Why the world should be paying attention to Putin’s plans for Belarus

[Rogue Valley]

From the remarks in post 18, I see that manifest.

 

[Evilroddy]

Don't you read at all? I clearly stated in Post #11 that nothing can be done about a Belarus Anschluss directly.

However, NATO can preposition supply assets and beef up naval, air, and land assets in Poland and the three Baltic States.

It would also behoove all NATO countries to cease cooperation with Moscow regarding NordStream 2. It makes no sense to enrich/empower a nation preparing to wage war on you.

Rogue Valley:

Yup, I read your Anschluss post which is why I qualified my question as follows, "So what measures do you propose either pre or post reabsorption of Belarus by Putin's macro-Amoeba to curb the pseudopods of a resurgent Russia from extending further?".

So what do you propose, as prepositioning troops and arms will only work if Putin is daft enough to attack NATO directly and NATO is brave enough to stand united and to not appease. If however Mr. Putin's Russia shifts its military direction to new non-NATO states around Russia's periphery and instead attacks them, then Russia is neither contained or constrained. Furthermore Putin's Russia could work clandestinely and deniably to destabilise the Baltic States and to foster a more cooperative far right-wing authoritarian government in Poland. Given your stated desire to toss Turkey out of NATO for its right-wing, authoritarian government, would you and would NATO be willing to tolerate a similar authoritarian government in Poland and allow it to remain in NATO?

Putin's options are many and cost-effective while the West's and/or NATO's resources and resolve are limited and the options are very expensive. Putin is operating along internal lines but containment will require the West and NATO to expend disproportionate resources in order to guard a very long land frontier and an even longer coastline in any attempt to even partially contain Russia. So what's your post Belarus strategy and will it work? It's easy for old men like you and me to talk of starting wars but it will be damned hard to win a hot war against Putin's Russia, unless you don't worry about thermonuclear war's impact on the biosphere and all living organisms in it. It will be harder still to win the peace afterwards assuming that enough people survive the conflict to make the attempt viable.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[Rogue Valley]

Putin's options are many and cost-effective while the West's and/or NATO's resources and resolve are limited and the options are very expensive.

That's a load of hooey. The US has pre-positioned supplies and Marine MEU's all over the world. This actually saves money.

Putin was in Kaliningrad yesterday so the RAF surveilled his movements and security arrangements.....

 

[Rogue Valley]

Putin's Retirement Plan Depends on Belarus

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin at a meeting in Moscow in December.

1/8/19
President Vladimir Putin has more than five years left in office, but he must already contemplate his next move. The transition among Russia’s leaders is seldom smooth, so Putin is looking at ways to ensure his continued influence by forging a closer union with neighboring Belarus. A change in the Russian oil taxation regime has provided the opportunity for exploring this scenario. The Russian constitution allows a president to serve only two consecutive terms. In 2008, rather than change the law and be ridiculed as the equal of Central Asian dictators, Putin ceded the presidency to a close ally, Dmitry Medvedev. But he hated playing second fiddle and disliked Medvedev’s openness to more cooperation with the U.S.; besides, trusting anyone with such a handover could be a bigger risk today, in a country increasingly run by the security apparatus. Simply going into retirement in 2024 is an even scarier option: Putin could never be certain of any personal security guarantees his successor might provide. Russia itself has been lukewarm about a closer union with economically weak Belarus, run by Lukashenko’s thoroughly Soviet team. In particular, extending the Russian monetary system to Belarus, as Lukashenko has at times suggested, could weaken the ruble and undermine Russia’s macroeconomic stability.

Now, however, unification is politically attractive to Putin, and not just because he could take over a much strengthened Supreme State Council in 2024, retaining a large measure of his power for life without changing the constitution. This is a good moment for Putin to put pressure on Lukashenko without looking overly aggressive. Russia doesn’t have to threaten to cut off gas supplies, raise energy prices or insist on a greater military presence. Belarus stands to lose billions of dollars from a perfectly reasonable tax reform going on in Russia today. All oil, whether exported or sold domestically, will eventually be taxed the same. That means Belarus, which today buys Russian oil duty-free and exports much of it, charging its own duties, will have to pay more. This year, according to the Belarusian Finance Ministry, the country stands to lose $300 million from the Russian “tax maneuver” given an oil price of about $70 per barrel. Though Lukashenko has publicly warned Russia against trying to swallow up Belarus and Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said a Russia-Belarus merger isn’t the subject of discussion, the denials only concern a full takeover, rather than a deeper integration scenario with Belarus and Russia both formally ceding part of their sovereignty to the union state. Lukashenko’s alternative to bending to Putin’s pressure is seeking help in the West, but that, in a way, is a less attractive option for him: He suspects the U.S. and the European Union want to undermine his near-absolute power. As many times before in his career, the Belarusian leader is caught between a rock and a hard place. Whether he can wiggle out this time depends largely on whether Putin finds other ways to resolve his own political problems, both with succession and with the balance of gains and sacrifices in foreign policy. If he doesn’t, the pressure may become unbearable for the Belarusian dictator.

Although swallowing up neighboring Belarus would be a plus to the expansionist and militaristic Putin regime, Belarus would be an economic drag on Russia as is Crimea. I've been to Belarus. It is 90% rural, backward and poor. Incorporating Belarus would certainly dilute and weaken the already weakened Russian ruble.