There's a real crisis on the border of Poland to Belarus. It results most directly from Belarus - often called "Europe's last dictatorship" - committing air piracy in May on a flight crossing its territory in order to kidnap a prominent critic of the government and his girlfriend.
The EU understandably imposed sanctions on Belarus for it. Because if the Belarusian government is going to commit air piracy on civilian flights, that not only a breach of international law and agreements, it's a very practical problem for commercial flights in that part of Europe. Although the incident touched on internal Belarusian politics, the sanctions were in response to a very practical problem for international air traffic, not an intervention in internal Belarusian affairs. (The EU had earlier imposed sanctions on Belarus that were directly related to issues involving the 2020 Belarussian presidential election and treatment of the opposition. See also: EU Sanctions Map-Belarus 06/24/2021)
So, knowing that the EU is still pitifully weak in its crisis planning for unexpected refugee flows, Belarus starting flying asylum seekers from the greater Middle East into Belarus and sending them across the border. On cue, Poland freaked out and violated international and EU law with brutal retaliation against the refugees themselves.
Turkey cooperated with sending refugees to Belarus, because it sees an interest in reminding EU countries that it can generate a new 2015-style refugee crisis any time it wants. The EU has had almost six years since the original signing of the EU-Turkey agreement in 2016, under which Turkey is currently housing about 3.5 million refugees, to work on the then-anticipated systematic admission of large numbers of those immigrants into EU countries. Instead, the EU has been merrily kicking the can down the road ever since.
Turkey is playing its own cynical game. But Tayyip Erdoğan's government knows it can do so because of the sad state of EU immigration/refugee policy. So, for instance, if Austria or Germany wants to put limits on formal political and financial ties of the Turkish government to Turkish groups in their countries, or want to limit Turkish funding for dubious religious projects that could have national security implications (i.e., sponsoring radical Islamic activists), well, Erdoğan knows their governments are terrified of his refugee supply heading north.
Belarus, including under the current dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko, has aimed in its foreign policy at balancing its relations between Russia and the EU. The EU has issues with Belarus over its political and human rights policies. But it also has an interest in not driving Belarus politically into a heavier dependence on Russia. That's the larger background against which the current deadly drama is playing out. And both Russia and Belarus are very aware that Europe's absurd panic reaction in the face of the "threat" of a few thousand extra refugees arriving can lead European politicians to make decisions that are short-sighted in terms of practical foreign policy and also make the EU politicians' propaganda use of their superior "European values" look like the most cynical hypocrisy.
Here are some reports on the current situation. It's worth watching in reports on this for how often they contain references to refugees as a national security threat, or how refugees are described in the terms of menace, including natural catastrophe metaphors like "flood" and military ones like "hybrid warfare."
Belarus has launched a hybrid war on Poland and Europe, using migrants as weapons. In response, Poland has created not just a humanitarian crisis but moral, legal, and administrative chaos. https://t.co/ipuA1w4tyv
Although her own use of the term "hybrid war" there strikes me as misguided, Applebaum in the article also does rightly criticize Poland for that same kind of rhetoric: "Even on its own terms, [Poland's seriously illegal] “pushback” [of asylum-seekers] has failed disastrously. Lukashenko has not been deterred. On the contrary, Poland’s hybrid-war rhetoric seems to have encouraged him to find new ways to troll Polish border guards and pile in more Belarusian troops, as if this really were a war and they really were needed." (my emphasis)
This is a dramatic case in which the EU's lack of a sensible immigration/refugee policy constitutes a real weakness for the EU, and gives adversarial powers the ability to promote disunity and a toxic form of political polarization within EU countries. In this case, it also gives Poland a way to blackmail the EU in its current legal conflicts with the EU itself with criminal cruelty against desperate refugees.
Jacopo Barigazzi reports on the EU's reaction to Belarus releasing refugees from Iraq, Syria, and Africa into Lithuania as part of the Belarus-EU confrontation over various issue, particularly Belarus' extraordinary action in forcing down a commercial airliner on the false pretence of a terrorist threat in order to kidnap a dissident Belarusian journalist and his girlfriend. This led to the EU suspending flights to and from Belarus. (EU pledges to step up efforts to help Lithuania stem migration from BelarusPolitico EU 08/02/2021)
Belarus and its dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko know that the EU has a broken system for handling refugees, much less the huge and unusual influx of the 2015-16 crisis. Far too many EU politicians use xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric for cheap political points and try to push the problem onto somebody else. The Politico article reflects the framing of refugees as a security threat to the EU.
Part of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the EU is to use "migrant" as an inclusive term for refugees, people who are hired by EU employers, people fleeing bad economic or environmental conditions who may technically not qualify for asylum or permanent residence, and refugees from ongoing wars or severe political oppression. "Migrant" implies that they just voluntarily wandered into the EU. Austrian politicians like to say they are coming to take advantage of Austria's social safety-net "hammock."
My emphasis in bold):
This is not primarily a migration crisis, this is an act of aggression that is aimed to provoke,” the EU’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, said during a press conference in Vilnius. “What we are facing is an aggressive act from the Lukashenko regime.
Yet for Lithuania, it is increasingly a migration crisis.
The allegation is that Belarus is “weaponizing” migrants by facilitating their arrival and that several flights are landing in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, carrying migrants from Istanbul and Baghdad.
The bloc [EU] believes this is in retaliation against EU sanctions targeting Lukashenko and his allies.
The situation “is deteriorating, more people are arriving,” Johansson said, adding that “a lot more needs to be done” to protect Lithuania’s external border.
... the EU agencies active on migration have deployed staff to the country: for example, almost 120 Frontex officers, 86 of them border patrol guards, have already deployed.
Vilnius also wants to install some kind of physical barrier at the border with Belarus, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said at the same press conference. EU money is not usually provided for the building of walls but she promised to go ahead anyway. [BUILD-THE-WALL! BUILD-THE-WALL! Lithuania needs to look for better role models, I think.]
"Lukashenko keeps waging hybrid operations against the EU and it is our duty to react and take decisions fast,” said a senior EU diplomat.
My point here is that the EU has effectively created an unnecessary vulnerability for itself by the combination of its unnecessarily stringent general immigration policy and its broken refugee process that depends on the "Dublin System" of processing new entries to the Schengen area that was never designed for significant refugee flows. And since the EU not only reacts with rhetorical overkill to even small refugee flows like those currently from Belarus into Lithuania, but quickly resorts to nationalistic resentments against other, its less friendly neighbors like Belarus at the moment know they can create a political trauma for the EU at relatively little cost to themselves.
The EU has legitimate concerns about its neighbor Belarus, including the stolen presidential election of 2020 there. Because Lukashenko's increasingly authoritarian turn increases the likelihood of problems just like the air piracy incident in May.
And threats of sending additional refugees into the EU are an obvious response to EU actions. Lukashenko is even flying them in from other countries, which doesn't cost a lot. Because, obviously, the EU could end the "hybrid operations" of, uh, Belarus releasing a couple of thousand refugees to cross the border by simply dropping its air travel restrictions on Belarus. Which would not only be a big mistake on the substance. But it would be a remarkable demonstration of weakness by the EU.
