Conclusions

Europe – and the West more broadly – faces a key dilemma with regard to its Belarus policy: attempts to use diplomatic and economic isolation to pressure Minsk into political liberalisation and distancing itself from Russia’s war in Ukraine are making the Lukashenka regime ever more dependent on Moscow, threatening it with becoming a mere puppet regime or satellite state of Russia (scenario 2). The alternative to this normative or principled policy strategy would be a more pragmatic approach of seeking engagement with Minsk through the restoration of full diplomatic ties and sanctions relief in order to increase Belarus’ sovereignty and strategic autonomy vis-à-vis Moscow. The key policy question thus becomes when, if at all, the benefits of seeking pragmatic engagement start to outweigh the costs.

The starting point of any policy debate on Belarus should be for policymakers to understand that Western policies in recent years have made Minsk increasingly dependent on Moscow. This is not to say that this policy necessarily needs to change, but without a recognition of this basic fact there is no substantial debate to be had, as such a debate would have to revolve around comparing the costs and benefits of current policies with those of alternative approaches. The fundamental question in choosing between a normative or pragmatic strategy essentially revolves around the issue of whether the EU wants to tie Belarus’ geopolitical future to its domestic political system (the normative approach) or would prefer instead to decouple these two developments to a significant extent (the pragmatic approach).

Whether the current normative strategy is correct hinges primarily on three assessments. The first one is the likelihood that Belarus will democratise. While there is a consensus that democratisation in the case of Belarus is not very likely, advocates of a normative approach nonetheless consider the odds of this happening to be significantly higher than advocates of a more pragmatic approach. Moreover, the above scenarios have shown that the likelihood of democratisation, and especially the EU’s leverage to push for political liberalisation, increases as the stability of the Lukashenka regime (or an authoritarian successor) weakens and Russian influence in Belarus diminishes. The second assessment is about the likelihood that the Kremlin will accept genuine political liberalisation and a potential turn to the West by Belarus, either because it stops seeing these developments as threats to its strategic interests or because Russia will be so weak that it will not be in a position to do much about them. The third assessment is how one weighs the value of potential Belarusian democratisation against the value of maximising the sovereignty and strategic autonomy of Belarus. This is in part a function of the likelihood one attaches to the potential democratisation of Belarus, but it is also informed by how one sees the appropriate roles of (democratic) values and (strategic) interests in European foreign policy.

Pragmatic engagement provides the clearest alternative to the current normative approach. By providing Belarus with a geopolitical alternative to Russia independently of the question of political liberalisation, pragmatic engagement is the most direct way to strengthen Belarusian sovereignty and strategic autonomy. As the policy analysis in the preceding chapter has shown, the normative strategy tends to be somewhat of an “all or nothing” approach: either Belarus democratises and becomes pro-Western, or the EU loses its influence over Belarus at the expense of Russia. Pragmatic engagement, on the other hand, sets the bar lower by not expecting to turn Belarus into a pro-Western liberal democracy. Moreover, pragmatic engagement operates under the assumption that Russia’s ability and willingness to wield hard power is likely to remain sufficient so as not to allow Belarus to fully drift out of its sphere of influence.

As such, pragmatic engagement instead aims to facilitate Belarusian efforts to construct an effective multi-vector foreign policy – including a diversification of its external economic relations – that increases Minsk’s autonomy vis-à-vis Moscow without driving a real wedge between them. Doing that would not only make Belarus less vulnerable to Moscow’s attempts to increase Russian influence (like in scenarios 2 and 3), but it also decreases Belarus’ vulnerability to external crises coming from Russia (like in scenario 6). The extent to which Minsk can succeed in developing a multi-vector foreign policy against Moscow’s wishes cannot be predicted beforehand; the only way to find out is by trying.

Just like the current policy, however, pragmatic engagement involves costs as well as potential benefits. The main cost of a pragmatic approach is that it weakens incentives for Belarus to democratise. A second cost is the reputational cost that Europe would incur if it were to seek rapprochement with an authoritarian Belarus despite the lack of democratic progress and despite the facilitating role that Minsk has played (and, to a lesser extent, still plays) in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This cost will be particularly significant as long as the war continues and as long as Lukashenka remains in power, as his role in repressing the protests of 2020 and facilitating Russia’s 2022 invasion has made him particularly toxic for the West. And the third cost of pragmatic engagement is that sanctions relief creates potential loopholes in the Western sanctions regime against Russia, because the Belarusian and Russian economies are closely integrated.

