Belarus and the NATO eastern flank — NATO and the eastern flank

Summary

Belarus joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1992 and NATO worked to build a partnership with it for many years, developing dialogue and practical cooperation. In 2021 Allies suspended practical cooperation between NATO and Belarus while maintaining dialogue as necessary, having stated at the Brussels Summit that Belarusian policies and actions had implications for regional stability and had violated the principles underpinning the partnership. NATO Allies have since condemned Belarus for enabling Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and for its ongoing complicity in the war. NATO also states that it is for the people of Belarus to determine their future and that all Allies support a sovereign and independent Belarus.

Why it matters

Belarus is usually filed alongside Russia in descriptions of the pressure on the eastern flank, and institutionally it is not in the same position at all: NATO stopped considering Russia a partner and has not said the same of Belarus. What it suspended is the cooperation, not the relationship. For a module whose Belarus question is how far integration with Russia has actually gone, the difference between a frozen partnership and a declared adversary is exactly the kind of distinction that should not be flattened.

Agreements

• North Atlantic Cooperation Council membership · signed 1992

  The start of the relationship. Succeeded in 1997 by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council.

What remains unknown

• The source read gives the year of the suspension and not a date within it. No finer precision is claimed.
• What dialogue, if any, has actually taken place since 2021 is not published on the page read, so the record states that dialogue was maintained as a stated policy rather than as an observed practice.