In addition to being bought and paid for by the Kremlin, the embattled Belarusian dictator has to become dangerously beholden to China.
On Jan. 26 , Belarus will hold ceremonial presidential elections dubbed neither ‘free’ nor ‘fair’ by the U.S State Department – the result of which is a forgone conclusion seeing as all four candidates were effectively handpicked by the incumbent himself. As the biggest consumer of Russian crude oil that is simultaneously pursuing much closer ties with Iran, India’s heightened engagement with Belarus following the controversial 2020 re-anointment of dictator Alexander Lukashenko has largely flown under the radar and failed to garner attention in Western circles.
Needless to say, India’s reputation as “the world’s largest democracy” has taken a hit under the leadership of its pseudo-strongman Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Having overseen the persecution of religious minorities, incinerated press freedom and sanctioned extrajudicial assassination plots in Canada and America, the onus is now on Modi to restore goodwill with the West. Severing ties with an increasingly lawless Belarus would send a clear signal that New Delhi has not gone totally rogue while causing minimal blowback or disruption to the Indian economy.
In response to Putin’s “special military operation”, India all but copped out of its moral duty to be on the right side of history by conveniently playing the “non-alignment” card. That said, using a decades-old precept of “not taking sides” as a justification for its special and privileged strategic partnership with Russia does not hold water. For starters, India is a full-fledged member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – a multi-modal defensive framework to push back against China’s adventurism in the Indo-Pacific perimeter – alongside Australia, Japan as well as the United States.
Also worth noting is that India stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel following the October 7th 2023 massacre and prides itself on being among the few places where Jews have never faced discrimination, notwithstanding its 200 million strong indigenous Muslim population. As for the post-Soviet space, the Indian government has openly backed Armenia in its ongoing territorial dispute with Azerbaijan. Granted, this alliance is more materialistically-driven than ideologically-bound, with Yerevan emerging as a major client of India’s nascent “military industrial complex”.
The South Asian giant harbours no illusions about Lukashenko’s Belarus, or Putin’s Russia for that matter, being a “true friend” of the Global Majority. Both totalitarian states still see themselves as inherently European and would abandon their newfound, non-Western partners in a heartbeat were the Group of Seven (G7) economies to offer them an olive branch in the form of sanctions relief. It is in India’s long-term interest to formalise ties with the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus headed by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya as part of a broader “China Containment Strategy”.
President Donald Trump’s mercurial nature means the United States cannot be counted on to lead the charge against China’s hegemonic overreach, however inflammatory his past rhetoric towards the People’s Republic has been. The fact that Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration on January 20th and had a sudden about-face vis-à-vis banning TikTok despite repeatedly accusing China of lying, cheating and stealing its way to superpower status are classic examples of his mixed messaging with respect to America’s alleged “public enemy number one”.
Forcibly exiled Belarusian activists and human rights defenders – most of whom are domiciled in Lithuania – continue to indulge in the fantasy of toppling Lukashenko remotely. Tempting as it may be to wish him away amid obvious health concerns, the Kremlin will see to it that their ailing yet politically-useful supplicant in Minsk has the best doctors money can buy at his beck and call. Having sheltered the Central Tibetan Administration since 1959 against China’s will, India can and should support Tikhanovskaya wholeheartedly in her righteous quest for international legitimacy.
The ability to maintain a geostrategic equidistance between the Collective West and ‘Greater Eurasia’ has been regarded as something of a luxury that only certain ‘middle powers’ can afford to get away with against the backdrop of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. In the case of India, though, such manoeuvring exudes indecision and casual indifference as opposed to projecting diplomatic prowess. Establishing an ‘Indo-European Quad’ with the like-minded Baltics to counter China’s crescent of influence in Emerging Europe is a no-brainier as far as New Delhi is concerned.
Freedom-loving Lithuania is proof positive that size does not matter when it comes to getting under the Chinese Communist Party’s skin and exposing their globetrotting dealmakers for the glorified loan sharks that they are. Convincing poverty-stricken, developing nations to undertake grandiose infrastructure projects they can do without and subsequently drowning these very same banana republics in unserviceable debt has been China’s modus operandi throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America since launching its “One Belt One Road” pet project.
Lithuania not only sees through Chairman Xi’s nefarious designs but, unlike its Janus-faced Western European counterparts, supplements pro-democracy posturing with concrete actions. Prioritising a values-based foreign policy over access to the incredibly lucrative Chinese market renders Vilnius a natural partner of a similarly hawkish New Delhi. Whereas the likes of Hungary, Serbia and Georgia take a deeply naïve “rainbows and sunshine” view of enhanced cooperation with China, the Baltic states remain far more circumspect about lofty ideals such as “mutual trust”, “equality” and “respect for cultural diversity” that underpin the so-called Shanghai Spirit.
The Lithuanian government had long been at the forefront of withstanding China’s bogus charm offensive. That is, of course, up until they were made to fall In line by the Brussels Orthodoxy whose higher-ups paradoxically talk a big game about “decoupling” and “de-risking” from China yet make frequent ring-kissing pilgrimages to Beijing. On that note, Modi’s decision to not visit the Baltics during his state trip to Ukraine and Poland last August reflected poor judgment. After all, it is incumbent on a nuclear-armed heavyweight like India to demonstrate solidarity with a far less imposing Lithuania as the latter punches well above its weight and confronts a common bully.
Ex-Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis being a recent recipient of Taiwan’s highest honour speaks volumes about the extent to which his administration stuck its neck out to preserve democracy worldwide and resist China’s gunboat diplomacy. In doing so, Lithuania has set the tone for neighbouring Latvia and Estonia to see the light and follow suit. Post-war Ukraine will likely share the same ‘Sino-sceptic’ sentiment. Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba even acknowledged that Kyiv’s strained ties with Beijing are essentially at a point of no return given the CCP’s overt complicity in keeping Putin’s war machine well-oiled.
Meanwhile, the political prisoner ‘pardoning spree’ Lukashenko has embarked on in recent weeks is emblematic of his desperation to kiss and make up with the free world. As out of sync as he is with the demands of Belarusian society, the former collective farm boss knows full well that being equally compromised by Russia and China is, by no means, an enviable or sustainable situation to find oneself in. His overture towards India over the past few years fits into this bet-hedging agenda, not least since Belarus needs the seal of approval of all BRICS members to join the group, which can then be trumpeted as a seismic foreign policy achievement to his domestic audience.
Nonetheless, what should set off alarm bells in India is Lukashenko’s history of engineering a pan-continental refugee crisis to settle scores with and bring the European Union to its knees. The country’s national airline Belavia started operating direct flights from New Delhi to Minsk back in August 2023. It is no secret that India’s stellar GDP growth has not necessarily translated into higher living standards or poverty eradication. By facilitating human trafficking from the world’s most populous nation to mainland Europe, Lukashenko is seeking to capitalise on the migratory risk Indian citizens still pose while driving a wedge between India and its Eastern Flank EU allies.
The manner in which Bashar al-Assad was forced to cut and run with his tail between his legs after the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover of Syria in December serves as a stark reminder of the ‘glass palaces’ Kremlin-sponsored despots inhabit and how prone their regimes are to overnight collapse when the stars align. India would therefore be wise to read the tea leaves and dissociate itself from an illegitimate leader in Lukashenko who is not just running his country into the ground, but prepared to sell his soul and Belarus’ sovereignty writ large to the highest bidder.
[Photo by Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India, via Wikimedia Commons]
Saahil Menon is an investment analyst based in Dubai. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
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