We have seen the disaster that is Trump’s but Poles cheered.

And with good reason, notwithstanding Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko’s protests that Belarus provides some kind of meaningful border between the two countries.

The other partner in Trump’s national security fantasy scenario, Belarus, is just as worried about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Belarus is not a NATO member state but Putin worried it may become too friendly to the West and too independent of Russia.

Schindler believes “Minsk is slipping from Putin’s grasp” and that provocations should be expected. The timing of the national security aides’ inquiries is, therefore, suspicious.

In fact, brave words aside, Lukashenko is currently worked up about alleged Russian violations of the two countries’ 20-year old border agreement. As the Financial Times explains,

Russia and Belarus share a border under a 1996 deal that set up a commonwealth known as the Union State. But Russian border guards this week set-up checkpoints at crossings into Belarus in response to Mr Lukashenko’s decision to introduce five-day visa waivers for citizens of 79 countries, including the US and EU member states.
 
“These tensions are happening because people in Russia are concerned that Belarus will move towards the west,” Mr Lukashenko said at an annual press conference in Minsk, the capital.
 
“As president I’m not supposed to play games or show my hand, because there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that you don’t see or hear and don’t need to know,” he added.
 
The comments by Mr Lukashenko, often described as Europe’s last dictator, highlighted growing tensions between Moscow and Minsk over Belarus’s balancing act between east and west.

It is more than a bit disturbing that the Trump administration is so ill-informed and amateurish than it would seriously entertain the idea of a Polish invasion of Belarus.

Lukashenko, by the way, lashed out at the FSB, the Russian security agency once known as the KGB and of which Vladimir Putin was once an agent – and the same folks Trump is busily cozying up to in easing the terms of President Obama’s recent sanctions.

There is a very real threat here. Keep in mind that Hitler used a staged Polish incursion into Germany – the infamous Gleiwitz incident – as his casus belli in invading Poland in 1939. If Putin is looking for an excuse to invade Belarus as well as Ukraine, Trump, whether intentionally or in his role as a useful idiot, seems eager to lend a hand.

Tellingly, Trump was not the least bit interested in news about Russian incursions into Ukraine, which are anything but the product of overheated and Kremlin-influenced White House imaginations.

Map: Google Maps

  Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus, Belarus Fears Russia, NATO, Poland, Poland Fears Russia, Russia, vladimir putin