And, of course, Turkey is holding 3.5 million or so refugees under its agreement with the EU negotiated by Angela Merkel in 2016. We can take it for granted that Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan is following the Belarus refugee situation very closely. Because, if Lukashenko can bully the EU into submission with w few thousand refugees, imagine what Erdoğan can do.
To close: Yes, countries have to pay attention to border enforcement, which normally is and should be a civilian police function. But for the EU leaders to talk about refugees in terms of military threat and imminent danger - Austrian Chancellor Basti Kurz, for one, constantly uses such language - is ridiculous threat inflation. They need to knock it off. And, much more importantly, they need to set up a realistic EU refugee policy that goes beyond the Dublin System.
The recent stolen election in Belarus, and independent nations once part of the Soviet Union that never established a democratic government after 1989, has set off a new round of domestic protest and international concern.
The EU is considering what the right response should be. Belarus is not an EU member, but it one of the countries of significant political and economic concern for the EU: The country borders on Russia in the east, Ukraine in the south, and on 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.
The EU-Belarus Coordination Group meets twice a year, at the level of senior officials, to steer cooperation between the EU and Belarus and oversee further development of relations.
The annual EU-Belarus Human Rights Dialogue provides a forum for discussion on the human rights situation in Belarus and joint steps to be taken in this area. The EU remains committed to cooperate with Belarus to enhance democratic governance.
The EU regularly raises issues related to freedom of assembly and association, freedom of speech and media as well as fundamental labour rights with the Belarusian authorities at all levels. The EU raises its strong opposition to capital punishment, which is still in use in Belarus, and calls for a moratorium on the death penalty.
The EU has been supporting the implementation of the National Human Rights Action Plan in the period 2016-2019 and has encouraged dialogue between the Government and civil society. In the period 2014-2018, the EU has provided €30 million to support social entrepreneurship, civil society capacity building and participation in decision-making processes, enhancing professional reporting and strengthening the capacities of independent media professionals.
With seven projects, Twinning, which brings together public sector expertise from EU Member States and beneficiary countries, has since 2016 become a new track of a preferred modality for EU-Belarus cooperation
So there is already a formal framework between the EU and Belarus for mutual interest in governance issues. But it's important to keeping in mind that the EU's own theory of democratization, incorporated into formal EU treaties and laws, is based on economic integration and development producing encouraging political liberalization and the strengthening of democracy and the rule of law. To put it inelegantly, well-heeled lobbies are generally more concerned about preserving continuity and mutual benefits in economic arrangements than in the good-governance issues.
Joerg Forbrig of the German Marshall Fund discusses the menu of possible immediate action alternative for the EU in Belarusians have rejected Lukashenko. So should the EU.Politico EU 08/13-14/2020. He argues that "the EU should clearly state that Lukashenko is not the legitimate president of Belarus. He has long been and is, even more obviously now, a plain usurper. With this election, he has lost whatever legitimacy he may have had left."
He provides more details on the immediate actions he advocates:
First, EU foreign ministries should instantly call in Belarusian ambassadors to express their strongest rejection of the actions of the Belarusian government.
At the same time, they should acknowledge, where applicable, the courage of Belarusian diplomats to conduct honest vote counts. At many embassies and consulates, which also serve as polling stations for expatriates, results were published that demonstrated Lukashenko's defeat.
Second, the EU and its member countries should, through their envoys in Minsk, show a maximum presence and offer support. They should visibly roam the protests, engage with people and observe police behavior.
They should attend trials against peaceful protesters, give interviews to independent media, invite engaged citizens and victims of police brutality to their embassies and regularly meet with key human-rights defenders.
Third, the EU and its member countries must ready humanitarian aid to all those who have suffered from the repression in the last days and weeks. Thousands have been arrested arbitrarily, mistreated in custody and severely injured. Many are now being tried and fined in court.
Belarusians have launched a massive campaign to help, with €1.5 million raised to date. More will be needed for legal assistance and fines, medical help to victims and financial support to their families, psychological and physical rehabilitation and relocation to safe countries. Europe can, and must, urgently help to mitigate this human cost borne by Belarusians.
Fourth, the EU should propose an international mission to mediate in the crisis. The standoff between a regime determined to cling to its illegitimate power and a society equally determined to assert its rights may not be overcome without an impulse from abroad.
An honest attempt by EU policymakers — perhaps a trio of senior parliamentarians from different member countries or a political dialogue between the regime and society under the auspices of the OSCE — would be worth undertaking. It would send a signal of constructive engagement to Belarusian society, while to the Lukashenko regime, it may be preferable to Russian interference in the situation. [my emphasis]
European foreign ministers are expected to move towards sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko’s regime, after reports of systematic abuse and torture of Belarusians swept up in the brutal crackdown on protests.
The EU’s 27 ministers are holding an emergency video meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss the elections in Belarus, after Austria became the latest country to call for sanctions against those responsible for violence and arbitrary locking up of protesters.
Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Denmark have called for “restrictive measures against officials” responsible for the election result, which gave Lukashenko 80% of the vote following a contest the EU said was “neither free nor fair”. [my emphasis]
Timothy Snyder is stressing the importance of the EU responding to the air piracy just committed by Belarus on a Ryanair flight legally passing through its airspace traveling from one EU country to another, Greece to Lithuania. (Terror vs. the Truth in BelarusSubstack 05/24/2021)
Both [Roman] Protasevich and a female companion, Sofia Sapega, were reportedly arrested during the enforced stopover — an incident denounced by leaders around the world as a “hijacking.” Ryanair called the forced landing an “act of aviation piracy.”
The measures to seize Protasevich were extraordinary, and they now expose Belarus to the fury of the EU and U.S. and to potential sanctions, but for Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime leader of Belarus, the threat posed by Protasevich and other bloggers and journalists is extraordinary as well.
Protasevich, 26, is among a group of inventive journalists who have detailed the violence used by forces loyal to Lukashenko to help him hang on to power. They’ve also covered the mass protests sparked by the August presidential elections — widely considered to have been stolen by Lukashenko — and also actively coordinated them. [my emphasis]
Snyder in his column gives this background:
Protasevich is important because he told the truth about his own country. Last August the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, sought to stage yet another fake electoral victory. His usual tactic of disqualifying and arresting opponents was not working. The wife of one of his opponents ran against him, and almost certainly won. After Lukashenko announced a victory anyway, Belarusians protested peacefully in very large numbers for months. Protasevich at the time worked for NEXTA, a Telegram channel that provided Belarusians with the facts about what was happening in their own country. [my emphasis]
This kind of action - having a jet fighter force down a civil aircraft legally passing through national airspace on what was apparently a false pretence that there was some kind of terrorist danger to the plane, then arresting two people on the flight - is definitely not any kind of normal procedure. Austrian political scientist Martin Malek in the discussion referenced just below called it "a very unusual hijacking of an aircraft."
And while people in many parts of the world may assume that news from Belarus is about some inscrutable event in a mysterious eastern European country. But air piracy is something that in itself has worldwide implications. And in this case, it was a national government committing the piracy. Molly Olmstead explains in How Much Will the Belarus Flight Incident Mess Up Air Travel?Slate 05/25/2021 asks Ian Petchenik of Flightradar24:
How big of a deal is this?
