Belarus, Lithuania, and EU fecklessness on refugee policy

It is often sad and aggravating to see how public discussion in Austria over refugee issues goes.

This is a small example from Der Standard, which is actually a very good news organization, and a partner newspaper of the New York Times. It's about refugees arriving from Belarus into Lithuania, . The article includes this sentence:

Der baltische Staat [Litauen] hatte zuletzt eine Rekordzahl von Flüchtlingen und Migranten registriert, die von Belarus aus ins Land kamen. Heuer wurden bisher mehr als 3000 von ihnen aufgegriffen – im gesamten Vorjahr waren es gerade einmal 81. Für das Drei-Millionen-Einwohner-Land ist das eine echte Herausforderung.

The Baltic state [Lithuania] has recently registered a record number of refugees and migrants entering the country from Belarus. So far this year, more than 3,000 of them have been picked up – in the entire previous year there were just 81. This is a real challenge for the country of three million inhabitants.] (my emphasis)

But the article doesn't elaborate on how 3,000 refugees, which is 0.1% of three million, is a "real challenge" for Lithuania. It does later ridiculously describe them as a "type of partisan warfare," i.e., guerilla warfare, by Belarus against Lithuania. I think there are some diplomats as well as reporters who need to sober up on this matter.

If Lithuania is having some kind of crisis handling three thousand refugees, that sounds to me like they weren't taking minimum preparations for such a contingency.

This is a small example of how the EU's general head-in-the-sand approach to refugees makes it unnecessarily vulnerable to neighboring countries giving refugees access to cross the border. As the Standard article explains, Belarus is allowing/encouraging this as part of its current differences with the EU, "Der Präsident von Belarus öffnet seine Grenzen für Flüchtlinge und Migranten aus dem Nahen Osten, um sich an Litauen für die westlichen Sanktionen zu rächen." ("The President of Belarus is opening his borders to refugees and migrants from the Middle East to take revenge on Lithuania for Western sanctions.")

The EU was understandably concerned by the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, which really was stolen by Alexander Lukashenko, who continues as President. Belarus borders on Russia in the east, Ukraine in the south, and in the north and east by EU members Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Belarus is one of six countries that are part of the Eastern Partnership framework with the EU, along with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

EU policy is to encourage stability and democracy in those countries and to promote friendly and cooperative relations. Being in the Eastern Partnership does not mean that a country is in a formal process of accession to the EU. But that is one possibility the EU wants to leave open, particularly for Georgia and Ukraine at the moment. However, the possibility of those countries formally becoming part of the EU and NATO is viewed by the Russian government as a potential threat.

During his Presidency when began in 1994 and continues today, Lukashenko has tended to seek a balance between Russia and the EU. There are strong affiliations to Russia and similarities in the political systems of Putin and Lukashenko. But he's tried to avoid being a situation where Russia could effective dominate or even incorporate it politically.

But his government's reckless decision a couple of months ago to commit what really was air piracy by forcing down a commercial flight legally transiting Belarussian airspace in order to arrest a dissident Belarussian journalist and his girlfriend triggered targeting sanctions by the EU. It also resulted in the very practical move by EU countries to restrict flights between Belarus and EU locations, as well as sanctions against some Belarussian officials.

So the release of refugees to cross the Lithuanian border is a retaliation against the EU by Lukashenko's government. Which should have been obvious to everyone involved on the EU side and should have prompted a well thought-out response.

But EU policy on immigration and refugees is so broken and the political leadership so irresponsible in how they frame the issue that they are now sputtering in horror at a few thousand refugees coming from Belarus. One doesn't have to be any kind of foreign policy expert to see that such weak and feckless behavior by the EU in such situations makes the whole Union subject to blackmail from unhappy neighboring regimes.

Again, the 3,000 refugees Lithuania is treating as an alarming crisis is 0.1% of their population. The total population of the current 27 EU member states is 448 million. Three thousand is 0.001% of that population. Is the EU really so weak and pathetic that it can't handle an obviously easily foreseeable consequence to the very necessary response of the EU to Lukashenko's plane hijacking?

That really is sad!

But life, diplomacy, and nationalist posturing goes on, of course. Lukashenko just made a new diplomatic move: Yuras Karmanau, Belarus leader ready to invite Russian troops ‘if necessary’ AP 07/30/2021:

In remarks carried by the state-run Belta news agency, Lukashenko stressed that he had dealt with last year’s anti-government protests without involving other countries’ armed forces, but added that he would not hesitate to bring in Russian troops if necessary.

Belarus is able to quickly deploy 500,000 of its own personnel, but “if it is not enough, all Russian armed forces will be brought in,” Lukashenko said, according to Belta. “If it is necessary, we won’t hesitate.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Moscow hasn’t received any official requests from Belarus to deploy troops, and the move “is possible only after an official request from the leadership of one country to the leadership of other.”

This appears to be mainly saber-rattling against the West. It does not constitute any real immediate threat to the West. But Balurus' neighbors Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are all NATO members. And Lukashenko's threat is a not-so-subtle reminder that incorporating the Baltic states in particular into NATO was done in the expectation that there was no serious expectation liklihood that Russia would be likely to threaten them in the immediate future, a bit of post-Cold War triumphalism that should have been occasion for more careful calculations.

The refugees Belarus is using in the current situation should not be the occasion for hysteria by Belarus or any else. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian "Basti" Kurz is using the occasion to show once again that he's the Savior of Austrians Against the Scary Scary Foreigners:

13 Cobra-Einsatzkräfte hat Innenminister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) am Donnerstag in Wien gen Litauen verabschiedet. Mehr als 1100 Kilometer nordöstlich der Heimat sollen die Mitglieder der Spezialeinheit mithelfen, die löchrige EU-Außengrenze zu stopfen. ...

Der Einsatz der österreichischen Einsatzkräfte beginnt am 1. August und soll auf alle Fälle einige Wochen dauern. Wann er endet, hängt von der Entwicklung vor Ort ab.

[Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) bid farewell in Vienna on Thursday to 13 Cobra [elite police force] soldiers headed to Lithuania. More than 1100 kilometers northeast of home, the members of the special unit are to help plug the porous EU external border. ...

The deployment of the Austrian forces begins on August 1 and should last a few weeks in any case. When it ends depends on local developments.]

This is a cheap political stunt. Kurz constantly refers to refugees in terms of danger, threat, menace, danger - and rarely if ever in different terms. This is a truly dumb move, done for no other reason to bolster his own desired xenophobic image.