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Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko take part in a signing ceremony following a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State of Russia and Belarus in Minsk, Belarus, on Dec. 6, 2024.
Viewpoint: With Putin’s protection, is Lukashenko’s reelection in Belarus a foregone conclusion?
Ahead of Sunday’s election in Belarus, there is little doubt that Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s longest-serving leader, will win a new term in office. After the protests that erupted following the 2020 elections, threatening his grip on power for the first time, a government crackdown supported by Russia has eliminated any opposition to the president.
Yet a new term for the 70-year-old leader, who has complained about health problems, will likely raise questions about potential succession planning in his next term. Regardless of what comes next, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who considers neighboring Belarus a critical part of his country’s sphere of influence, will make sure its interests are protected.
We sat down with Eurasia Group expert Alex Brideau to learn more about the upcoming election.
What do we know about Lukashenko’s true level of support?
Lukashenko has been in power for more than 30 years, ever since he won Belarus’ first and only genuine democratic presidential election, held in 1994 a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, it has been hard to tell just how genuine Lukashenko’s public support is. He has routinely won reelection in votes that were neither free nor fair. Many of his challengers have been arrested for standing against him.
Lukashenko’s reelection in 2020, though, demonstrated that whatever popularity he previously enjoyed had eroded and that his hold on power looked shaky. Public outcry over manipulated results that showed another landslide victory against a credible opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, prompted major demonstrations that threatened Lukashenko’s hold on power for months. Major repression by the security forces and support from Russia allowed him to regain control of the situation.
Is there any chance of a repeat of the 2020 results or unrest?
This election is going to look very different from the anger of five years ago. Belarus’ security services continue to repress the formal opposition. Parties have been banned and their leaders have been arrested or forced to flee the country. Attempts to protest the results will be met with arrests and force, most likely. The regime may hope that holding the election in January instead of August, as happened in 2020, might limit the appetite for demonstrations. As for the election itself, there is little mystery as to who will win. Lukashenko won’t have a serious challenger, instead facing candidates who are considered to be loyal opposition.
What matters with this vote?
Given his age and past statements suggesting he is concerned about his health, there will be at least some question as to whether Lukashenko might consider a succession plan during his new term. Lukashenko has talked about stepping aside before, only to stay firmly in charge. And it’s doubtful that a succession plan would truly lead to him giving up his control. Lukashenko’s control of the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly gives him a way to exert power if he decided he wanted to transfer the presidency to a loyalist.
How do outside powers view the election?
Russia will recognize the election results, allowing it to maintain its influence over Belarus. Lukashenko isn’t exactly liked in Moscow. His leadership has been considered erratic, and he has thumbed his nose at Moscow’s interests at times when it either helped him at home or when he tried (and failed) to cozy up to the West. But he has become even more dependent on Russian economic and military support since 2020, as Western governments imposed heavier sanctions and even restricted air travel from Belarus. Putin’s policies have treated Belarus much the same way he has approached Ukraine, seeing it as an integral part of Russia’s sphere of influence. Russia has used a bilateral “Union State” treaty from 1999 to boost its role in the country. If there were a crisis stemming from the election, Moscow could very well intervene to ensure that its control was intact.
How about the West?
The US and EU members, meanwhile, will not consider the election legitimate. But so far they aren’t saying all that much. Having already imposed a large number of sanctions against the economy and Belarusian leaders both before and after the 2020 crackdown, there is only so much they are able to do to affect Lukashenko’s control.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor of Eurasia Group.
Container ships in front of the port of Bremerhaven.
How scared should the world be of Trump’s economic threats?
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump used his social media platform to threatenVladimir Putin with “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States” unless he struck a bargain over Ukraine.
There’s just one problem: Russia has very little trade with the US. Americans imported just $2.8 billion in goods from Russia from Jan. to Nov. 2024, less than a tenth of the pre-war figure and less than 1% of all US imports over the same time period. The extensive sanctions already in place have hardly brought Moscow to its knees, and arguably benefited US rivals like China, Iran, and North Korea. It’s tough talk, but it’s not likely to push Putin to the table.
China is a different story. Trade with the US added up to an average of $54 billion per month in 2024, and the 60% tariffs Trump threatened to put on China on the campaign trail would cause severe damage to both economies. That may be why Trump is backing off the high sticker number and said Tuesday he is considering imposing at 10% tariffs on Chinese goods as soon as Feb. 1.
