2020’s Color Revolution, so Lukashenko should know better than to betray it.