It’s a huge deal. There’s very specific conventions in international law that relate to the operation of international air traffic. And this is really one of those things where it’s very clear that you’re not supposed to do this. This could have ended so badly, beyond the current situation, which ended terribly. What happens if that pilot misinterprets what the Ryanair aircraft is doing? What happens if they can’t communicate clearly? There’s so many things that could have gone wrong from 39,000 feet, when they met each other.
Then, on top of all of that, what happens now, in a real situation, where there is possibly a bomb on a plane? Does the pilot believe the air traffic controller who’s relaying that message? If there are all of a sudden fighter jets escorting the aircraft, is there a second thought there? One of the rules is if a fighter jet comes up on your wing, you should listen to that person, because if you are under threat, they have your safety in mind. So now do I second guess all that? Question if it’s false information about an emergency?
Belarus is a former Soviet republic which briefly had democratic elections after its independence. The office of President was established in 1994 and Alexander Lukashenko was elected to the office, which he has filled ever since. Professor Viktoras Bachmetjevas of Lithuania argues that the 1994 election was a legitimate democratic one. But Lukashenko has become increasing authoritarian. And after the election of August 2020 which the public widely regarded as fraudulent, protests against his regime became widespread.
Bachmetjevas points out that much of the industry in Belarus is still state-owned, a legacy of the Soviet era. Belarus has a formal unity agreement with Russia. But Belarus under Lukashenko the last 27 years has tried to strike a balance between the EU and Russia. Fiona Hill said in the conference that the Belarus-Russia union treaty was mainly symbolic, but has become more substantive a relationship over time.
A big consideration is how the EU sees the relationship between Belarus and Russia and how they assess the risks involved. Hill argues that if Lukashenko had been successfully voted out in 2020, Putin would have been concerned that would endanger his own plans for a Russia renewal in combination with Belarus. So Lukashenko is now strongly aligned with Moscow. She thinks he is trying to suppress the opposition to make him seem more valuable to Putin.
She recounts how in 2018, Lukashenko was in a phase of tilting more toward Europe, trying to get more European and American investors, in order to get some distance from Russia with a neoliberal/technocratic approach, hoping the move would help him in the 2020 election.
She also makes the important point that Belarus is the only land link to Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). Although even then, direct land access would also have to be granted by Poland or Lithuania.
In that same discussion, Sławomir Sierakowski, editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Polish journal Krytyka Polityczna, talks about NEXTA, the Telegram channel for which Protasevich wrote. He describes how young organizers were able to coordinate the massive post-election protests in Belarus. He thinks Lukaschnko's motives in the Ryanair hijacking include (1) revenge; (2) context - to squeeze Protasevich for information about other organizers (3) and, state terror, to scare other dissidents.
Sierakowski stressed that Protasevich is in real danger now.
The IHS discussion highlights a number of issues in EU response to this incident. On the one hand, the issue really is important, both because of the human rights dangers to the two people kidnapped and the broader implications for air safety and international cooperation against real terrorist threats. But, as in most international sanctions against nations, the pressure on the leaders has to be considered along with the effects on the population and what implications that might have on Belarus' political system and international alignments. Despite the talk for the last couple of decades about "smart sanctions," any sanctions that are tough enough to push a country's leaders to change policy are almost certain to have significant detrimental effects on the people of the country.
It's also important in this and other situations to remember that the legitimate interest of political actors in one country in human rights and democracy in another country function on a continuum from democratic internationalism and international civil society interactions, on one end, to governments meddling in other countries' internal politics. The fact that a country or a party or a national leader may view any external criticism or any cooperation by people in other countries with dissidents from their own country as subversion or a hostile intelligence operation doesn't mean that they aren't legitimate civil society interactions between people of different countries. It also doesn't mean that that such accusations are always wrong. Because governments do meddle in each others internal politics and intelligence agencies do sometimes carry out hostile operations in other countries, even in peacetime. (Ask anyone from Latin America about how that works.)
So whenever we try to understand situations like the one in Belarus including this recent act of air piracy, we have to be able to walk and talk at the same time. And to remember some cynical truisms like, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you."
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?
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.
Here’s another piece on the role Belarus, the Russian ally to Ukraine’s north, plays in the Ukraine-Russia war. And the role it’s not playing, that is, as an active military combatant: Brendan Cole, Could Belarus Join Vladimir Putin's Troops in Ukraine?Newsweek 08/13/2022.
To those of us not privy to highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago or elsewhere, it may seem surprising that Belarus isn’t using its armed forces in Ukraine. What seems to have been Russia’s hope to seize Kiev quickly didn’t work out that way. And the war looks to be in more-or-less a stalemate, though it seems there are rumors of new “offensives” every few days.
Belarus participated in the Russian troop maneuvers that preceded the war. One might suppose this would be a good time for Russia to call on its close ally for military help. Belarus’ President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has held that office since 1994, was until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year commonly referred to as “Europe’s last dictator.” Now that we have a New Cold War (more-or-less), of course now Putin is the New Hitler – America’s Big Bad of the moment is always the New Hitler – I guess we can’t call Lukashenko the last dictator any more.
But this is still surprising. First: "Anyone openly speaking out against Putin's war will be treated like an opponent of the regime, posing danger in a country that retains the death penalty and has seen regular reports of protesters dying in custody."
Then comes this:
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said that Belarusian troops had been testing their readiness in the Brest and Gomel border regions.
However, senior officers from Belarus's special forces have warned in an open letter to Lukashenko that sending Belarusians to fight alongside Russians would be "pure suicide." Also, deploying troops who are not considered to be combat ready to a war Belarusians do not want risks further unrest for Lukashenko.
Konrad Muzyka, a defense analyst who focuses on Belarus and Russia, expected Lukashenko to recognize the independence of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics at the start of the war and then send in his troops to Ukraine.
"But neither of these things happened," he told Newsweek, "I was very surprised by this. As the war has dragged on, my assessment has changed. Now I don't expect him to commit troops, if it hasn't happened already."
Muzyka, who is the director of Rochan Consulting, said that he has tracked Belarusian troops near the border where they have been undertaking "serious" exercises, albeit on a small scale.
This could point to not preparing for war but a plan to "tie up Ukrainian forces near the border with Belarus to make sure that these guys are not deployed to Donbas or Kherson or anywhere else."
Much of the first part of the article is about the severity of the rule of the Once-Last Dictator of Europe, and quotes Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a major opposition leader in exile, at some length. They also quote a pseudonymous oppositionist in Poland:
"It's not only about Lukashenko now in Belarus, because they have a lot of Russian officers now in Belarus who are making orders."
"It's like a double occupation in Belarus now. We have Lukashenko who is actually beating people and there is a lot of repression," she said, "and we have Russians who are even much worse than Lukashenko."
So, on the one hand, the Once-Last Dictator is ruling with an iron hand. But the country is half-controlled by Russians, or something. But serving officers in the Once-Last Dictator’s armed forces are publishing an open letter practically threatening to murder him (“pure suicide”) if he sends Russian troops to Ukraine? This is pretty clearly a hodgepodge of information that is some combination of dodgy and poorly explained.
Lukashenko in the last couple of years has clearly tilted more heavily toward Russia. But for a long time he tried to strike some kind of balance between Russia and the EU, though careful to stay on friendly terms with Russia. And to the extent Putin’s government really is operating on some sort of Greater Russia annexationist ambitions – as the New Cold Warriors gleefully assume – Belarus would be a part of that vision. And certainly part of the Eurasian Union that Putin has been working to build.
So, there are different reasons why Lukashenko may not be sending his regular armed forces into Ukraine now. Or, yet.
The Russians might not want him to, because it might look Russia look weak to rely on Belarusian troops.
The Russians may not want him to at this time. There are surely contingency plans of some sort in both Moscow and Minsk.
Lukashenko sees the costs of direct intervention as notably greater than the cost of disappointing Putin. The one active war Russia currently has with a western neighbor country isn’t looking all that promising for Russia at the moment and no quick end is in sight. So a Russian threat to invade Belarus or overthrow Lukashenko may not look so immediately threatening as it might have six or seven months ago.
There's another curious item in the Newsweek report:
[Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya] said Belarusian partisans sabotaged railway lines against important supply routes at the start of the invasion, when Russian missiles were fired from Belarus' territory toward Ukraine.
Information was also passed on to Ukrainian forces about bases from where the Russian missiles were fired and this resistance would be repeated if Belarusian troops were forced to fight.
Ukraine hinted at Belarusian partisan involvement behind explosions on Wednesday at the Ziabrovka airfield, in the Gomel region, where Russian aircraft are reportedly stationed. [my emphasis]
Assuming that there are anti-Russian partisans militarily active in Belarus, the obvious question is who is running them and/or supporting them? Presumably it’s not Russia. The anti-intervention Belarusian officers reported as publishing an open death threat to Lukashenko? Possible, but still seems unlikely.
Bottom line: this is a story that’s both very interesting and very odd.
Christian Jakob in the German paper Jungle World comments on the problem and weakness the EU displayed in the refugee stunt that Belarus pulled this year, Humanitär aus dem Weg räumen 18.11.2021.
It looks like the immediate crisis Belarus manufactured at the Polish border is being resolved now and some lives saved. (Thomas Mayer, Migranten in Belarus: Realpolitik an der GrenzeStandard 18.11.2021)
It took Germany and France working out an arrangement with Russia and Belarus. The EU as such wasn't capable of resolving it.
The opening paragraph defines the problem, although it's muddled a bit by what seems to be a superficial understanding of the position of immigration expert Gerald Knaus:
Der österreichische Politikberater Gerald Knaus, bekannt als »Erfinder des EU-Türkei-Deals«, gilt vielen als Stimme der Vernunft in den heißlaufenden Asyldebatten. Dass der »Deal« für viele Flüchtlinge vor allem hieß, dass sie seit 2016 Syrien kaum mehr verlassen können, die EU durch die türkische Regierung unter Präsident Recep Tayyip Erdoğan erpressbar bleibt und sich auf den Ägäis-Inseln seither eine ausgewachsene humanitäre Katastrophe abspielt, hat am Urteil über Knaus nichts geändert.
[The Austrian political consultant Gerald Knaus, known as the "inventor of the EU-Turkey deal", is regarded by many as the voice of reason in the hot-running asylum debates. The fact that the "deal" for many refugees meant above all that they have hardly been able to leave Syria since 2016, that the EU remains subject to blackmail by the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and that a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe has been taking place on the Aegean islands since then has not changed Knaus' verdict. (my translation)]
This is a superficial take on Knaus' position. He conceived of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal as something that would only work properly if the EU then implemented a process by which significant numbers of refugees in Turkey have their asylum petitions considered by the EU and the successful ones accepted for residence in the EU.
The EU has not done that in the nearly six years since the EU-Turkey deal was concluded. And Knaus has been one of the most prominent critics of the EU's inaction and violations of law and human rights in its treatment of refugees in the years since. In his book Welche Grenzen brauchen wir? (2020), he discusses the concept behind the EU-Turkey deal and its antecedents. Christian Jakob is right that that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Greek Aegean islands with refugees. But that is not directly an effect of the EU-Turkey deal as such. It's another aspect of the EU's let-ignore-the-problem-and-hope-it-goes-away attitude toward the refugee crisis.
Knaus links on Twitter to Jakob's article and comments in a generous but critical way on it. Knaus calls attention to how widespread the mishandling of immigration issues is in the richer countries:
But the policies to which his criticism boils down are being implemented by any democracy, any country in the world. Currently, all 27 EU countries support Poland's policies. Under Biden, not Trump, just in September, 100,000 were deported from the United States without asylum. In the rest of the world, hardly any state grants asylum.
Like Jacob, a majority in Germany wants a humane policy without deaths. But he doesn't show a way to get there. This is more urgent today than ever.
Jakob, he points out, has advocated for an "open borders" solution.
But as far as it goes, this part of Jakob's critique is on point:
Denn für den westlichen Teil der EU ist die Flüchtlingssituation – wieder einmal – überaus verfahren: Kaum etwas fürchtet man mehr, als dass die Aufnahme der etwa vierstelligen Zahl festsitzender Geflüchteter als »Pull-Faktor«, also als Anreiz für weitere Flüchtlinge, diesen Weg zu nutzen, politisch ausgeschlachtet wird. Genau diese Botschaft aber senden Rechtspopulisten ständig, seit die vom belarussischen Diktator Alexander Lukaschenko produzierten Bilder an der östlichen Außengrenze täglich in den Medien zu sehen sind.
Dass die EU sich damit so erpressbar gemacht hat, ist ihre eigene Schuld. Bis heute hat sie keinen Plan, mit Ankommenden so umzugehen, dass deren Rechte und die eigenen moralischen Maßstäbe gewahrt werden. Stattdessen hat auch die EU jahrelang die »irreguläre Migration« als Bedrohung dämonisiert und jetzt auch noch die eskalierende Formulierung vom »hybriden Krieg« übernommen, die von der rechten autoritären Regierung Polens benutzt wird.
[For the western part of the EU, the refugee situation is – once again – extremely complicated: Hardly anything is feared more than that the admission of the approximately four-digit number of refugees as a "pull factor", i.e. as an incentive for more refugees to use this path, will be politically exploited. But this is exactly the message that right-wing populists are constantly sending since the images produced by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on the eastern external border can be seen daily in the media.
The fact that the EU has thus made itself so blackmailable is its own fault. To this day, it has no plan to deal with arrivals in such a way that their rights and their own moral standards are upheld. Instead, the EU has for years demonized "irregular migration" as a threat and has now adopted the escalating phrase of "hybrid war" used by Poland's right-wing authoritarian government.]
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the most senior Catholic official in Austria, calls both Belaurus' conduct in using refugees this way as well as Poland's response in their brutal treatment of the refugees, "cynical and shameless."
(Kardinal Schönborn über Belarus: "zynisch und schamlos"Heute 19.11.2021)
It would be nice to think that there would be some kind of meaningful negative repercussions for Poland from the EU for their criminal treatment of the refugees on their border. But I doubt it.
The new Cold Warriors tell us confidently that Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin is a dictator and Russia is a chronically expansionist power driven by a religious and nationalistic mission to conquer as many of its neighbors as it can. And that can only be changed by bringing about the complete collapse of Putin's government and of Russian as a major power.
Moritz Gathmann of the "highbrow"-conservative German magazine Cicero represents a version of this view in the DW English panel above. And there are other variations on that beloved theme, of course, some more heavy-handed than others. It's not considered polite in respectable commentary to note that this general outlook fits nicely with the marketing goals of weapons manufacturers.