Now, 10% is a number that Beijing feels is much more manageable. China is experiencing price deflation — a really damaging phenomenon with one silver lining in that it could mean US consumers wind up paying about the same prices even if Trump hikes tariffs. The central government is also promising funds to stabilize the stock market in the face of potential tariffs and prevent investors from seeking safer shelter for their cash.
The fears are more real in Europe, where Trump threatened to impose tariffs without specifying a rate on Tuesday. Growth in the region’s most important economies is already stagnating, and even small barriers to trade with their most important partner will have serious consequences. Further economic troubles could empower far-right movements across the continent, which may suit Trump just fine. We have our eye on Germany, which will hold elections in precisely one month.
And don’t forget Canada and Mexico, which are staring down the barrel of 25% tariffs that Trump threatened on Tuesday as well. It’s creating a decidedly tense atmosphere in North America, with Canadian Prime Minister (for now) Justin Trudeau promising retaliation, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has hinted at as well.
The bottom line? You’re probably in for rising prices in the near future … unless everyone can come up with a reason for Trump to let them slide. We’re watching what Trump says when he speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.
Swedish troops of the NATO Multinational Brigade Latvia arrive in Riga port, Latvia January 18, 2025.
Sweden deploys troops to Latvia
Sweden has sent 550 troops to Latvia, its firstmajor deployment since joining NATO in March, which ended its decades-long neutrality.
The Swedishmechanized infantry battalion arrived in Riga on Saturday, escorted by Swedish air force and naval units. Stationed near the town of Adazi, the Swedish forces joined a Canadian-led multinational brigade, part of NATO’s effort to counter the growing threat Russia represents in the region since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Why Latvia? The small Baltic nation joined NATO in 2004 as part of a wave of former Soviet republics and satellites including Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Those are now the states on the front line of a potential confrontation with Russia — and Latvia wants to be ready. It is feared that a lightning strike from the East could cross the country in just a few hours if defenders aren’t ready to fight.
Sweden’s armed forces said the mission will ensure stability and “marks Sweden’s largest commitment yet since joining NATO” last year. According toLieutenant Colonel Henrik Rosdahl, “It’s a historic day, but at the same time, it’s our new normal.”
Ian Bremmer on the forces behind the geopolitical recession
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take for you today. I want to talk to you about the geopolitical recession that we, the world, are now in. What is a geopolitical recession you ask?
Well, economic recessions you kind of understand. We have boom cycles and bust cycles. They happen frequently. So frequently that we even have solid measurements for when an advanced industrial economy is in a technical recession. That's two quarters in a row of negative growth. Or when the world is experiencing a recessionary year. They happen frequently in the United States since World War II, every seven to 10 years on average. And that means that we have been through many of those cycles, and we can recognize them and we know that we don't like them. We want to respond to them.
And whether you are an advanced industrial economy, a free market economy, or whether you are an authoritarian state and a state capitalist system, either way, you've got central bankers and finance ministers or treasury secretaries that are using monetary and fiscal tools to try to minimize the impact of a recession and get back towards effective more sustainable growth.
Okay, so that's the economic side. But I'm not an economist. I'm a political scientist. Are there cycles in geopolitics? And the answer is yes. But they're a lot longer. And because the cycles are longer, playing out over several generations, we don't live through a lot of them individually. And so, we don't recognize them as a pattern. But we are right now in a geopolitical recession.
What causes a geopolitical recession? Well, basically it's when the balance of power becomes misaligned, out of whack, with the rules of the road geopolitically. With how the world order is structured, the institutions, the architecture. So, for example, the global order that we have been living through both after World War II through the Cold War, and then through Soviet collapse, was all about a number of global institutions and architecture that the United States created with its allies, its friends, after World War II was over.
So, the world has just gone through this horrible cataclysm, a geopolitical depression, and now we've got a boom cycle. And the United States is creating the United Nations and the WTO and the IMF and all of these other global institutions with the idea being support for collective security, support for a multilateral free trade architecture, support for rule of law, promotion of human rights, promotion of democracy all over the world. Generally speaking, the United States created a whole bunch of global institutions that reflected what the United States thought about how the world should be run.
Then over time, the balance of power changes, but the institutions don't. At least not as much because they're sticky, because it takes a lot of political capital to change them. People kick the can down the road. Let somebody else do it. And when that gap grows too wide, then the geopolitical order starts to shake. It becomes much more unstable.
