How Russia’s response to Belarus could lead to a globalised conflict

Russian radicalisation in the aftermath of Belarusian destabilisation could paradoxically trigger an intensification of the China-US stand-off
The coronavirus has joined at the hip three theatres of conflict: the Russo-Western; the Middle Eastern and the Sino-American

Irvin Studin

Published: 7:51pm, 17 Aug 2020

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Tolstoy famously wrote that all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And yet today, three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, most post-Soviet states are happy in different ways but unhappy in exactly the same way.

While the stand-off in Belarus steals the headlines, the bloodiest recent clash in the vast post-Soviet theatre – smack in the middle of the global coronavirus pandemic – saw a return last month to kinetic border exchanges between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Just as China and India collided along their borders, the resumption of border hostilities between Yerevan and Baku saw nearly two dozen people killed.

Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko faces opposition and new EU sanctions

Today’s Belarusian conflict is not an electoral conflict. It is, far more fundamentally, a conflict about succession – the core source of constitutional and political angst in 12 of the 15 former Soviet states.

Our politicians are either in jail, have been in jail, or are otherwise going to jail

Taxi driver, Ukraine

From Russia to Turkmenistan, and from Ukraine to Uzbekistan, no stable algorithm has been divined for peaceful transitions of power at the centre of post-Soviet government. With the exception of the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – the decision-making in Minsk, as in Moscow, Bishkek, Astana, Dushanbe, Baku and Yerevan, is driven by a survivalist instinct and improvisation appropriate to any young state – and all post-Soviet states are very young – whose leadership understands that leaving power typically yields one of three fates: death, prison or exile. (A taxi driver in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa said it best when he told me, in famous Odessa humour, in 2005: “Our politicians are either in jail, have been in jail, or are otherwise going to jail.”)

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Belarus protests against President Lukashenko continue with demands for new elections

The situation in Belarus is of a kind. It cannot end well regardless of the fate of its long-standing president, Alexander Lukashenko. But unlike Nagorno-Karabakh, the fate of Belarus may have extremely serious, radicalising and enduring consequences for global conflict in the post-pandemic world.

If Lukashenko survives in power, it will only be thanks to very heavy-handed crackdowns and repression, with the spectre of growing intervention – now formally requested – from neighbouring Russia. The succession question will then have been put off by a year or two at best, after which the current stand-offs will be repeated.

China shows support for Belarusian leader amid criticism from EU

But if Lukashenko is forcibly ousted from power, then neighbouring Russia will almost certainly be strategically radicalised. Such Russian radicalisation will not be as extreme as we witnessed in 2014 following the ouster of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine – which saw Russia annex Crimea and bona fide war break out in the Donbass – but Moscow will doubtless feel compelled to counteract the delegitimation of the authorities in Minsk with moves that relegitimate the standing of Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. After all, even if Putin has secured a constitutional amendment allowing him to govern until the year 2036, he has no obvious dauphin and mounting internal and regional tensions in the world’s largest and most complex country will force him to reckon daily with the existential question of succession.

Belarus (population 10 million) is clearly not as important to the Russian psyche and Russian strategy as Ukraine (population over 40 million). Nor is it as important to European and Western strategy and imagination. And yet the future viability of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, of which Belarus is a founding member, turns on the fate of the protests in Minsk. Moreover, even if Nato membership for Belarus is not a realistic scenario regardless of the fate of Lukashenko, the stand-off between Moscow and Western capitals over Ukraine remains unresolved, while Russia’s strategic cooperation with, and trust in, China has intensified significantly in inverse proportion with the diminishing trust between China and leading Western countries in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Photo: EPA

Russian radicalisation in the aftermath of Belarusian destabilisation could therefore paradoxically trigger an intensification of the stand-off between Beijing and pre-election Washington, and by extension between Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and several Asean capitals – not to mention New Delhi, still smarting from this summer’s clashes.

Collapse of the regime in Minsk would also undermine the difficult peace process in Ukraine. While Belarus has remained an essential dictatorship over three decades, its role in helping to mediate and maintain relationships with all warring sides in the complex wars in southeastern Ukraine since 2014 has been nothing short of heroic. But for Belarusian mediation and, to be sure, the efforts of Paris and Berlin, the Ukrainian crisis could have easily spilled over into proper Russo-Western warfare.

Russian radicalisation over Belarus would in turn re-radicalise Europe and the West. Weakening confidence between Washington and the Old Continent, and diminished physical contact during the pandemic period, mean that the restraints of deterrence, reserve and prudence may be less pronounced in the event of Russo-Western escalation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo: EPA

More significantly, perhaps, the global pandemic period saw the world’s three main geopolitical conflict theatres – once fairly discrete – finally joined at the hip: the Russo-Western theatre (triggered since 2014); the Middle Eastern (triggered since 2003 and joined up with the Russo-Western theatre after Moscow’s Syrian intervention in 2015); and, finally, the Sino-American theatre, arguably triggered in 2016-17 with the advent of President Donald Trump taking power in the United States.

In principle, the future of Belarus could be bright. A next-generation leadership – assuming a succession algorithm is found – could build on a talented and highly educated population – one with already open psychological ties to Russia, Ukraine, neighbouring Lithuania and indeed all of Europe – to make this small unitary state the fourth member of an embryonic Singapore-Israel-United Arab Emirates axis. (Israel and the UAE have just concluded a historical mutual diplomatic and economic opening through American mediation. It is only quality of leadership that militates against a similar Belarusian opening to the world.)

Belarus leader, clinging to power, says Putin offers help with ‘security’

Nevertheless, in the short term, things are likely to get far worse before they stand a chance at improvement. Belarusian collapse would be bad enough, whatever its manifestation. Russian collapse would be globally catastrophic, as would Russian military activation, with all the said consequences – including possible irreparable destabilisation of Europe – redounding to very real prospects of deliberate or accidental war even between or among the major powers in all three of the aforementioned geopolitical theatres.

Belarusian opposition supporters rally in the centre of Minsk. Photo: AP

Can anything be done to avert the more dire scenarios? Answer: maybe. Just as Belarus, France and Germany intervened to heroically mediate in Ukraine (if not them, then who?), the Belarus impasse requires immediate diplomatic intervention by two or three leading countries – Asian, Western or post-Soviet. The intervention must advance two central goals – first, the establishment of a clear, peaceful succession process for power in Belarus; and second, the creation of stable “interstitial” mechanisms and institutions that allow the political, economic and geopolitical blocs represented by the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union to avoid collisions at a minimum, and to coexist in peace and prosperity as an ideal. Connecting both of these blocs with Western and Asian blocs – again, interstitially – will be one of the great tasks of 21st century diplomacy.

Irvin Studin is Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of Global Brief magazine, and President of the Institute for 21st Century Questions

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