One advantage of this viewpoint is that since it reflects stereotypical, Dr. Strangelove-type Cold War thinking, it doesn't require much tedious thought to apply it to any and all situations involving policy toward Russia. The downside is that it's practically useless in evaluating the motives and goals of specific Russian actions in the real world. That is a not-insignificant drawback in what is currently a proxy confrontation between the world's tow biggest nuclear powers. (Russian propaganda calls the Ukraine conflict a "proxy war" against Russia, so it's a touchy characterization. But the fact that one side uses/misuses it from propaganda doesn't mean it's not so. But such proxy wars in Europe were something that the US and the USSR managed to avoid after the initial Cold War civil conflicts in Greece and Turkey.)
Even “understanding the enemy” as a concept itself is misunderstood. It is a mistake to think the aim is to predict how an enemy will behave in a given situation. Not even the enemy can predict this about themselves. Instead, it is about knowing their habits and weaknesses to understand better how they are vulnerable.
Anatol Lieven, also of the Quincy Institute, uses the military approach Russia has taken to evaluate its goals and how they may have shifted already in Why Russia has failed to achieve its goals in UkraineResponsible Statecraft 07/12/2022:
A key reason [for Russia's surprisingly slow advances] is that the Russian government pursued two mutually contradictory goals in Ukraine. On the one hand, Moscow sought to retain influence over Ukraine as a whole. On the other, it sought the “return” to Russia of territories that it considers historically Russian.
That contradiction has been resolved. From now on, Russia’s goal is land in the south and east. As to the rest of Ukraine, Russia will still try to keep it from formally joining NATO, but Russian elites with whom I have spoken now accept — as Putin himself presumably accepts — that it will be an enemy of Russia and a de facto ally of the West for the foreseeable future. [my emphasis]
Lieven doesn't expand on who his "Russian elite" sources are, though they are presumably in some way part of the broader Russian foreign policy establishment. It's important to remember that governments at war put out various versions of their shifting positions through multiple channels. Apart from propaganda reasons, this also serves as a way of floating talking points and testing other country's responses.
What the Russian government has been saying since the 1990s, and even more explicitly since the 2007 Munich Security Conference, is that they view the enlargement of NATO as a security threat. The New Cold Warriors are especially eager to quash the idea that there was any kind of validity or even seriousness to those stated views. It probably doesn't help their argument when Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky declares confidently that the outcome of the current war is going to be that Russia "will remain paralyzed for generations." That sounds like a considerably more expansive set of war aims than restoring Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea and the Donbas region.
Here we come across the difference between the liberal-internationalist view of international relations, including its humanitarian-intervention variant, and the "realist" IR view. In terms of formal international law, any nation can join any military or political alliance it wants and their neighbors have no legitimate complaints to make about it. So taken dogmatically, the liberal-international IR view can wind up arguing that it's impossible that Russia could be motivated by any kind of legitimate security concern regard Ukraine and NATO. Even when the Ukrainian President recklessly implies that the goal of the current war is to paralyze Russia "for generations".
The realist IR view can come off as cynical. And for some of its practitioners like Henry Kissinger, it often produces cynical and brutal policies that could have and should have been avoided. But realists take full account of the painfully obvious reality that nations pay attention to their security interests and what military capabilities of other countries - obviously including their immediate neighbors - might threat their own security. John Mearsheimer even argues that big parties are particularly subject to paranoid exaggerations of security threats. But to pretend that a country has no real or legitimate interest in what their neighbors' military capabilities and intentions are is just silly.
In fact, the Russian government and Putin himself have given a range of perspectives on Russian policy toward Ukraine over the years, including talking about Belarus and Ukraine as an integral part of Russian civilization. Some of Putin's more recent statements have suggested that Russian policy is to incorporate Ukraine formally into the nation of Russia.
The specific justifications for the current war have included the claim that Ukraine is run by Nazis or fascists and is therefore inherently hostile to Russia. There are also been claims that Russian-speaking populations have been subject to serious persecution by the Ukrainian government. Neither claim holds up to serious scrutiny and are pretty obviously designed to rally Russian popular support for the military action. Factually, the first claims is largely frivolous. There is some substance to the charges that Russian-speakers in the Donbas have been discrimination against - the Minsk Agreements of 2014-15 implicitly recognized that - but it doesn't remotely justify a unilateral Russian military aggression.
What does the current state of the war tell us about Russian goals?
Lieven writes about the present situation:
This invasion plan was bedeviled by the same contradiction visible since 2014 and in Putin’s essay. Russia deployed fewer than 200,000 troops — far too few in any case to invade a country the size of Ukraine. Even more important, in pursuit of its two contradictory political goals, the Russian military divided its forces roughly equally between those intended to capture Kyiv, and those intended to occupy territory in the east and south. The first were intended to subjugate or replace the Ukrainian government and turn the whole of Ukraine into a Russian client state; the second, to seize as much Russian-speaking territory as possible in the east and south.
Largely as a result of seeking both these goals simultaneously and dividing its forces in this way, the Russian government failed completely at its first objective, and very largely at its second. On March 29, the Russian government announced that it was withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv; and, instead of a triumphant march across eastern Ukraine and the Black Sea coast, the Russian army has been reduced to a grinding war of attrition to capture small cities in the Donbas.
Moreover, this initial failure fatally undermined the war’s political goals. Russia’s ability to appeal to the population of eastern and southern Ukraine depended critically on a quick and painless victory. Instead, Russia has only been able to capture cities in the region by reducing them to rubble in months of fighting, and the invasion has been bitterly denounced by most local elected officials. [my emphasis]
This seems consistent with the commentary of Christian Ferdinand Wehrschütz, head of the Ukraine bureau of Austria’s public news agency ORF since 2015 and has established a good record in doing so. Did a did a post in German on Facebook 02/06/2022 that I quoted in this 07/16/2022 post making the point that the current level of troop numbers Russia was reported to be massing on Ukraine’s border, which is that they would be enough to take control of additional territory in the Donbass region, they didn’t sound remotely sufficient for a planned complete occupation of Ukraine.
My translation of a relevant portion:
First, as is so often the case, the question is not asked [in the article on which he is commenting] how great the expected Ukrainian (military) resistance would be! Because the Russian figures alone say nothing about the possibilities that are associated with it after an attack.
An example: for a peace mission for Donetsk and Lugansk [portions of the Donbass region currently under Russian control] – not a combat mission!!! - military planners have calculated that this would require an international force of 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. This involves about 4 percent of Ukraine's territory. I have not met any ([Ukrainian] General Staff) officer who considers 100,000 /120,000 soldiers to be sufficient to conquer the left-bank [western portion of] Ukraine including Kiev.
In addition, this would not be a play war, but a real war with an occupying power, not to mention the Western sanctions. If the Ukrainians in Kharkiv and other cities do not capitulate without resistance, this means a war in the urban area with high losses, including for the Russians, and catastrophic images of destruction, death and misery. Apart from the Western reactions, is this so easy to "sell" to the population in Russia? [my emphasis]
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides regular updates on the military situation in Ukraine. The July 15 report notes of the recently renewed Russian offensive after a short pause:
A 10-day-long operational pause is insufficient to fully regenerate Russian forces for large-scale offensive operations. The Russian military seems to feel continuous pressure to resume and continue offensive operations before it can reasonably have rebuilt sufficient combat power to achieve decisive effects at a reasonable cost to itself, however. The resuming Russian offensive may therefore fluctuate or even stall for some time.
