Russia and Belarus - Hard Power

Recently Belarus and Russia have gotten into such conflict that their relationship could be on the brink of destruction. Russia is Belarus’s main oil and gas supplier, and Belarus relies heavily on imports in order to make their money. This means that Russia has a large amount of sovereignty over Belarus. For a while these countries had an amicable relationship, however six months ago Minsk received a new ambassador, and supposedly he has different priorities than what the country needs. Belarus as a whole is so dependent on Russia that whenever they threaten to take action and do something that is not in alignment with what Russia wants, Russia threatens to cut off their energy supply. Not complying with Russia could disrupt their economy instantly. You can guess that eventually Belarus just has to give in to what Russia wants, even if they do not want to do it. 
One example of this is paying more for natural gas imports. Russia recently created a new energy tax system, and this has caused Belarus to lose billions of dollars. Russia is trying to evolve, but not in a way that works for Belarus. Because Russia has sovereignty, they are using hard power to get their way. It has not yet gotten to violence, however they are using coercion and manipulation to get what they want which is more money from Belarus for the same amount of crude oil. Russia is using their power in a forceful manner to get Belarus to do what they want. 
This issue has no foreseeable resolution as Mink’s new ambassador previously worked for Putin and there is some conspiracy of these two countries trying to further their integration. However I am interested in seeing where this goes, and what is to come of their economy, as well as what the millions of people in these two (still separate) countries think of this issue. 



Fedirka, Allison. “Hard Power Is Still King.” Geopolitical Futures, 2019 Geopolitical Futures, 
Shraibman, Artyom. “War of Words Pushes Belarus-Russia Relations to the Brink.” Carnegie 
Moscow Center, 2019 Carnegie Moscow Center, 26 Mar. 2019, https://carnegie.ru/commentary/78682.

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