So, what happened here? Three big reasons why we are now in a geopolitical recession. Number one, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia was not integrated into the West, not into the EU, not into NATO. They're angry about it. They blame the United States. They are now a chaos actor on the global stage, at least insofar as the advanced industrial economies. The G7 are concerned, and their top allies are fellow chaos actors: North Korea and Iran. That's reason number one.
Reason number two, China was integrated into the global order, particularly the global economy on the notion that as they got wealthier, as they benefited from that, they would become responsible stakeholders. And what that means for Americans is that they're going to align with these US led global institutions and values and norms. They'll support rule of law. They'll become more politically liberalized. They'll become more economically free market in orientation. The Chinese have gotten much wealthier. They're now a technological peer to the United States, no one else is close, ahead in some areas, behind in others. But they absolutely have not aligned with the United States. And that is making a lot of Americans and a lot of American allies very concerned, and it's leading to confrontation between the two most powerful countries.
Number three, while those first two things were going on, lots of people in the West, and especially the United States, increasingly felt like their own leaders, their political leaders, their business leaders, their corporate leaders, their media leaders, their elites, were promoting globalism, were promoting a bunch of things for a global order that didn't help them. So, all of those ideas about collective security and promotion of democracy and promoting free trade, not interested, because the average American doesn't feel like they're benefiting from it.
And certainly that is a big reason why Trump won, not just once, but twice, and more decisively the second time around. And so now, not only do you have the Russians acting like rogues with allies, and the Chinese much more powerful, but not aligned with the US-led global system. But you have the Americans saying, "We're not very interested in promoting that global system anymore. In fact, we're more interested in the law of the jungle."
It's a worldview that's closer to the Chinese. Not multilateralism but just one-on-one relations where you are stronger and you tell the other country what you want to have done. It's very transactional, it's very pragmatic. Doesn't really matter what kind of values that country holds. If you're Trump, you'll do a deal with Russia or China or an ally, and you'll criticize and pressure anybody if they're not behaving the way you want to. The fact that there are common values doesn't really matter. The fact that you're part of the same infrastructure and architecture doesn't really matter. It's, "What are you doing for me now?"
So given all of that, we are now in a serious geopolitical recession. What I call a G-Zero world. Not a G7, not a G20, where there's an absence of global leadership. Now, what's very interesting about that G-Zero world, what's very interesting about this geopolitical recession that I believe that we're in is that the United States is in a particularly strong position right now. Particularly strong compared to its adversaries like China facing the worst economic conditions since the 90s, maybe even the 70s. Like Russia in a period of severe economic decline, and other decline, national security, political. And Iran, which has basically just lost their empire, their empire by proxy, the Axis of Resistance in the Middle East. The US is also much stronger relationally to its allies. America's technology capabilities becoming so dominant compared to what the Europeans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Canadians don't have. America's military capabilities. The strength of the US economy coming out of the pandemic compared to every other G7 democracy shows that the United States can get a lot more done in a geopolitical recession. Can ensure that its will is followed.
Also, the fact that Trump is consolidated so much more power this time around compared to 2017 when he was first president. Last time, he had all of these establishment Republicans that didn't really support him, all the way from Mike Pence, his vice president, to Mad Dog Mattis, to Mike Pompeo, to Nikki Haley, to Gary Cohn, and on and on and on. This time around, not at all. Everyone is aligned with Trump.
Also last time, the GOP, the Republican Party, didn't feel like they had to ride Trump's coattails. He wasn't as popular as a lot of they were in their own individual campaigns. This time around not at all. Trump's much more popular than them, they need him much more. And that's happening at a time when so many allied governments are very, very weak. And that's a problem, right? For them. If you're Canada and your government's imploding, or you're South Korea and your government's imploding, or you're Germany, your government's imploding, or France and your government's imploding. Or even countries like the United Kingdom and Japan where the establishment is very, very vulnerable, and very unpopular, Trump's ability to tell you, "This is what we want. And by the way, we are a lot more effective at playing the law of the jungle than either our allies or our adversaries."
It's going to be very hard for them not to kiss the ring, not to provide big wins for the Americans. So, lots of wins for Trump, and that's what we're going to see over the course of the coming year, and a lot of defense being played by a lot of those other countries around the world. But is that sustainable?
Because to get out of a geopolitical recession, you ultimately need to create new rules of the road. You need new global architecture, especially because our challenges, whether it's climate change or an arms race, nuclear weapons, whether it's AI and new disruptive technologies, for good and for bad, they all are global challenges and global opportunities. But we are increasingly fragmenting our responses to national and even local levels.
So, this is not a sustainable trajectory, and that is what we're going to spend an awful lot of time looking at over the coming year, over the coming administration, and going beyond. Because, of course, this is the first time that any of us have experienced a country, the United States, essentially unwinding, undoing its own order. These global institutions that Trump and others are saying are globalist and not useful for the Americans to align with are institutions the United States initially created to help run the world in America's own image, but the US no longer believes that that works for it. And that is a fantastically interesting, but also unnerving, unsettling, and unstable time for us all geopolitically.
So, that's what a geopolitical recession is. I hope you found this worthwhile, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski speaks during a press conference.
Poland sounds the Russia cyber alarm
Georgia, a former Soviet republic that’s now independent, has facedpolitical crisis and social unrest over claims that Russia is manipulating its politics. Romania was forced to void an election result andrerun the vote late last year on similar charges of Russian meddling.
The charge isn’t new. Ukraine’sOrange Revolution (2004-05) began in response to an election result that protesters asserted had been determined by Vladimir Putin. And the charges of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential race made headlines, though there was no evidence the Russians were successful enough to determine the outcome.
Today, Europeans are particularly on edge, because new elections are coming in both Germany and the Czech Republic. Russia has suffered more than700,000 casualties in Ukraine, according to US officials. Its ability to wage conventional war has sustained enormous damage. All the more reason, European officials fear, for Russia to use cyber strikes and sabotage attacks to pressure their governments to cut their backing for Ukraine.
Putin makes a stunning accusation at Trump
Putin doesn’t like that Trump is copying his style. So he does what anyone would do ... invade Canada. #PUPPETREGIME
Watch more of GZERO's award-winning PUPPET REGIME series!
Polish Minister for European Affairs Adam Szlapka speaks during the presentation of the program for the 2025 Poland's Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Warsaw, Poland, on Dec. 10, 2024.
Poland calls for security self-reliance for Europe
With Donald Trump set to take office as US president on Monday, Poland is beginning its six-month presidency of the European Union with a warning: This is “the right time to say loudly that it’s time [for Europe] to take responsibility for our future and our security,” Poland’s Europe minister, Adam Szłapka, told the Guardian on Wednesday. Poland holds the rotating presidency from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2025.
Poland has long warned that many fellow EU members underestimate the threat that Russia poses for Europe, and with Trump now promising to broker a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, Poland’s government wants to be sure Europeans understand the longer-term risk.
Szłapka warned of “a very difficult time” ahead. And though Polish officials are careful not to criticize Trump directly, at least until his approach to Russia, Ukraine, and the future of NATO becomes clear, Poland continues to insist that Europe can’t outsource its security to the United States indefinitely.
In fact, Poland’s defense minister has welcomed the incoming US president’s call for NATO member states to spend 5% of their GDP on defense. Poland is already NATO’s biggest defense spender – with 4.12% of GDP in 2024 and an expected jump to 4.7% this year.
It’s a reminder that while many Europeans are casting a wary eye toward Washington, Poland’s attention remains firmly focused on the Kremlin.
Ian Bremmer: Trump is a symptom of a dysfunctional "G-Zero world"
In a political environment plagued by instability and polarization, who is poised to benefit? 2025 has kicked the G-Zero world into high gear: a world characterized by a growing vacuum in global governance. The anti-establishment wave and anti-incumbency trend that swept major democracies this past year underscore the dramatic shift. President-elect Donald Trump is the leading symptom, in many ways, the most powerful beneficiary of the G-Zero, argues Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer during a GZERO livestream to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report. He says that America’s embrace of a more “transactional worldview,” indifference to rule of law, and focus on rule of jungle will play to Trump’s hand and agenda. Bremmer adds that a G-Zero world and “a consolidated America First are the same thing, but jut from different perspectives. G-Zero is what happens with everybody else, and America First is what happens with the Americans.” With a tipsy-turvy year ahead, the world will be watching how Trump will navigate this moment in time.
Take a deep dive with the panel in our full discussion, livestreamed on Jan. 6 here.
- Three reasons for optimism in a leaderless world ›
- The rise of a leaderless world: Why 2025 marks a turning point, with Francis Fukuyama ›
- How Trump 2.0 could reshape US foreign policy, with the New York Times' David Sanger ›
- How will Trump 2.0 approach foreign policy? ›
- Quick Take: Trump's foreign policy legacy - the wins ›
- Trump's Davos address sets up big shifts in US strategy - GZERO Media ›