It's always possible that Russian officials underestimated their own military capabilities against Ukraine and excessively discounted the US-NATO response. Arrogance and overconfidence are chronic foreign policy problems for great powers, as the US has experienced on more than one occasion since the Second World War.
Role of Belarus
It's also worth noting that while Belarus actively participated in the threatening military maneuvers prior to the February 24 invasion, its direct military role in the conflict so far has been limited. Alla Leukavets in The Role of Belarus in the Ukrainian Crisis notes Focus Ukraine (Kennan Institute blog) 04/04/2022:
While everyone’s attention is focused on the dramatic events unfolding in Ukraine, the West should not forget that the Kremlin is currently waging two wars, one in Ukraine and another in Belarus, though by different means. Whereas Ukraine is presently under military attack from Russia, Belarus is being “softly” occupied without the Kremlin having to fire a single shot. Even if Putin does not succeed in overtaking Ukraine, it can be argued that Belarus under President Aliaksandr Lukashenka is quickly turning into an extension of Russian territory. It is crucial that Lukashenko’s regime not be equated with the rest of Belarus and that the pro-democratic Belarusian movement and its antiwar efforts be supported by the West.
She also mentions, "Belarus is the shortest way to Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast through the so-called Suwalki corridor, a sixty-five mile long strip of land on the Polish-Lithuanian border that provides Russia with access to the Baltic Sea but is not under Russian control." This is important to keep in mind that Lithuanian policy is closely connected with the Belarus-Russian relationship. ("Some Russian analysts suggest that Lithuania’s move to block Russia’s access to its own territory could, to some extent, be considered a ‘casus belli’ – a cause for the declaration of war." - Suwalki GapGlobalSecurity.org n/d, accessed 07/17/2022)
The stolidly-establishment Council on Foreign Relations recently published an analysis by Thomas Graham, author of Getting Russia Right (2023). He writes:
Three historical impulses provide insight into Putin’s ultimate goals: the impulse to expand control to enhance security, to return to … Russia state lands that were lost for various reasons, and to reunite the three branches of the greater Russian nation. Putin has used elements of all three narratives in his rhetoric since before he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (1)
What he refers to as the “three branches” means Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Belarus is certainly in a close alliance with Belarus. As to how much of a “vassal state” it is, opinions may vary. It’s worth remembering that the “vassal state” is a feudal concept:
In feudal times, a “vassal” (from the medieval Latin vassallus, a servant) was not a low-born serf, but one who held land on condition of allegiance to a prince or king. ...
But “vassal” very quickly came to mean anyone in a subordinate position of power to another. Shakespeare calls himself a “vassal” to his lover as well as a “slave” in Sonnet 58, and Pope Pius V testily declared Elizabeth I a “vassal of iniquity”.
In the old language of international affairs, a “vassal state” was often obliged to pay money to its superior, and usually expected to provide military assistance on demand. (2)
To borrow from John Mearsheimer, who describes his version of “offense realism” in foreign policy as based on the observation that great powers are particularly sensitive to another great power acquiring power and influence in what they consider their neighboring area. As an example, just this year, the Trump 2.0 regime has threatened military against Mexico and Panama, and implicitly against Canada. It’s also demanded that Brazil flush its rule of law down the drain when it comes to prosecuting the attempted insurrection that their authoritarian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro incited. And, as Mearsheimer often points out, the US has still never forgiven Cuba for the 1962 Missile Crisis. (Though Obama did ease sanctions on Cuba when he was President.)
So, yes, Russia does pay attention to what goes on with Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and – oh, yeah – China and Japan. Feigning surprise about that is popular among hawkish types. But it’s also more than a little silly.
The non-Soviet members of the Warsaw Pact were often referred to as vassal states of the Soviet Union. And the USSR did dominate their internal politics in a major way. But if by “vassal” state we mean that vassals pay financial tribute to the dominant country, it’s dubious if they qualified. A major reason for the collapse of the USSR was that it was a great financial burden for them to subsidize the other Warsaw Pact nations.
Graham goes to one of those broad historical generalizations about Russia in a formulation suggesting the kind of historical essentialism that so often clouds Western thinking:
Even after [Putin] annexed four Ukrainian oblasts—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia - in the fall of 2022, he continued to insist his goal was not territorial conquest but security. That is disingenuous, for territory and security have been inextricably intertwined in Russian strategic thinking for centuries. The question is how much territory Putin believes Russia has to dominate in order to feel secure. [my emphasis]
It's not as though strategic considerations from earlier centuries are fully irrelevant today. The Monroe Doctrine which still governs US strategic thinking about Latin America was first adopted by the John Quincy Adams Administration of 1825-1829. And while that framework is still used by the US, American policy has varied considerably over those two centuries. It’s been nearly 180 years since the US forcibly annexed one-third of Mexico’s territory in what Americans call the Mexican War of 1846-1848. And the US has meddled in Mexican politics way more than it should have since then – including military intervention during the Mexican Revolution of 1810-1821. But that doesn’t mean that the US is still looking to annex Mexican territory. But since Trump 2.0 is threatening to seize territory from Panama, Canada, and even Denmark (Greenland), the longer history is relevant to understanding the current strategic picture.
The same is true of Russia and China. The fact that Ukraine was once part of the Russian Empire and then of the Soviet Union does not tell us that Russia’s current goal is the physical conquest of all of Ukraine. In fact, Graham describes Russia’s likely goal in the war at the moment in much the way Mearsheimer does, i.e., keeping immediate control of at least four eastern Ukraine provinces and the Crimean Peninsula (which is still legally part of Ukraine) and installing a friendly government in Kiev. Graham:
For the moment, the limits of Putin’s ambitions are difficult to discern. To be sure, he has been clear from the beginning that he wishes to subjugate Ukraine. How much of the country he wants to formally annex is uncertain, but he would strip any part of Ukraine that lies beyond Russia’s direct control of genuine independence and sovereignty, reducing it to a vassal state, such as Belarus is today. [my emphasis]
Russia is not occupying or annexing any part of Belarus. We can speculate about whether Russia’s supposed Grand Vision Of History means that is what obtuse Russian-nationalist publicists want. But that’s not what Russia is doing right now.
Beyond Ukraine, Putin has denied any aggressive intent or designs on any state’s territory. But his repeated threats of dire consequences for European states that step up their support to Ukraine, as well as his escalating campaign of disinformation and sabotage across Europe, have understandably raised concern. Prevalent among Western commentators is the view that if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will undoubtedly turn his sights on other states of the former Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—all of which are NATO members. At the extreme, some believe he even intends to restore the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence in eastern Europe through covert operations or direct military assault on former Soviet Bloc countries, such as Poland. [my emphasis]
Phrases like “some believe” and “raised concern” generally require closer scrutiny. Among Trumpistas in America, “some believe” in Alex Jones’ claim that there are lizard people from outer space walking around disguised as Earthlings. But while it may be a fact that “some believe” that, it doesn’t make the claim any kind of accurate description of reality.
That wording is also disingenuous when it comes to the Baltic states. Both the NATO and EU treaties include them, and both treaties include a mutual-defense clause. Foreign policy realists like George Kennan warned in the 1990s that the further east NATO expanded, the more likely it would be that Russia would regard that as a security threat. We can quibble as to whether that is rational or nice for Russia to react that way. But if we picture Mexico, Canada, and Cuba joining a military alliance with China that includes a mutual-defense clause, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture the freakout even the most stiffly establishment foreign-policy analysts and policymakers would have. (I.e., they would lose their minds.)
As Kaarel Pürimäe reminded us last year:
Arguing against [Bill] Clinton’s decision [to expand NATO] was the last significant thing Kennan did in his life. In October 1996, at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, Kennan reacted to a talk by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, calling the plan of NATO enlargement a ‘strategic blunder of epic proportions’. In an article in the New York Times the following year, he famously argued that it ‘would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. Kennan expected that NATO expansion would give rise to undemocratic and anti-Western forces in Russia and would lead to another Cold War, but was certain that official Washington would persist. He was right: it proved easy for Clinton to ignore not only Kennan, whose credibility was undermined by his long-standing opposition to NATO, but, more remarkably, the majority of the U.S. foreign policy and scholarly establishments.
Kennan’s warnings are cited as prophetic by scholars who view NATO expansion as a fateful miscalculation. Intellectual sources of the criticism vary, but most tend to point out the anachronism of preserving a Cold-War institution made to contain an adversary that no longer existed. It is argued that by expanding NATO, which in Russia was viewed as a threat to its status, if not security, the United States betrayed the West’s most ardent supporters and gave ammunition to anti-Western, nationalist, and neo-imperialist voices in that country. [my emphasis] (3)
In the case of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – which were part of the Soviet Union - every European policymaker knows what it would mean in a very practical way if Russia actually started seizing territory there (Estonia is currently cited as the most likely candidate) and what that would do to the ever-treasured Credibility of both alliances if their Western allies didn’t respond militarily in an active way.
By the way, it’s also a safe presumption that any Russian civilian or military strategist who doesn’t spend 12 hours a day every day toking joints also realizes that the Western powers see things that way.
Graham’s concluding recommendations for four policy measures and general strategic considerations are pretty much safe and bland generalizations. Like: “In the best-case scenario, Russian rulers could even reinterpret Russian history to develop a new narrative for Russia’s greatness and global mission that appears less threatening to its immediate neighbors.”
Anti-refugee rhetoric is becoming more obvious in EU politics now. I suppose we could say the issue is always on a slow boil, at least for the past decade or so. But now the winter is coming, there are four million or more Ukrainian refugees in EU countries, with many more likely to come in the following months. Russian attacks on civilian facilities seem to have the generation of many more refugees as its goal.
The current Austrian weekly Profil headlines, "A wave of refugees like 2015? What is different now":
Dark, mysterious refugees, it seems, who would prefer that we not see their faces as they stand in the shadows. The cover does identify them as (l.to r.) Ukrainian, Indian, and Russian. A Russian named Vlad.
It's worth noting that it's stock rhetoric for xenophobes to use natural metaphors to describe refugees fleeing war and repression and torture. Like "wave" and "flood." Profil is generally more of a center-left publication.
The two great weaknesses of the EU are the flawed construction of the euro currency and their (on the whole) dysfunctional approach to refugee issues. The European Central Bank (ECB) was able to ease the euro crisis of 2015 with a muddling-through solution in which the European governments decided not no make a big stink about the fact that its bond-buying program wasn't exactly part of the official function of the ECB.
The 2015-16 influx of refugees, which is now universally remembered as a "crisis," involved less than half the number of refugees into the EU as the Russia-Ukraine War has already produced in 2022. The EU also came up with a muddling-through solution to the 2015-6 crisis by a treaty with Turkey, in which Turkey agreed to house 3-4 million refugees in exchange for EU payments to pay for their support. The treaty was the brainchild of immigration expert Gerald Knaus, who worked close with Angela Merkel's government in negotiating it.
Both crises coincided in time. And the financial crisis, particularly the hostile, nationalistic (even ethono-nationalist) rhetoric against the so-caled PIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) - which had very real and very ugly consequences in the brutal economic measures taken against Greece in particular - set the stage for nationalistic reactions to the refugee "crisis" of 2015-16. The political poison has yet to be cleaned out of that well.
Both solutions also have stayed provisional. The structural problems of the euro, such as the need for a common budget for the eurozone and collective debt instrucments for the eurozone - are still there. But so far, the muddling-through of the ECB has been good enough. Which could change very quickly in a new financial crisis.
The EU-Turkey treaty was renewed in 2021. The fact that it continued to function generally well makes it a success story, on the whole. So far. (Daniele Albanese, The Renewal of the EU-Turkey Migration Deal ISPI 05/27/2021) But it still remains a kind of interim agreement. And it means that Turkey can use the threat of sending hundreds of thousands, even millions, of refugees to the EU to pressure European countries. The number of Syrian and other refugees coming from Turkey in 2022 via the "Balkan route" has notably increased, thanks in part to the pro-Russian regime in Serbia generously providing tourist visas to such refugees. (Suzanne Lynch and Jacopo Barigazzi, EU fumes that Serbia is fanning new migrant routePolitico EU 10/14/2022)
However, Knaus himself pointed out on Sunday:
Today, Turkey is not safe for returnees from 🇬🇷.
🇪🇺🇬🇷 & anyone who cares about refugee rights have a massive interest to see this change.
1. because there are millions of refugees in 🇹🇷.
2. because otherwise 🇬🇷 pushbacks are almost certain to continue, with tacit 🇪🇺 support. https://t.co/iyYOYlLJj4
The international laws on refugees and asylum currently in effect are to a large extent the product of the experience of Europe after the Second World War, when massive displacements of populations took place. "Displacement" is almost a euphemism to describe what actually happened. There were also later examples of genuine refugee crises, not least of them in the aftermath of the partition of Britain's Indian colony into India and Pakistan. William Dalrymple describes it this way, "By 1948, as the great migration drew to a close, more than fifteen million people had been uprooted, and between one and two million were dead." (The Great Divide: The violent legacy of Indian PartitionNew Yorker 06/22/2015)
The EU's handling of refugee issues is also a danger to the rule of law in the EU itself. Poland and Hungary in particular have presented various problems in that regard in the last decade. But handling of refugees and asylum claims is definitely one of them. It's also clear that Vladimir Putin's government is very aware that EU political leaders have found xenophobic agitation a tough political challenge. And they clearly want to exacerbate those problems with the Ukrainian refugees.
Here it's worth recalling Belarus' cynical use of refugees against Poland and the EU in 2021. The immediate occasion was limited EU sanctions against Belarus because of an air piracy incident by Alexander Lukashenko's government. But in retrospect, it seems obvious that this was also a test of how the EU might react in the face of a far more massive inflow of Ukrainian refugees. It may be possible to make a non-xenophobic argument that the EU handled this well. But I can't imagine what that would be.
