Last month, in an interview with the Economist, French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the brain death of NATO. His statement went viral. He was not the first Western leader to comment publicly on the North Atlantic alliances problems, but his questioning of NATOs commitment to collective defensethe cornerstone of the organizationindicated serious trouble. Numerous Western officials were quick to repudiate Macrons words, but the unfolding discussion only emphasized that NATO faces perhaps its most intense challenges since its inception in 1949.

For some observers, NATOs internal turmoil is a dangerous gift to Russia, a country with which the alliance has had a particularly strained relationship since 2014. No wonder that a spokesman from Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, praised Macrons statement as golden words. Yet both Western condemnation of Macrons remarks and Russias happy reaction neglect a possibly more worrisome future.

Over the last few years, Russia and NATO have been caught in something of a security trap, where neither trusts the others intentions and thus tries to build up more military power to deter its rival. Although both think of their actions as defensive, their enemy sees pure aggressionand the cycle dangerously repeats.

For simple reasons of geography, Eastern Europe, which lies between Russia and NATO, has become the epicenter of this unfolding security dilemma, which has resulted in increasingly dangerous militarization. Russian exercises in the Baltic Sea, for example near the Karlskrona Naval Base in Sweden, are an indicator of Moscows plan to expand its influence over the states of the former Soviet Union and beyond.

Macrons public questioning of the alliances commitment to collective defense will only exacerbate the sense of uncertainty along NATOs eastern flank. Countries there may believe they have no choice but to do more about their own defense. In particular, they may look beyond NATO to Washington. Poland has already done as much in its attempt to secure a Fort Trump, including a permanent U.S. military presence, within its borders. Other countries appear ready to follow suit.

Meanwhile, by mid-2018, NATO and the United States had placed around 4,500 soldiers in the three Baltic states and Poland, as well as several thousand armored troops in Eastern Europe to prevent Russian aggression. That will also raise the stakes for Russia, which would surely see any increased buildup as an act of aggression.

The short- to medium-term repercussions are easy to predict. They will include more tensions inside NATO and inevitable counteractions from Russia. Those will, in turn, prompt ever more Western presence on the ground. No country will be left feeling more secure. Another worry is that a stronger NATO commitment to an ally would make that ally behave more aggressively than it would otherwise. In the longer term, the security dilemma could throw the region and the entire Euro-Atlantic space into danger.

It will be difficult to reverse Eastern Europes security dilemma. Doing so would require the Western countries and Russia sitting down together and striking a grand bargain on numerous issues such as sanctions, an arms control framework, and Ukraine, which currently appear unresolvable. A more realistic solution would be to find ways to make the twists and turns of Eastern European security more predictable. And here, Belarus is key.

For a long time, Belarus has been disregarded in the West as Europes last dictatorship, languishing in Russias geopolitical backyard. Although the countrys domestic politics are troubling, its recent foreign and security policies show a lot of potential for Belarus to play a stabilizing role in Eastern Europe.

In the wake of Russias invasion of Crimea in 2014 and fighting in the Donbass, Belarus took an emphatically neutral stance between Russia and the West. It even became a venue for the peace talks that saw the two Minsk agreements concluded in 2014 and 2015. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europes Trilateral Contact Group (including representatives of the OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine) convenes there every second week. And at a Minsk Dialogue Forum on regional security in October, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pledged to make the country a success story of European security and asked key global and regional actors for help.

Belarus remains a Russian ally, of course, and in a military conflict, it would side with Moscow. But it is also ready to do everything possible to prevent such a war from starting and alleviate regional tensions. We are on the front line. If we dont survive these years, if we will fail, it means we will have to become part of some other state, or they will simply wipe their feet on us. God forbid they unleash another war, like in Ukraine, Lukashenko said in the summer of 2018.

Because of its desire to head off the fighting, Belarus has refused to host a Russian air base, which Moscow sees as crucial in responding to NATOs growing presence on its western flank. Minsk has also gone a long way in improving relations with both the United States and the European Union, and it has expressed readiness for direct dialogue with NATO.

Most importantly, Belarus has a unique network of bilateral, military-to-military agreements with its neighbors. It has agreements with Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland (all NATO members) for regional confidence and security-building measures. With Ukraine, Minsk has an even stronger agreement on security cooperation.

Such agreements, long dismissed as window dressing, have become uniquely practical tools since 2014. The agreement with Kiev proved highly important in easing Ukrainian concerns that Belarusian territory could be used to launch a Russian attack, and agreements with NATO member states are becoming particularly useful in light of the upcoming Defender Europe 2020 exercises.

On the basis of these documents, Belarus could serve as a geographic cushion between NATO and Russia, protecting the two against miscalculation. As Belarus seeks better relations with the EU and the United States, Western actors should encourage bilateral and multilateral engagement with Minsk. Belaruss willingness to act more independently between East and West has grown, and questions about Belaruss sovereignty are at the heart of this determination.

Belarus will not solve the fundamental problems between Russia and NATO, nor will it ease growing differences inside the North American alliance itself. Yet it could help tame the security dilemmaand given todays climate, anything that prevents escalation would be welcome.

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Tensions Between Russia and NATO Have Militarized Eastern Europe. But Belarus Is Charting a Different Course. - Foreign Policy