Although there is no clear methodology by which one can arrive at an objective answer to the question of when the benefits of pragmatic engagement outweigh the costs, two factors are particularly important to consider. The first of these is that the costs of pragmatic engagement are likely to diminish over time, especially once the war in Ukraine ends and Lukashenka leaves the political scene. The problem is, of course, that the longer Europe waits before engaging with Belarus, the more difficult it will likely become to reverse Russia’s tightening grip on Belarus.

Secondly, the costs of pragmatic engagement can be mitigated in various ways. One of them is by designing sanctions relief in such a way that it maximally benefits Belarus but provides minimal benefits for Russia’s war effort and military regeneration. Sanctions relief could focus, for instance, on Belarusian industries (such as the aviation, potash fertiliser, and timber industries) that do not rely heavily on Russian inputs and which had significant potential to export to Europe prior to the imposition of sanctions. It could also omit dual-use goods that are important inputs for the Russian defence industry and which Russia could otherwise easily obtain through Belarus. The reputational costs of pragmatic engagement can be mitigated by using the leverage of offering the restoration of diplomatic and economic ties to demand humanitarian concessions, such as a release of political prisoners, better treatment of prisoners, a general lowering of levels of repression, and other measures that would improve the lives of Belarusian citizens. Contrary to political liberalisation, these are concessions that even an authoritarian regime in Minsk can make without creating an existential threat for itself, especially when it feels secure domestically. As such, pragmatic engagement does not have to be pure Realpolitik devoid of ethical concerns.

This also shows that the choice between the normative and pragmatic approaches is not simply binary; there are middle grounds to explore here. But these middle grounds should not be regarded as ways to avoid trade-offs – they instead contain their own trade-offs. Limited sanctions relief for Belarus along the lines outlined above may, for instance, limit the loopholes created in the West’s sanctions regime against Russia compared to full sanctions relief, but it would do so at the cost of also limiting Belarus’ economic alternatives to the Russian Federation. Similarly, compared to full sanctions relief, tying sanctions relief partially to pragmatic concessions and partially to political liberalisation would maintain certain incentives for political liberalisation, but at the cost of limiting an authoritarian Minsk’s options to build a multi-vector foreign policy.

Apart from restoring diplomatic relations and offering sanctions relief, support for soft Belarusisation policies that differentiate Belarusian national identity more sharply from Russia’s could become another instrument in the EU’s toolbox. The main challenge is twofold. To begin with, an effective Belarusisation policy can only be implemented by the government in Minsk – not by the opposition in exile – and the current normative approach to Belarus prevents European policymakers from exploring such options as long as Belarus remains an authoritarian state. Secondly, Lukashenka himself has been very hesitant to implement such policies, at least in part because many symbols of Belarusian identity have been associated with the political opposition to Lukashenka’s regime.

A final conclusion of this report is that the future of Belarus – and in particular of the Russian military presence in the country – will also be shaped by the broader context of international security in the region. For starters, a continuation of high tensions between NATO and Russia would make it more difficult for Belarus to pursue an independent foreign policy from Moscow. Moreover, the shape of Europe’s postwar security architecture – including the issue of Ukrainian NATO membership – is likely to impact Moscow’s decisions regarding the stationing of Russian troops on Belarusian territory. Specifically, if tensions between Russia and NATO continue to be high (or rise even further), and especially if Ukraine also becomes a member of NATO, it will be very hard – if not impossible – for Minsk to negotiate a lower Russian military presence in Belarus, which could be a concession that Western countries could demand in exchange for particular forms of rapprochement.

Recommendations

As the conclusions discussed above indicate, there is no easily identifiable right answer to the question whether Europe – and the West more broadly – should pursue a normative or pragmatic strategy vis-à-vis Belarus, or some kind of middle ground. Therefore, this report refrains from recommending one specific strategy. Nonetheless, this report provides the following recommendations: