The EU and its Resilience to Hybrid Threats. Case Study: Belarus and the Weaponising of Immigrants at the EU’s Eastern Border

Abstract

Belarus was gripped by mass protests triggered by an election widely believed to have been orchestrated in favor of the long-time authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. Neither the vast majority of the Belarusian people nor the EU nor the democratic Western countries have recognized the election's outcome. As a response, the European Union imposed sanctions on Lukashenko's regime, which has led to the cooling of relations between the two. Along with several other incidents, such as the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Minsk and the subsequent arrest of a journalist on the flight, in the summer of 2021, three countries from the EU's Eastern flank, namely Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania that have a common border with Belarus, have directly experienced the deployment of a new instrument of pressure meant to pursue the Community decision-makers to lift the sanctions on Belarus. Namely, the Belarusian government was facilitating the transition of irregular immigrants into these three EU Member States. The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, also highlighted that the Belarusian regime was "using human beings in the act of aggression." As the central hypothesis of the research, we argue that in this case, the deliberate facilitation of illegal migration was used to destabilize the three bordering countries, and implicitly the EU could be considered as a tool in Belarus', and indirectly Russia's hybrid warfare waged against the European Community. Furthermore, as the migration pressure led to changes as regards spatial modifications, such as the erection of fences and border walls (by Lithuania), we also target to unfold the irregular immigration and spatial resilience nexus. By spatial resilience, we understand the ability of a territorial system to bounce back to desired functions after unexpected shocks and disturbances to improve its adaptive capacity intending to evolve all its material and immaterial components toward a new territorial system's organization. Thus, the present scientific endeavor not only targets the inspection of the potential of facilitating irregular immigration as a hybrid warfare tool but also as a shock disturbing the system and the prevalent status quo. The dependent variable of the research constitutes the assessment of the Community and implicitly its Member States' resilience to hybrid security challenges (with a particular focus on the deliberate facilitation of irregular immigration), the independent variables referring to all those factors that influence the capacity of the European Union in this regard. Moreover, a qualitative discourse analysis (of prominent EU and national decision-makers) will be used to assess the weaponizing of migrants as a hybrid warfare tool. Just like the concept of 'resilience,' the terms' hybrid threat' and 'hybrid warfare' have also dominated the EU's security agenda in recent years. For specific fields and specialists, hybrid threats might seem like a modern phenomenon; however, as ascertained by the experts of the European Commission and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, they have existed since the inception of warfare and violent conflicts among men. According to this reasoning, 'hybridity' in wars is as old as statecraft. Its reshuffled appearance is a consequence of the changes in the dynamics of the international security environment, which not only empowered it but, by exploiting the possibilities given by technology, enabled the emergence of a new array of hazards, tools, and modi operandi. Not just the available tools and modus operandi but also their outreach and effectiveness had increased. Nowadays, states and various non-state entities generating hybrid threats can achieve strategic objectives, such as interfering in elections, eroding citizens' trust in the core values of democracy and in democratic institutions, polarizing societies, or influencing the decision-making process and the capacity of leaders. The old concept redesigned in a new cloak approach is being emphasized by other scholars, such as Rita Costa, Robert Wilkie, and the experts of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) as well, when examining the evolution of the concept of hybrid threat. Moreover, Fiott and Parkes stress that the term, which during the Cold War was known as 'unconventional threat,' has resurrected in the new millennium under the label of 'hybrid threat,' making a successful comeback.