Poland's refusal to allow asylum-seekers to enter the country and their pushbacks of refugees were criminal behavior. And Poland's fellow EU members backed them in that behavior. Even after accepting two million or so Ukrainian refugees this year, Poland is reportedly continuing its illegal conduct toward refugees from Belarus. (The wrong refugee: How Poland's Belarus border differs from the Ukrainian welcomeThe Times and The Sunday Times 08/23/2022: Maria Skóra, The paradox of Polish migration policySocial Europe 07/12/2022)
In Austria, the leader of the far-right "Freedom" Party (FPO), Herbert Kickl (formerly national Interior Minister), called this week for Austria to make an "immediate suspensions of the right to asylum" (sofortiges Aussetzen des Asylrechts). Standard commentator Martin Tschiderer comments drily that this would be "not consistent with international treaty obligations," aka, blatantly illegal. (Debatte um Flüchtlingsquartiere: Kein Platz für Kleingeld 17.10.2022)
This trend will get uglier. How ugly will depend on how energetically the left and center parties actively counter the hate-and-fear rhetoric. Conservative parties could and should do this, too. But some of them are very tempted to go along with xenophobic agitation. Like Profil with its "flood" metaphor on the cover.
All of a sudden - or at least so it probably seems to most news consumers in the US and Europe - there's hair-raising talk in the press about a confrontation between the US/NATO and Russia over Ukraine.
In the geopolitical jockeying among Russia, the US, and other powers in Europe, the rumors of war over Ukraine are happening simultaneously with the confrontation with Belarus and Poland, also along with Latvia and Lithuania, which haven't gotten as much attention as Poland in the international news.
There is a useful discussion on this between Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig, the latter of which is mainly taking a knee-jerk hawkish position (usually a very safe stance for people operating in the foreign policy Blob), while Ashford is notably more pragmatic: Is Russia Preparing to Invade Ukraine?Foreign Policy 11/19/2021.
Their discussion includes the key role that Russian energy business plays in this situation, which plays a key role in Russian relations with both Ukraine and Belarus, and which also gives both Russia and the EU (particularly Germany) an incentive to avoid political and especially military escalation in either place. But Putin's government also has practical reasons to see benefits in saber-rattling, as well.
Ashford notes:
... on the upside, [Belarusian President] Lukashenko is also his own worst enemy. In addition to the migration crisis [he staged on the borders to Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania], he started to suggest last week that he might cut off oil and gas shipments to Europe. This week, he announced an unplanned three-day “maintenance” stoppage on the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Poland.
But I don’t think he’s going to get very far with this ploy. Putin’s response to this suggestion last week was to tell reporters that any move against pipelines carrying Russian energy to Europe would “risk harming ties between Moscow and Minsk [Belarus].” The Russian state depends on energy revenues — and on being a reliable supplier. If Lukashenko tries to disrupt that, I think he’ll find his support from Moscow drying up faster than the Polish oil supply. [my emphasis]
A lot of the mainstream commentary on Russia that I see doesn't give enough weight to Russia's status as a petrostate, a situation which is simultaneously a big blessing and a big curse.
Anatol Lieven of the pro-realism/pro-restraint Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote about the Ukraine issue of the moment in Ukraine: The Most Dangerous Problem in the WorldThe Nation 11/15/2021:
Since the Ukrainian revolution and the Donbas rebellion of 2014, successive Ukrainian governments have vowed to recover the Donbas — by force if necessary. Despite a ceasefire in 2015 that suspended full-scale war, probing attacks and retaliations by both sides have led to repeated clashes, as in March and April of this year. Successive US administrations have expressed strong support for the Ukrainian side and for future NATO membership (so far blocked by Germany and France), though they have stopped short of promising to defend Ukraine militarily. ...
Only the most insane of US politicians and commentators actually want to go to war with Russia in Ukraine. But as the outbreak of World War I demonstrated, leaders who do not intend to go to war may stumble into a situation in which they are unable to stop or turnback.
Do I need to add that in the era of Donald Trump, Paul Gosar, and Kyle Rittenhouse, the phrase "most insane of US politicians" is not empty hyperbole? After all, one of those three was still President this time last year, actively plotting a coup to remain in office after losing the Presidential election.
The consequences of a direct US-Russian clash in Ukraine would be catastrophic. A full-scale conventional war would have the strong potential to escalate into nuclear war and the annihilation of most of humanity. Even a limited war would cause a ruinous global economic crisis, necessitate the dispatch of huge US armed forces to Europe, and destroy for the foreseeable future any chance of serious action against climate change. China might well seize the chance to conquer Taiwan, leaving the United States to face a war with the world’s other two greatest military powers simultaneously. Finally, given the huge superiority of Russia’s armed forces over Ukraine’s, the very limited number of US forces in Europe, and the deep unwillingness of European countries to confront Russia militarily, the strong likelihood is that Russia would win a limited war in Ukraine, seizing much more Ukrainian territory and imposing a shattering humiliation on the US and the West. [my emphasis]
If the latter seems like a terrifying scenario, that's not least because the existence of nuclear arsenals in the US and Russia has the potential to make any direct military confrontation between the two powers a potential humanity-ending event. See Cuban missile crisis. And the lesser-known but probably even closer call, the Able Archer incident.
But this is also the kind of calculation that foreign policy analysts should be making, looking as realistically as possible at the threats, options, stakes, capabilities, priorities, and alternatives in a situation.
Even states that may be otherwise closely allied and sharing similar political and economic systems can't be indifferent to each other illegally seizing territory, as Russia clearly did by occupying and even annexing Crimea in 2014, which is legally part of Ukraine. Spain and the UK generally get along very well and are both members of NATO, but Spain still wants Gibraltar back. Argentina and Great Britain have generally good relations, but Argentina still claims sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands to the Brits). In both cases, the weight of international law is against Britain. But this doesn't mean that either Argentina or Spain are likely to go to war with the UK. Although Argentina made a disastrously unsuccessful attempt at it in 1982.
But Ukraine is not a member of NATO. And the US has no mutual-defense treaty with Ukraine. And it seems unlikely as a practical matter that Russia would accept NATO membership for Ukraine, Georgia, or Belarus. No less an authority than George Kennan famously warned in 1997, when the first post-Cold War NATO enlargement (outside the former East Germany) was being actively considered, "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era." (A Fateful ErrorNew York Times 02/05/1997)
But in 1997, Cold War triumphalism was in full bloom.
Speaking of nuclear weapons, it worth remembering that when the Soviet Union broke up, they had such weapons stationed in Ukraine. As Gerhard Wettig writes (Gorbatschow-Reformpolitik und Warschauer Pakt 1985-1991; 2021):
Die Unabhängigkeit des ukrainischen Staates schien sowohl durch das generelle Bekenntnis zur Unverletzlichkeit der Grenzen als auch speziell durch eine Garantie seines Territoriums gewährleistet, die Russland als Gegenleistung für die Übergabe der dort stationierten sowjetischen Kernwaffen zusagte.
The independence of the Ukrainian state seemed to be guaranteed both by the general commitment to the inviolability of the borders and specifically by a guarantee of its territory, which Russia promised in return for the transfer of the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed there. [my translation, my emphasis]
This is what made Russia's annexation of Crimea and the support of separatist mini-republics inside it a particular blow the nuclear nonproliferation. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the US/NATO armed intervention in Libya in 2011 sent a similar signal, since both had agreed to give up their programs to develop "weapons of mass destruction."
So why would the leaders of North Korea, India, Pakistan, or Israel agree to give up their nuclear weapons if they see that existing nuclear powers refuse to honor their pledges to respect their territorial integrity?
